There is a slight thumping in my chest cavity as I hear the announcement, the great Will Wright, maker of The Sims and SimCity is to make an announcement at 2005 Game Developers Conference. Will it be the anticipated and unprecedented The Sims 3, will it be some new sim-type of game, or will it be something brand new? The beating speeds up as he starts to talk; he talks about a new style of game play, about a game that incorporates everything from Pacman to Civilization. He talks about a game that you are in total control over, with truly open game play. Will Wright, the great Will Wright, has announced the game of the decade: Spore.

The heart rate accelerates like a drag racer at the green light. It is thumping in admiration, thumping in desire, thumping in lust. The game should be out by the end of the year, the greatest game ever available on PCs; well, at least the greatest ever available using Windows XP as an operating system. This game is supposed to have everything one could want in a game; it is to be a MSORPG, a Massive Single-player Online Role Playing Game. No game before, and presumably no game after, will be so simple yet so complex as this astounding game should be. Evolution will be lead by the player, a civilization will form and the galaxy will be conquered. In the space of a few hours or days, you should be able to become God.

The beating skids to a stop; there it is, that dreaded press release. Spore has been delayed, moved into the piles of games that could be but never were. Say it is not so, we all hoped and prayed as we surfed Digg trying to find out more information. There were developer problems, technology problems, and even a lack of a budget (not giving Wright a large budget is like not giving Spielberg a new movie). Murphy had reared his ugly mug to ensure that everything and anything that could go wrong, even those not overlooked, would go wrong. It seemed to be destined to end up in the wish pile with Diablo 3 and Duke Nukem: Forever (both of which are now being worked on). The greatest game of the decade might never be.

The gentle thud reemerges at E3 2007 as Wright announces Spore is to be released later that fiscal year. While I assume it might be an announcement in the vaporware to keep me interested, it does exactly as it should. There is a new trailer released, complete with some comic genus (Robin Williams) playing around with the new game. There are details, like 7 levels, complete customization, and file sizes of about 1Kb! They even release a downloadable trailer and a build-your-own-creature machine. Regardless of how many penis-shaped creatures show up on Web sites, ready to be released into the game worlds soon as it shows up, something happens and it gets delayed again.