The Creature Creator at work.

I've not been entirely sure whether Spore is a success or not, since there's been plenty of grumbling about the ways in which the game didn't live up to the hype. How do we measure a title's success? Shifting a few million units doesn't always mean a game is any good, and given Spore's status as most pirated game of 2008, not officially shifting millions of units doesn't necessarily spell doom, either! Well, how about continuing community interaction? If sheer numbers of created creatures is any measure of Spore's impact, it has to be considered a winner, as the hundred millionth piece of user-generated content will soon be uploaded to the Sporepedia.

At an average of more than 307,000 user creations uploaded daily, the enormous milestone represents a truly staggering number of hours invested in the title worldwide. A nice, perspective-lending statistic EA are boasting of is that the 31,017,761 Spore creatures added since the Creature Creator's release in June last year equal nineteen times times the number of species that currently exist on earth. The number of discovered and classified earthly species is apparently around two million, which sounds about right, but this figure represents only a small portion of the species yet to be recorded, with some scientists estimating that only ten percent of all currently existing species have been recorded. Pinch of salt, anyone?

Regardless of hyperbole and statistical abuse, Maxis must be congratulated on their achievement - and their domination doesn't look set to end any time soon. The Spore world is due for even further expansion with the upcoming release of the Spore Galactic Adventures expansion, and two spin-off titles for Wii and DS.

(By the way, if you're interested in checking out some creature creations, you don't have to visit the Sporepedia - a hundred million creatures is probably just a few too many to glance over, and you can check out the cream of the crop right here in our forum gallery of GON users' creations!)