The modding community keeping Spore alive
We talk to three members of the Spore modding community about their efforts to continue Maxis' work and keep the game active for new generations of fans.
After publishing my Spore oral history in June, a member of the community who goes by Biolaser reached out by email. "Almost everyone in the Spore community recognizes that Spore did not live up to the hype surrounding the game in the 2000s," they wrote. "From the quotes in your work, the [Electronic Arts] developers seem to share this view all the way up to [chief designer] Will Wright himself."
In my story, Wright said that "the biggest criticism of Spore, which I totally accept, is that it felt like five separate games that were kind of stuck together. Which it pretty much was." Chris Hecker, designer and lead engineer for the procedural generation, said that although Spore "had more magic in it than most games," it was "overall a failed game design."
But Biolaser wanted to share a different perspective. "The greater Spore community is still extremely active, and content for the game is being produced all the time," they wrote.
Jay Castello
For members of that community, Spore remains a beloved game despite having been released in 2008 to a mixed reception. EA also continues to maintain public servers, and in 2024 it created a new official Discord server. According to the Spore-O-Meter, a log created by a community member called Kade which pulls from Spore's API, dozens of new players create accounts and hundreds of new creatures are still uploaded daily.
"I would also argue that modding is the single strongest factor that has kept Spore alive with an active playerbase," Biolaser wrote. To dig in further, I spoke to three members of the modding community — Biolaser; Kade, who runs the tool hosting website Sporecommunity.com; and long-term modder Valla — about the 18 years since Spore's release, and the work and passion they've put into keeping it alive.