amazing video game with evolution and AI

Will Wright, of Sim City fame, has created a new video game named Spore, where players start with a single celled organism and help evolve it over many generations (using a "creature editor") through a sequence of more complex organisms that walk on land, mate to produce offspring, eat other creatures to survive, and so on. Eventually, the creatures form villages, cities, and leave their home planet to meet creatures evolved by other players. There is a fantastic video available where the developer shows off what the game can do. Text on the video's web page says "Will Wright talking at the Game Developer's Conference about 'Spore', which looks like it could possibly be the best video game ever". That may not be hyperbole.



The video contains interesting comments about "procedural verbs", like "bite" and "walk" and how they can be combined to produce "drag" = "bite and walk". It's unclear whether there is significant NPC AI, or whether the creatures are all the result of the work of other players.