Full FeedSome Atheists cranky about Spore’s religion creation feature
Will Wright’s latest project Spore puts players in control of their own destiny by controlling a lot of the aspects that help make up life. Starting as a single-cell organism, your choices help determine the type of creature you will become. From there it’s a matter of building up a civilization which include traditions, customs and religion.
Wright had a feeling that the religion creation mechanic in Spore might stir up some controversy from various religious groups but ironically enough, it was a segment of Atheists that had a problem with it.
Wright said in an interview with Eurogamer:
“I think our bigger fear was that we didn’t want to offend any religious people; but looking at the discussion that unfolded from this thing, what we had was a good sizeable group of players that we might call militant Atheists, and the rest of the players seemed very tolerant, including all of the religious players.
And most of the Atheists were very tolerant as well. I didn’t expect to hit hot buttons on the atheist side as much; I expected it on the religious side. But so far I’ve had no critical feedback at all from anybody who is religious feeling that we were misrepresenting religion or it was bad to represent religion in the game. It was really the Atheists.”
Wright describes himself as an atheist as well but, unlike “militant Atheists,” he doesn’t see religion has being inherently dangerous and said that he is “open to the idea that there is some creator somewhere.” He sees religion as having both positive and negative consequences. Wright and his Spore team worked very carefully to not offend anyone who may describe themselves as being religious.
“We have a number of team members that are pretty religious. And so in design, on the team, in our small, little microcosm of players out there, we tried our best to make sure we weren’t overtly offending any religious people, but yet we wanted to include the idea, the concept of religion in the game.”
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So far, only ONE article on this subject has gotten it right.
You see, the real problem is NOT the inclusion of religion in Spore; that makes perfect sense since religion has been around for as long as humanity has.
No, the real problem is that religion in Spore grants the player MAGICAL POWERS.
This is something religion in the real world DOESN’T DO, and for a game that claims to be a universe simulator, Spore really ought not to include @#$%ing MAGIC.
That was the REAL objection atheists had on the Spore.com webboard, and I find it marginally distressing that Will Wright got that wrong, especially since he even responded to us on the board.
on September 3, 2008 at 11:23 AM - LINKMy main issue with this topic is the way Wright’s answers were represented. The question by Eurogamer: “You describe yourself as an atheist; take the so-called militant atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, who see faith uniformly as a bad, negative and dangerous thing. Do you see it more benignly, even if you don’t necessarily believe?”
So the term “militant Atheists” in that interview was introduced by the interviewer, not from Wright. There is also an exclamation point tossed in later implying that Wright was pretty excited/angered/surprised (?) that Atheists were so concerned but it’s impossible to get accurate intonation from a written word. I read that as Wright not actually calling any group militant but trying to delicately reply to the interviewers question.
As for the magic vs. religion aspect, I did not realize that Atheists are so against magic. What “one article” got it “right?”
on September 3, 2008 at 05:06 PM - LINKLet’s take it to the next level…
If the SPORE model is correct we have the minor problem of god requiring (and being reliant on) a team of computer game designers…
Sure, SPORE is a little unrealistic - you select traits that you want etc but it’s a GAME. A real-time, no input required evolution simulator would leave you and millenia of your children( and their children, and their children…) waiting for the replicator to occur and then…
You get my point.
on September 8, 2008 at 03:59 AM - LINKI don’t see why people get offended over a game… It’s a GAME. IT’S FAKE! Just because it has an aspect of religion and the religion in the game grants magical powers DOESN’T mean anything. It just means in the game certain “occupations” , I’ll put it, grants you some special things. Like in some games religious classes get the power to heal wounded. Do religions in real life have the power to heal the wounded, no. It’s a game. It’s not saying it’s based off one religion either, so it’s not claiming any or all religions have special magic. It’s just putting an advantage in a game for a class you get. Just like the military class gets huge @$$ missles and guns, religion gets magic powers. So stop complaining and just play the game. THERE IS NOTHING TO GET OFFENDED BY!
on May 9, 2009 at 08:08 PM - LINK