Jonathan Ross and son play Spore

Who is Jonathan Ross you ask? If you live in the US then you probably aren’t familiar with his name, however people in the UK would know him as a celebrity and host of a TV show called Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. Why is this an interesting story? Well, Mr. Ross’s son, Harvey, posted a thread on the Facepunch Studios forum claiming that a Maxis employee brought over the game Spore and that he and his dad got to play it.

After pages of disbelief, he posted some photos of himself with his dad to prove his identity and story.

So let’s get to the meat of the story. This is the post that started it all:

People from EA came round to our house today and showed me and my family the current beta of spore. We got to make creatures and try out some of the different stages of the game.
No we didn’t actually get an early copy but we’ve played and we are getting an early version of the creature creator early. See spore site for more info on that though.
Oh and also the reason why they keep dellaying is becuase there finishing the UFO stage.
Also please tell me if this is the wrong forum, i just wanted to share this with you guys because it was bloody amazing.

You can read the whole thread but it’s now about 20 pages long. Rob from the Gaming Steve forum posted about the thread and Hydro extended an invitation for him to come there and share his news with real Spore fans. So he did and was kind enough to answer questions from the community. Here is some of the information we found out:

Maxis employees came to visit Jonathan Ross at his home in England. They brought the whole game and full creature editor on a laptop. The opening sequence showed “a bunch of weird creatures flying into a hole. The loading screen shows you pictures of some creatures inhabiting the world you created.” They were able to pick a planet before starting the microbe stage, they picked a purple one. The microbe stage took about 25 minutes to play.

He indicated the delay of the game is due to the UFO stage, because of the “technically infinite” game play that can be experienced. He got to see a few minutes of tribal stage and said at that point it seemed like an RTS. The creature editor comes with a function to take photos and movies and will be able to upload direct to YouTube.

There is hope now that there will be a water creatures based on this statement: “You can stay in the primordial stage if you want, but when you make a creature he is plopped on land HOWEVER from what I have seen you can redesign your creature to go back into water. I saw in the creature creator you can add stuff like fins and flippers and all sorts of sea like stuff but I never saw any of it in action so this is just an estimate.”

Many thanks to Giga King (Harvey) for joining the Gaming Steve forum and sharing the information with everyone. Excitement is building for the release of the creature creator in 9 days and the game in 3 months.