Spore

I don't play computer games much, so I don't keep up on the computer games market. So I guess everyone else already knows about Spore, but I just heard about it.

(In case you haven't, too, the best way to find out about it is the video demo from 2005's E3. Go watch the video before you read the rest of this.)

Like I said, I'm not much for computer games. My dabblings are generally things I can pick up and play for five minutes and then put down, which I use to fill in times I'm waiting for something, or on those rare days when I just need to burn off a little stress. Mostly I play ancient (read: from my own youth) arcade games using MAME, and puzzle games like Sudoku or Bejewelled. And of course I play person-to-person roleplaying games, sometimes face to face and sometimes over a computer (as opposed to a computer game that integrates, or claims to integrate, roleplaying, which I do not play).

But I don't play anything that takes an investment of time, anything that sucks you in, because, simply enough, I put my time into other sinkholes, just as consuming and addictive. I have a few flight simulators and a space combat game, but I rarely spend that long in them, so every time I play with them I have to start over.

Spore might be the thing to finally change that. Now I have to decide what else to give up to make the time for it. And think about whether I'll need to buy a gaming computer that can handle it (doubt I'll be able to kick my wife off of her computer long enough!). I've been imagining a game like this since the first day I was exposed to simulation games, maybe earlier, so how could I not?