EA needs creative guru's gaming spore to click

Jet-powered cars, aliens, moon colonies and robots.

To many, this is the stuff of science fiction. But for Electronic Arts Inc creative guru Will Wright, they represent some of his most obsessive pursuits and the seeds of inspiration for his hotly anticipated video game, Spore.

Launching Sept. 7, Spore allows players to create empires and civilisations across galaxies, populated by creatures, buildings and spaceships.

Atlanta-born Wright, a bespectacled, mop-haired alien obsessive who builds robots for research purposes, said Spore was inspired by the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program.

"I believe there are other intelligences out there, and the closest is several galaxies away," said Wright, 48, who grew up building model cars and dreaming of space travel.

The launch of Spore comes at a critical time for loss-making EA, which is battling Activision Blizzard Inc for preeminence in the fast-growing $28 billion-a-year video games market.

Evan Wilson, analyst with Pacific Crest Securities, describes 2009 as a "do-or-die year" for EA.

Though the consequences of Spore's failure for EA are uppermost in analysts' minds, Wright is widely seen as up to the task.

A seminal figure in the games industry, observers tend to reach for superlatives when they assess his importance to the company.

"Will is the Albert Einstein of the gaming business -- no one else is pushing boundaries like he is," said Geoff Keighley, the host of GameTrailers TV, a specialist web-based video games review.

"He is right up there with Shigeru Miyamoto in terms of his contributions to the gaming industry," Keighley added, referring to Nintendo Co Ltd's legendary games designer who created many of the firm's smash hits like Donkey Kong.

Wright developed his blockbuster game The Sims while at Maxis, the company he co-founded and sold to EA in 1997.

The Sims, where players create home environments in which characters did mundane tasks like cooking and moving furniture, surpassed expectations and went on to sell over 100 million copies.

Version 3 is in the pipeline and it, along with Spore, is among a raft of new games seen as critical to EA's future as it struggles with tepid sales and flagging interest from gamers.

There are no guarantees, as Wright knows to his cost. His most striking flop was The Sims Online, a multi-player version of The Sims that never caught on and was shut earlier this month.

"He clearly didn't understand what makes those kinds of games work well, so The Sims Online was a pretty serious failure," said Timothy Burke, a cultural historian at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.

Spore itself has not been without its share of challenges. First announced in 2005, it was originally slated for launch in 2007.

Spore's strong pedigree bodes well for sales, says Colin Sebastian, analyst at Lazard Capital Markets in San Francisco, though he acknowledges it is not yet clear if Spore will see Wright reproducing his best form.

"It's too early to say if Wright is a one-hit wonder," he added.