On Sunday, the Holy Grail of life simulation games hit the gaming market like a long-delayed meteorite. It made a smaller impact with the atheist crowd, who took umbrage with the inclusion of religion in the game.
"Spore," a game about developing life from cellular goo to space-faring creatures, marks the next generation of "God game," where players alter every aspect of some elements of the game, such as creatures and buildings.
"Spore" is constructed around phases of life, all spent guiding organisms through the evolutionary process. The later parts of the game focus on large environments, moving from tribes to planet-wide and eventually interstellar civilizations.
In these later phases, players have the option to take over rival groups by militaristic, economic and religious means. Glancing over the more obvious biological issues, some militant atheists have been offended by the last of these.
The ability to manipulate life in the game is very much like the concept of intelligent design, with players changing minute details of creatures in order to adapt them to their environment. Of course, survival of the fittest still determines who gets eaten, but the ultimate control lies in the godlike players' hands.
Given this chance to be creative, the players responded by flooding the Spore Web site with creatures designed to look like previous video game characters, inanimate objects and sex organs.
As for the game's view of life, there has been no strong backlash from the conservative fundamentalist crowd as of yet, possibly because the Darwinistic mechanism of evolution doesn't have as much of a presence in the game. In fact, the appeal of Spore is somewhat theistic, although the game refrains from calling the player a deity and life already exists before the player takes the helm.
Surprisingly, for a game in which creatures evolve from simpler organisms into complex ones, Spore has upset atheists. While the obvious reason would be its apparent advocacy for intelligent design, with players controlling every step of the evolutionary process, instead atheists are upset about a mechanic of the game that allows players to have religious civilizations.
According to designer Will Wright, there 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." Then again, of course the creationists are happy, the game finally shows the possibility of a deity directing evolution - to a species resembling human testicles.
Apparently, radical atheist groups believe that religion should be completely excluded from the game. Maybe I'm the exception, but I think religion is a natural consequence of cultural development. It would be far more dishonest for the Spore creators to pretend that a primitive tribe would have no religion at all. I mean, how would the sun come up?
Getting to the bottom of this, I tried to find out just what the religious "powers" in the game are. It seems that a player can take over neighboring civilizations through the use of propaganda converting the citizens to the player's species' religion. Nothing says "let's be friends" like a crate full of space Bibles.
The alternatives to religious takeover are economic and military routes. Each has super weapons, which can make taking over rival civilizations much easier. For instance, the military super weapons include the Napalm Strike and the Tactical Nuke. The religious super weapons? Faith Heal, which fixes your vehicles and buildings; Black Rain, which rains diseased creatures down on an enemy state, making the citizens unhappy and therefore easier to convert; and Messianic Uprising, which allows players to take over the entire planet with a message of awe-inspiring evangelism.
In other words, players can take over other cultures with a hostile religious message. Unhappy citizens are more susceptible to being converted, and a very powerful ability enables players to get them there by dropping diseased bodies on their towns. Try to figure out why this upsets atheists.
The portrayal of religion is obviously not at all flattering. If anything, it ignores the positive effects that religion has on a society, which the game sidesteps in favor of the hyper-evangelical approach. Atheists' efforts would be better spent on criticizing a part of the game that does offend their beliefs - the intelligent design approach. Maybe they can use their own standby super power, Richard Dawkins.
In other words, it's time for militant atheists to hear the words they have been saying to fundamentalists for years: "It's just a game."
Steven Davis is a junior math major and can be reached at opinion@dailynebraskan.com.
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