Wil Wright talks about design influences on Spore (from Seed magazine, which as far as I can tell gave me a one-year subscrtiption in hopes I'd renew):
The science in Spore can be seen as the offspring of two seminal ideas: Powers of Ten , a 1977 documentary film by Ray and Charles Earnes that first showed viewers the zooming perspective of the universe described above, and the Drake Equation, a controversial attempt by the astrobiologist Frank Drake to quantify the prevalence of intelligence... read more
