Spore and the ‘Long Zoom’
Listening to: Be Natural - Manic Street Preachers
Science/Culture writer Steven Johnson has written a fascinating article about the game Spore and the idea of the ‘Long Zoom’. Johnson uses Spore as an example of “way of seeing of our time”:
Most eras have distinct “ways of seeing” that end up defining the period in retrospect: the fixed perspective of Renaissance art, the scattered collages of Cubism, the rapid-fire cuts introduced by MTV and the channel-surfing of the 80’s. Our own defining view is what you might call the long zoom…
Will Wright on his new game:
“I wanted to make a game that would recreate a drug induced epiphany,” Wright told me. “I want people to be able to step back five steps, five really big steps. To think about life itself and its potential galactic-scale impact. I want the gamers to have this awesome perspective handed to them in a game. And then let them decide how to interpret it.”
