Wright fears religious offense

News - But says only atheists angry so far

Will Wright tells Eurogamer.net today that EA were concerned that the grandiose evolution featured in Spore (single-celled organism to galactic culture) might see religious-types getting hot under the collar. So far this hasn't happened, it would seem.

"I think our bigger fear was that we didn't want to offend any religious people; but looking at the discussion that unfolded from this thing, what we had 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."

So, its only the red-faced atheists who are enflamed so far. In fact, Wright says that early criticisms from members of the development team helped the studio remove elements that might angry the so-inclined. "We have a number of team members that are pretty religious, and so in design, on the team, in our small, little microcosm of players out there, we tried our best to make sure we weren't overtly offending any religious people, but yet we wanted to include the idea, the concept of religion in the game."

Wright insists that despite his own atheistic leanings, that the game does not offer an opinion on religion, the existence of god, et al. He does however, clearly have some other game ideas up his sleeve: "I kind of like the idea of having a range of projects, some of them very short term, maybe one very long term - it's nice to have things a little out of cycle."