Spore and Creature Creator are all well and good, but how long till the right wing noise machine demands a fair-and-balanced intelligent design game, too?

I've seen ads for a Creature Creator that's got a list price of 9.99. In fact, I pre-ordered it for my son who's been waiting for Spore for a good portion of his gaming life now. Is that this same program, or is it a different version? I noticed that the download page listed this as a trial version.

Unfortunately, my husband can't play. What the heck do they have against LINUX???

They're pretty much the same -- the $9.99 version will include more designs to add to your creature. That version will also ship with Spore, the full game, in Sept.

Farhad, under Preferences you should be able to increase the Creature Creator's default video recording resolution.

Ummm... it's well after 10AM and they're still offering version 2.0.0.14 on the download page.

When I first read this, I downloaded 3.0, but it kept crashing. I did a complete uninstall and went back to download again, but it was back to the previous version like Colinski mentioned.

. . . or used "creatively," if you prefer.

I've seen several videos of Creature Creator critter designs that are creatively perverse. Or maybe perversely creative.

Maxis is going to have to carefully screen the designs submitted to its archives.

Not only do they not offer a package for Linux, but my OS X is too old (you have to have 10.5.3). :-(

My kid and I have been making critters all day.....so addicting.......

Before everyone oohs and aahs over the Spore game, please check the fact that EA (Electronic Arts) is planning to put SecuRom, a DRM device, into this game.

If you don't know what this means, google it and you will find it is a nasty form of a rootkit which could destroy your computer, if not just your DVD burner and CD burners.

Better forwarned and forarmed is the best protection against this massive problem that has been haunting all the latest games from the company.

It has caused many (and there have been hundreds of reports) that this shuts down your computer and destroys emulation software.

It will also have a 3 install limit, no matter which computer you're using.

Yeah, it looks great but its not getting on my computers. The DRM is way too nasty for me, no way I'm letting a game take control of my computer. The three install max limit is absolutely nuts.

However there is an addon - oldBar (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6227) that restores the old behaviour.

I'd love to play Spore, but I haven't purchased an EA product since they started using SecuRom.

SecuRom was added to the last two Sims 2 expansions. In the Sims 2 community, many players dismissed concerns about SecuRom at first, or posted that they weren't having problems with it. Nine months later, most of those players have been back to ask for help in uninstalling SecuRom because it eventually did cause problems. Ironically, the only way to play the Sims 2 with those expansions and without SecuRom is to get a no-cd hack. EA's heavy-handed security paranoia is driving a good number of their customers to warez sites, in a desperate attempt to play a game they've already paid for.

Sweet, dude, thanks. That new address bar sucks.

This does not work on my 2 year old macbook. And it doesn't even work on my

son's 1 year old macbook! The graphics chip set is too old. I wonder if the pay

version will be more compatible. Anybody know?

Are they going to use the same offensive DRM system on the mac

that they are using on windows?