Game Enables Users to Guide Evolution on Screen

The new Spore computer game allows users to choose traits for living things to help them survive. Scholars caution the game is not a substitute for learning science directly.

—Image Courtesy of Education Arts

A Digital Approach to Biology

By Sean Cavanagh

A much-anticipated commercial computer game about evolution is getting a favorable response from some scholars, who welcome its interactive, engaging approach to the topic even though a few of its features sacriﬁce strict scientific accuracy to fun.

The game, called Spore , was released in stores across the United States last week. It gives users the ability to “evolve life,” or customize creatures by giving them traits that affect their ability to survive and prosper, as well as share their creations with a vast network of other game players.

Debates over how to teach about evolution, a foundational theory in the study of biology, have raged in schools for years. For a number of academic experts familiar with those debates who had heard of Spore or seen demonstrations of it, the game is a clever way to raise...