Social networking goes gaming

— -- Spore has landed, and the long-awaited video game brings with it an evolutionary shift in how players interact with — and help create — games.

The title, in development for more than four years with The Sims creator Will Wright at the helm, breaks new ground in several ways. For starters, Spore (out this week for Windows and Macintosh computers, $50; special edition $80) takes the "god game" genre to extremes with players guiding single-cell organisms through the entire evolutionary process from land creatures to galactic explorers.

Another Spore game-changer: Everything players create is transmitted to the game's network, run by publisher Electronic Arts and becomes part of a constantly updated universe. All players will encounter material designed by others, from a menagerie of creatures to buildings and vehicles, in the spirit of sharing that has gained millions of devotees for sites such as YouTube and Facebook.

"A lot of what we had modeled in terms of the social features of Spore was based on social networks," Wright says. "You are creating stuff as you play the game and, with that, basically everybody becomes a creator."

Wright also stars in How to Build a Better Being tonight (10 p.m. ET) on the National Geographic Channel.

User-generated content has been a part of online computer gaming long before YouTube. Back in the '70s, homegrown text-based multi-user dungeon, or MUD, games began cropping up on networks. And games such as Doom, Quake and Half-Life came with tools to create modifications ("mods") and new levels.

But Spore makes user-generated content almost automatic. "You are sort of creating without even knowing you are doing it," says PC Gamer magazine's Kristen Salvatore. "With a few rare exceptions, (user-generated content) has been used only among the hard-core community. It has not been that easy (or) accessible for casual or mainstream gamers."

And that seamlessness keeps the quality high, Salvatore says. "It's all so wacky and fun and rendered so beautifully. It's not like you ever feel like you stumbled out of the professional part and into the unprofessional."