If you live near or in San Francisco and have some free time on your hands tonight, you may want to head over to San Francisco's Apple Store to watch an hour-long demo of the full game of Spore (PC, Nintendo Wii, DS, Mac, and Mobile), as hosted by Will Wright. The full details after the jump!

The game industry may be getting swamped with sequels, remakes, annualization, and all manner of money-raking tactics. That's bad news, an analyst says, because creativity among developers is often compromised. He says, however, publishers are better off in the long run by breeding talent among the minds behind the medium. Get his full take in the article after the jump.

Okay, so this is definitely not new. Since it was introduced years ago, Spore (PC, Nintendo Wii, DS, Mac, and Mobile) has often been thought to be one of the games to bring new blood to the saturated PC gaming market by way of being the segment's best seller once it's released. But Electronic Arts just wants its investors to know that the company's feeling optimistic about the sim-strategy title, and Michael Pachter predicts more or less of the same.

Few games for the Nintendo DS, the Nintendo Wii, the PC and Mac are as anticipated as Spore from Will Wright's crack team of developers over at Electronic Arts. It'll still be a hefty wait before we get our hands on it, but at least we've got the devs on hand to talk about it. Watch the video interview after the jump!

Gamers, here's good news: Will Wright's Spore (PC, Mac, Wii, Nintendo DS, Mobile) now has a definite release date, and we can now finally stop guessing when the game will come out. Sure, the date may be several months away but at least we now have a something real to look forward to. Find out Spore's actual release date in the full article!

As we all know, Electronic Arts recently had a conference call with some of this industry's analysts. Want to find out just what sort of surprises they let loose? Then head over to the full article as we brief you about the future of Rock Band (Xbox 360, PS3) and Spore (PC, Mac, DS, Wii). It's not something to be missed.

Similar to Harvest Moon games, Marvelous Interactive's Yasuhiro Wada said he wants to create something like Spore (Nintendo Wii, DS, PC) in which gamers can create something that grows and produces other nifty stuff. In an interview, Wada talked about micro worlds and shared his ideas.

Find out more at the full article.

It's an endless debate when talking about girls playing the same video games guys play. They say girls only like MMORPGs, then follow up with "there are no girls on internet." Others believe female gamers stick to casual games, but Mario and Pokemon titles have more fanboys than fangirls.

No matter what your stand is, here's a list of non-girly games that aren't Barbie, Bratz, or any of those glamorous stuff.

Whether it's Turkey Day or Christmas, we feel the need to thank the greatest figures in video game history for their contributions that made gaming as fun as it is today. For decades, we've seen creative minds emerge and bring forward games that amaze the world, but they don't get much recognition. But now, we have enough time to list down some of the greatest geniuses behind phenomenal landmarks like Mario, Wolfenstein 3D, and even The Sims.

When the god of god games himself speaks, the world has no choice but to listen. Will Wright, the creator behind some of the biggest "god games" like Populous and SimCity, talks about the development of his upcoming life sim, Spore (PC, Wii, DS, Mobile), as well as the changing trend on how society adapts to games in general.

As a game designer, Wright wanted his games to appeal to a wider range of people. While gamers were busy killing off each other in all manner of shooter games, he was busy making games which created stuff - thus the birth of the SimCity and The Sims franchise. With most of his games having a strong scientific element, he enjoys making and playing games which call for a lot of innovation in the gaming industry.

He said that games today need to "culturally disconnect the concepts of play and education", only then will can we say that people as a whole have developed in an evolutionary sense. Wright said that when society gains interest and get emotionally involved with games, that's the only time that it becomes culturally acceptable and the next phase of evolution can set in for the industry.

He had his on take on how the gaming industry can be used to focus this movement:

I think the game industry could use spokespeople that try to represent the potential of gaming. The industry hasn't even begun to realise its potential – we're getting there very slowly – but in the meantime we need to be educating the public as to what this can eventually become. If we have more discussion about what games could be versus what they are right now, we might get there sooner.

With the finishing touches on Spore all prepared for its debut six months from now, Wright admitted that there were so many things that he and the developers at Maxis want to include in the game. However, they're still trying to find the "sweet spot" between what they want for both the game and the gamers. While Maxis is known for a lot of its games taking its roots on the PC, Spore will also see versions for both the handheld and console platform. Wright noted specifically that everyone will be seeing Spore on the Wii just as with their previous release, MySims.