If you haven’t seen Will Wright’s GDC talk about Spore and content, do it now. (registration required). It’s an hour long, but well worth it. Watch it to the end. Then come back.

Done?

The highlight, of course, is the demo of Spore and it does not disappoint. I haven’t seen any game so original since, well, The Sims.

But the point is a return to algorithmic programming with no loss of data for the player and this is done through player creation based on simple systems.

Though the idea of having other players’ animals being pulled into my ecosystem is a little odd, the challenge of infinite content is met through the compression of the data into a small rule system. Wright says that the player creations will run around 1k in size – an amazing saving of space and necessary to make an ecosystem look real and convincing.

And then the game changes to a RTS civ management game. And then to SimCity. And everything is done through simple rule sets and an amazingly obvious editor.

I don’t think I have ever seen a tech demo that promised such emergent gameplay. Though the Civ bit looked uninspired and, frankly, a little dull, the development of an authentically foreign culture and truly original world – for minimal cost in space and processing power – with a focus on light and player driven gameplay.

His concept of player experiences being the better story than anything scripted by the designer is not new. I think that strategy gamers have always understood this.

But if you compare the demo of Spore, a game still many months off, with the glorified cut-scenes on display for the new consoles at E3, there is no question what the most important presentation there was. Wright’s GDC presentation didn’t get the attention that it deserved in the gaming press at large and most of the E3 coverage has been about the new hardware in the pipeline.

But this – Spore and games like it – this is what I live for.

The Carnival of Gamers is on at Tony Rice’s Buttonmashing. A bunch of gaming blogs have gotten together to show what we have out there. I read two or three blogs daily, plus a few more a couple of times a week.

Sample the menu over there and fill your belly with some interesting perspectives on the industry and the hobby we love. My contribution was my recent column on Gamer Shame,

Womengamers.com recently posted an article by Fizgig (pseudonym, of course) about being afraid to reveal to your hobby to you colleagues and friends. “Why don’t I tell people at the university where I work that I play videogames?” Fizgig wrote. A university teacher, she would hide her hobby. (At last week’s E3, ESA chief Doug Lowenstein brought this article to the attention of the industry at large in his State of the Industry Address.)

Fizgig focuses on the shame of women gamers, but there is still a prevailing fear among adults that games are not a serious hobby and a waste of time. She makes a connection between the objectification of women in the industry and the corresponding resistance of women to share their interest in gaming.

But, as she notes, her own fiancé was reluctant to reveal his interest in gaming. Gamer shame is an equal opportunity disorder.

I have been “out” as a gamer for a while now. And Fizgig is on the way there. She doesn’t go into people’s reactions to her hobby, but I can guess. Most people are genuinely interested.

At the high school where I finished interning, about half of my department gamed in one fashion or another. There was one teacher who was a serious flight sim nut. Another was your standard console gamer. A third confessed to playing a lot of Rome: Total War. One female teacher took the trouble to explain that she had no games on her computer because she wasted too much time on then.

And the age range of this group is from early 20s to mid 40s.

My other non-gaming friends find my hobby (and the fact that I occasionally get paid to write about it) interesting, but in general just another hobby. They put it on the same level as watching movies or reading mystery novels. It’s a harmless distraction of no real importance. I am not a freak – though their lack of gaming knowledge does limit the types of conversations we can have about the subject.

In short, I think that the fear of ostracism, mockery or pity is pretty overblown. There will always be those snobs who think gaming is pointless, but these are the same people who don’t watch TV and talk about it endlessly. Games have been part of the background of my generation for as long as I can remember, so it’s not like you are unveiling that you are a LARPer.

Games may not be mainstream yet, but they aren’t in the shadows. Gamers shouldn’t be either.

Gamespot has some screenshots of the upcoming XIII Century: Death or Glory. You can read more about it at 1c Games headquarters.

Gee. Epic battles, a Risk-like strategy game, 10 playable factions, sieges…didn’t I play this before?

Creative Assembly has a good thing going. A distinctive look and complete command of the sub-genre. They had large battles and a strategy overlay that was finally perfected in Rome.

Immediately, after Shogun was released, Magitech released a similar Japanese themed game called Takeda. They shortly after did a Rome themed one, Strength and Honor, which is still awaiting its US release. The Magitech games put more energy into the strategy than the battles, and they had a lower budget look and feel. (They are now at work on Takeda 2).

But now we have Imperial Glory, a Total War type game set in Napoleonic Europe and soon we’ll have XIII Century, which will have customizable units. Legion: Arena looks to have a Total War vibe to its battles, though we’ll have to wait until Xmas to see how they stick a strategy engine to it.

In short, Creative Assembly’s trademark style now belongs to everyone.

This is nothing new. Civ sparked clones, as did Command and Conquer. All the great strategy originators had to see their own Eureka moments copied or bastardized by less talented developers.

Now, XIII Century could be a great game. It could be the 3D Medieval: Total War.

But after seeing a Rise of Nations campaign map tagged onto Cossacks II and Rise of Nations borders in Empire Earth II, I wonder why anyone wonders why strategy gamers are a little jaded.

As wide and deep as the strategy genre is, you would think that we would see more variety in the settings for the games. The push for a familiar world to put the player at ease means that most games just repeat the same moments over and over again. Games with a broad historical sweep aside, strategy games today generally fall into four major groups:

Roman
Medieval
World War II
Cold War gone hot

There were once lots of Civil War battle games and games that dealt with Napoleon, but the golden age of wargaming is long past. So these settings, though still popular with players, are a little out of fashion. As ancient themed games have grown in popularity, these early modern and modern themes have faded.

The Age of Discovery is also a common them in games, but is not a perennial favorite like revisiting D-Day is.

I have a few periods that could use the attention of a talented designer. I am not suggesting that people stop making games about familiar or popular topics – I need legions to command – but would a little change hurt?

Ancient Middle East – Besides Chariots of War, no other game has really dealt with this fascinating period. Though the tech tree would be simple, and largely focused on organizational stuff, the diplomatic setting is complex and deep. You could plop the player in as the King of Assyria, armed with the greatest military force ever seen or as the King of Judah, caught between Assyria and the Egyptian superpower to the south. There is probably a good Christian/Jewish religious game in here somewhere. Can you keep your faith and your kingdom?

Renaissance Italy – If you want diplomatic wheeling dealing, this is the setting for it. The Merchant Prince/Machiavelli games dealt with some of the scheming that the author of The Prince was talking about, but put some foreign and military policy in there. This was a cockpit of all kinds of fun. If Paradox is smart, they’ll package the Machiavelli variant with their Diplomacy game now in production.

Exploration – Someone on another forum had this idea, and I think it’s a good one. Let the player be an explorer in the opening of a great Continent. Randomize the world setting, put strategic decisions in his/her way (negotiations, supplies, speed, competition for renown) and let people act out their inner Livingston.

Creation of China – the Shogun Era of Japan has been done a few times, and Koei dealt with the early Chinese empire way back in the Golden Age of strategy gaming. The success of recent Chinese movies with the expansion of Qin as a backdrop may mean that there is an audience for this kind of historic strategy epic.

Trade Empires – Yeah, Frog City already did a game called this. But someone should revisit it and make it fun. Add multiplayer. Maybe if Frog City wasn’t too busy making a GTA drug lord ripoff, they could do it.

Ideas are a dime a dozen in the game industry, and I am sure that smarter people than I have proposed ideas similar to these to their bosses. None of these ideas is purely original, just underdone.

And, familiar settings means a ready made audience. Which means money. Most great games are variations on a theme – nothing way out in left field.

But take this chance to pitch the strategy game you want to see. Maybe somebody will listen.