It looks like Spore creator Will Wright has been beset by some criticisms from "militant atheists" who have problems with the game's religious aspects. Here's what Wright told Eurogamer in a recent interview:

I think our bigger fear was that we didn't want to offend any religious people; but looking at the discussion that unfolded from this thing, what we had was a good sizeable group of players that we might call militant atheists, and the rest of the players seemed very tolerant, including all of the religious players.

And most of the atheists were very tolerant as well. I didn't expect to hit hot buttons on the atheist side as much; I expected it on the religious side. But so far I've had no critical feedback at all from anybody who is religious feeling that we were misrepresenting religion or it was bad to represent religion in the game. It was really the atheists!

Religion does play a part in Spore's civilization phase, and players are undoubtedly playing something akin to a god, but it's never overtly stated who the player is. The game also leaves the whole creation of the universe question open.

Spore is currently scheduled for release on PCs and Macs in September.

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