100/10, you just a singular cells at first but in 8 hours laters you gonna rule the world

just fun

When I installed Spore on my PC I expected a science toy in the guise of a game. Create a cell. Guide it toward civilization. Watch it march into the stars. What I didn’t expect was how quickly it would metastasize into the architecture of my daily life

The cell stage taught me hunger before it taught me joy. I scavenged. Devoured. Fled. Then I noticed myself doing the same in my career. Always scrabbling for nutrients. Never stopping to ask if I was full? The creature stage was worse. I sculpted abominations with too many eyes. Not enough balance. Then realized I was sculpting myself the same way. Clumsy. Overburdened. Desperate to appear fit for survival

By the time I reached the space stage I was no longer playing a game. I was playing a thesis. Everything we call society is just an ecosystem of temporary mutations. One step away from collapse if we stop adapting. That realization has not left me. It stares at me from the edges of every headline. Every election. Every whispered debate about democracy’s future

The disturbing thing is how Spore hints. Accidentally maybe. That if we remembered we were all once cells drifting in the same broth. Our systems of governance might hold. Cooperation isn’t lofty. It is primal. To ignore it is to de evolve

I live differently now because of this game. I eat differently. I argue differently. I dream differently. My loved ones with strange appendages. My city mutating overnight. My own hands reshaped into tools. It is not comfortable. It is clarifying

Why is Spore not more widely cherished. It is imperfect yes. But if we allowed its lessons to spread like spores in a damp forest. Maybe the world would be a better place. Stranger. Freer. Perhaps still democratic