“The television show is an exciting trip into the development of all life as we have come to know it and illuminates the fact, like never before, how all of us, from the lowliest to the grandest, are all connected right down to our most genetic level”

On Tuesday, September 9, the National Geographic Channel will premiere “How To Build a Better Being,” its special program hosted by game pioneer Will Wright.

Wright is the gaming guru behind the highly successful SIMS, the gaming environment that allows users to create entire worlds from scratch and also create the inhabitants of those worlds. Now Wright is redirecting his genius with “Spore,” his newest game that will allow players to design a new life form, such as a one-eyed web-footed creature with a snout, and even more importantly, then controlling their created species through the known laws of evolution and genetics.

[Photo: Game developer Will Wright examines a robot in Emeryville, California]

In order to get a better understanding for “Spore,” Wright left his familiar gaming confines and surrounded himself in the world of the geneticists, anthropologists, biologists and the leaders in the evolutionary sciences. With them he explores the genetic information that all humans share with every other creature, something now referred to as the “Tool Kit Genes,” and how those genes are the basic overseers of every other gene in the development of every living thing. From 340 million year old prehistoric fish with wrists to 8-ton elephants with trunks, this television program allows the viewer in on some of the powerful new insights science has learned right up to our current time as it relates to the origin of the species and how our prized parts came into being….and exactly what all of us humans have in common with a 500 million year-old worm.

Wright then employs all of what he was able to get from these scientists into his new video game “Spore,” which debuts today, Sunday, September 7, in stores across the globe.

The television show is an exciting trip into the development of all life as we have come to know it and illuminates the fact, like never before, how all of us, from the lowliest to the grandest, are all connected right down to our most genetic level.

I highly recommend this program to everyone, old and young alike and encourage families to sit down and watch it together when it airs this coming Tuesday, September 9 on the National Geographic Channel.

Overall Slice of SciFi scale of 0 to 5 stars, “How To Build a Better Being” rates:

~ Samuel K. Sloan
FarPoint Media Executive News Director