If creator Will Wright brought the building blocks of Spore to the development table, executive producer Lucy Bradshaw makes sure that the rounded pegs snap together just right. We met with Lucy at the Spore launch event, and we got the sense that she's excited about the game, but also relieved that, after years (or "dog years" as she says) of development and hype, Spore is finally pressed to disc and available at retailers worldwide.

This isn't the first time Bradshaw has worked with Wright -- she was also on board for the creation of his massive game, The Sims. The difference between Spore and The Sims, however, is that unlike Wright's life management simulation, Spore is no one-trick pony.

"SimCity and The Sims are these singular systems that were a deconstruction of ideas that were sort of whole in themselves," says Bradshaw. "With Spore, we had to traverse through such an epic scope and the gameplay transitions were the most challenging parts. For us, we had to figure out how to give players this experience -- the arc of an entire journey about the 'who' that they've created as opposed to the 'what.'"

The 'who' of Spore refers to the player-created creatures that populate the universe; nearly five million to date (check them out now on the Sporepedia). Creature creation is the very heart of the game and with the stand-alone creation client topping US sales charts in June 2008; it has clearly found its mark. However, early on in the development process the team struggled to get players to connect with their creations as the focus groups turned sour.

"People would come in and you could see it on their face. They weren't having fun, they got frustrated and no one bothered to save or even name their creatures," said Bradshaw. "We made very rapid changes to what that interface would look like. We knew we got it right when they immediately sat down, thought of it as a creature and started putting it together. The funny thing was putting in that spine. Before, it had just been this lump of clay and people didn't know what to do with it."

Shortly before the Spore launch party, game reviews began to hit the Web. While the press has been largely favorable in their reviews (it currently holds an 87 out of 100 on Metacritic), many critics say that it falls short of the tremendous hype surrounding the game. Since the game's been in been in development since 2000, Bradshaw says she's aware of the hype that Spore's built up over the past eight years, but she says players are still connecting with the game.

"The one thing that I'm finding that I'm really happy to see is that even the hardest of core gamers who are saying, 'This isn't what I really expected,' they're recognizing where the magic is." said Bradshaw. "And they're writing about it. There are these experiences in Spore that are unique to it alone and the sort of magic around the overall experience and that's been pretty consistent in the reviews I've read. Frankly, that's what I find pride in. That's what we were trying to accomplish."

Lucy says it was too early to talk about game expansions or connectivity between devices for Spore (though she did mention that it was built to make expansion possible), but for now it seems as though the team at EA and Maxis are enjoying the launch of this unique addition to the gaming universe.