The folks over at Wired managed to score an interview with Will Wright to ask him a few questions about his latest project titled Spore which is due to hit gamer’s PCs sometime next year:

Wired News: What do you want players to get out of Spore?

Will Wright: One of my goals for this whole thing has been to give somebody an awe-inspiring global view of reality, almost like a drug-induced epiphany with a computer. The kind of, “Oh, man, what if we were a molecule inside of a galaxy?” type thing. Can we transfer that experience—that, I don’t want to say drug-induced, but I guess it is, or almost theological meaning-of-life-type experience—into an interactive computer game?

Can a computer game bring you to theological discussions, or philosophy, but at the same time remain eminently whimsical and playful and approachable? That’s an interesting balance to strike. I like the idea of an extremely whimsical toy that has deep philosophical implications.

WN: In the design process, was there any discussion of how religion would play into the game?

Wright: Well, we’re looking at what we called Cultural as one of the ways a civilization on your planet can then acquire another civilization, and we’re roughly thinking of that as possibly pseudo-religious. And I’m not quite sure how specific we’re going to get.

It’s almost better to be a little more abstract and let the player read into it.... So that distinction, let’s say, between religion and art, I’d almost rather leave to the player.... They can design little churches or minarets if they want to. In the game, they can use the tools to instantiate a very specific instance of what they think Cultural means.

I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on this one when it comes out and populating my own little universe full of Stupid Evil Bastards.

Update: Seems EA has officially launched the Spore website. Not a whole lot there yet, but you can sign up for a newsletter to keep up to date with developments.