Spore
I've played parts of Spore and watched other people play other parts. It's fascinating and a great game, but it's not an accurate simulation, of course. In fact, if The Sims is like Playing With Dolls: The Game (which it kind of is), then Spore is Intelligent Design: The Game
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anyway, one that I really loved was an old-school DOS simulator called SimEarth. It was surprisingly hands-off, for a Maxis sim game; they aren't kidding when they call it simEARTH - the part that you have control over is the ecosphere of a planet. You tweak the environmental status, the atmosphere, the terrain, the scope of vegitation, etc... The point of all your eco-tweaking, however, is to create and maintain a planet capable of supporting and sustaining life as it evolves. And I'm serious about the "as it evolves" part - you have little to no hand in the evolution of your species on the surface (in fact, I don't recall any "zoom in and look at the creatures" option)... You just get little notices now and then when events and milestones happen...
after about a billion hours of game play, you finally get a "congrats, life has evolved"
and then another billion hours later, after carefully trying to keep your planet from overheating or anything drastic, you get "congrats, your life has remained alive long enough to develop sentience"
and so forth through developing tools, technology, dark ages, middle ages, exploration, getting plagues, etc. Sometimes, if you are lucky, you can develop two or more sentient species - and then watch as you get notices about how they discover each other & if they go to war or not.
The ultimate goal, if I remember correctly, is to drag the planet ecologically along, no matter how much pollutants the inhabitants of your surface pump out during their cosmic adolescenece & eventually they will mature into eco-friendly "enlightened" space-faring peoples, who leave the planet as a honored wildlife refuge. That's your "big win!" in the game: grow people capable of leaving the nest, and leaving your planet the f#*$^ alone.
Anyway, the reason I bring it up is because Spore doesn't simulate evolution so much as dress-up dolls. During your gameplay, you control the species as it evolves culturally, but the game doesn't show the morphing / mutating of physiological features over time. Instead, you plunk down features on your doll at specific milestone points in time (hundreds, or thousands, of years apart from each other) - there IS a clock telling you how much time has passed between the last incarnation of physical features, and the current one you are designing... but I imagine that I am one of select few who look at that, and attempt to make informed decisions about the characteristics that my species would be likely to evolve, and have reasons for doing so.
It really IS possible: I am currently developing a species that I have been very particular about "morphing" the features from one set to another, while paying attention to the environmental factors that would be brought to bear on the physiological aspects of my little ground-dwellers... But, I am also a little OCD, and a trained anthropologist. I find it fun to actually use Spore to emulate some sort of evolution in my species. Most game players, I would guess, don't have much inclination to do so.
I would blame our modern culture, if I lay blame anywhere - a game that more accurately enforces the hypothetical mechanics of long-term special evolution, would severely limit the options available at any given time... a player simply wouldn't be able to dictate that their species eventually develop wings just because they are pretty... and I imagine there are plenty of gamers out there who would get into a game, then find out that xxx body part is not a clickable option, and go "WTF? omg, that's dumb and boring".
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(1) I mean to say, if you are psychotic and OCD (like me) - the mechanics are available to play that sort of nit-picky, evolutionary-centric kind of game.
(2) This is not to say that only that sort of game play is good, or that this is a lofty goal that normative gamers fall short of...
(3) I don't actually lay blame anywhere - my last paragraph was largely hypothetical and added for the rambling / philosophical effect... clearly I didn't make the "if I were to blame anyone at all" a large enough IF or a large enough AT ALL. Cuz I don't blame, cuz there's nothing to blame for...
(4) It's just a game, and people play it for enjoyment. Thus, people are allowed to enjoy their game however it is that floats their boat. I do believe that hyper-option and over-stimulation is a hallmark of modern American culture; but I also freely admit that my desire to exercise self-restraint often crosses the line into utter insanity and OCD psychosis rather than simply being some sort of imagined virtue in the face of an excessive society.
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