Eastern Red Cedar, originally uploaded by wcm777
I have been a Will Wright fan since 1989, when I first played SimCity on my Commodore 64. That dude makes some seriously good games. As a young kid, I learned a lot from them, and they encouraged curiousity about things like cities and insects and sociology.
His new creation, Spore, is set to be released this fall. It's basically a simulation of everything: encompassing the origin of life, evolution of species, the rise of civilization, planetary ecology, and galactic exploration.
It's kind of a big deal, and I feel obligated to share this genius with my little geeklet at the youngest possible age. Of course, by the time she's in high school they will have moved on from dissecting frogs to prodding embryonic stem cells, but for now this is the closest we can get to playing God.