Gamespy sat down and ate breakfast with Will Wright, and they talk about his upcoming game, Spore, a book he’s writing up, the $600 Playstation 3, Nintendo DS, and more. Here’s a bit about the creature editor:

GameSpy: I keep hearing about blockbuster games made by teams of 300 people.

WW: The Godfather had about 240, so having a team of about 70 feels really good. Basically we are outsourcing the artwork to the players. They are designing the creatures, vehicles, cities, planets. They are designing everything… the plants. Pretty much everything in the game.

To build the creatures, you are starting out with parts. We have seven part categories — feet, mouth, weapons… Each category has four columns of parts, and each column has eight or nine choices. As your brain level increases, you unlock more columns. All in all we have about 400 creature parts. Each of these parts also has morphs.