Overview
Spore is a multi-genre "massively single-player online game", that was designed by Sims creator Will Wright, and developed by Maxis. Unlike other games it allows the player to control the evolution of a species, from the humble beginnings of a single cell, to a highly complex, social, spacefaring civilisation. The game is noted for its large scope (especially in the latter phases) and procedural generation. This procedural generation is pivotal to the game as it allows content (such as creature movement dynamics, environments, planets etc) to be created on the fly.
The full version of the game was released on September 4, 2008, in Australia and Scandinavia, but Australian stores prematurely broke the street date on September 2, 2008. This caused illegal copies of the game to be distributred via torrents. The game was then released on September 5, 2008 in Europe, Japan, South America and New Zealand and finally was released on September 7, 2008 in North America and Asia Pacific territories. This was an unusual way to release a game, as most games tend to release in the Asian and American markets first. Spore is also available for direct download from Electronic Arts though there were problems initially in the Australian Store. In order to download the game from EA, the Electronic Arts Download Manager is required. A special edition of the game, Spore: Galactic Edition, was also released and includes a "Making of Spore" DVD video, "How to Build a Better Being" DVD video by National Geographic Channel, "The Art of Spore" hardback mini-book, a fold-out Spore poster and a 97-page Galactic Handbook published by Prima Games. 
The game was released on both Windows and Macintosh. It also spawned several spin off games that were developed at the same time as the main game. These games (Spore Origins and Spore Creatures) were released on the mobile phones/ipods and the Nintendo DS respectively. These games focus on one particular phase of evolution.
Spore's community aspect is broad and diverse. Spore's user community functionality includes a feature that is part of an agreement with YouTube granting players the ability to upload directly from within the game a YouTube video of their creatures' activity, and EA's creation of "The Spore YouTube Channel", which will showcase the most popular videos created this way. After reaching the space phase, players can visit other players' planets, and interact with other players' species and civilizations. This is made possible by the Sporepedia, which keeps track of almost all aspects of gameplay. It shows a detailed timeline, detailing how the creature evolved over time, as well all content downloaded and encountered within the game. The Sporepedia also allows user content to be uploaded to the central database.
Some info borrowed from Wikipedia.
