News.com has an article about how games are focusing more and more on customization and letting players design the worlds and characters for the game using the game's game engine. The article includes quotes from Sims developer Will Wright, who is working on the new Spore game for Electronic Arts.
His new game "Spore," still under development at Electronic Arts, is built wholly around this phenomenon. Players will control a species at it evolves from single-cell organism all the way to interstellar space-traveling "Galactic God," creating the look and personality of the species and, later on, the tools, cities, and even planets they used and inhabited.
The game is created so that simple choices on the part of the consumer--mouth shape, leg placement and so on--will be amplified by the computer's physics and behavior models to create creatures worthy of a Pixar movie, he said.
But the real secret weapon for the game is that each player's creations will be uploaded to the company and then downloaded to other player's computers. Once a species reaches space, for example, it will visit other worlds inhabited entirely by cities full of beings created inside another player's game.
"Instead of putting players in the role of Luke Skywalker, or Frodo Baggins, I'd rather put them in the role of George Lucas," Wright said.
Some of the virtual worlds are already offering customers lots of customization. We have been hearing of Spore since May, 2005. The game needs to not wait too much longer before being released -- before the concept is considered old fashioned.
News.com has an 
