The demo is free, but the full version of the creature creator (which the demo is only a demo of; there really isn't a demo of the game) costs money. Makes sense, in a brilliant business plan sort of way.
However, I suspect this is a sneaksy plan by EA to populate the spore universe before release using child labor. Having a team at EA working on creating enough content to populate not just one world, but thousands of worlds, and not just once, but thousands of times over is hardly cost effective. It would take them years to develop the content needed internally. However, release the creature creator to the general public a few months before the game actually gets released. Those half-mad fans that have been waiting over two years (or more) for the game (I've been waiting for 2.5 years myself) will fall over themselves to play with the editor, creating hordes of creatures that get uploaded to the general database and are then ready to be downloaded into the game upon release. Instead of having maybe 10 people devoted to creating content, they have hundreds of thousands of fans doing their work for them. It is brilliant.
And hey, why not double dip? Offer a demo of the creature creator to get content, but sell the creature creator as well. The people who buy it will undoubtedly by the game as well, so you don't loose out on sales, they get an extra $10 out of those people, and better content to download to the game upon release.
It is a brilliant plan, diabolical in its simplicity.
Lucky for them I was able to get the demo to run on a different computer. One more sucker fooled into doing their work for them.
Still... I am hoping to make Lavos live again this weekend (or maybe Ozzie, or Slash, or etc).
