Videogames like ‘Spore’ from Electronic Arts, and ‘LittleBigPlanet’ from Sony Computer Entertainment, are more than a craze – they are an ‘entertainment and creativity’ combined package! The players of the games are the ones who actually ‘make’ the games!

With the latest expansions of ‘Spore,’ and the soon-to-come sequel of ‘LittleBigPlanet,’ the makers of these games have both taken the creativity element a step further by their remarkable user-generated content.

The assorted editing tools of ‘Spore’ help players in forming creatures and steering them through evolution. Spore.com boasts of more than 65 million player-made creatures, building and spaceships posted on its site.

Lucy Bradshaw, the production vice president at EA Maxis, said that ‘Spore’ is the most popular new game launch by EA; with more than 3 million units of all versions of the game sold globally, along with 6 million free downloads of the basic ‘Creature Creator’ editing tool.

In September last year, EA spilled out three games - ‘Spore’ for the PC; ‘Spore Origins’ for mobile phones; and ‘Spore Creatures’ for Nintendo DS. Lined up for this year are four new ones!

Of the new foursome, the shipping of ‘Spore Galactic Creatures’ - the first expansion set of ‘Spore’ – is marked for spring; while an unconnected PC game for youngsters - ‘Spore Creature Keeper’ – is set for summer. The fall season will bring out two action-oriented games for Nintendo – ‘Spore Hero’ for Wii and ‘Spore Hero Arena’ for Nintendo DS. (Rupinder Kaur contributed to this report)