From Tierra to... Spore?!

From an NYT article on artificial life:

Later artificial life researchers created programs to take advantage of the growing power of computers to model evolution in simple, abstract universes. Tierra, in particular, first developed by the ecologist Thomas Ray in the early 1990s, drew a great deal of attention. The program, which ran on more than 100 workstations, demonstrated the mutation of digital forms and elementary aspects of evolution. More recently, Spore, from Will Wright, popularized many of the aspects of artificial life in a game that is now widely available on desktop computers, videogame consoles and even iPhones.

Tierra and its successors are computer programs in which digital organisms really do evolve. Spore, on the other hand, is nothing like it. Rather, it's a lot like creationism.