Will Wright
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You can finally play Maxis' long-lost 'SimRefinery' oil simulator
Thanks to an article published by Ars Technica reporter Sam Machkovech, a piece of video game history has been recovered for all to play.
Former EA boss invests in Will Wright's Syntertainment
John Riccitiello, former CEO of EA, is the third board member and an investor in Syntertainment, the startup from SimCity creator Will Wright. Syntertainment recently secured $5 million in funding, part of which is attributed to Riccitiello, GamesBeat reports. "John is one of the smartest guys I know," Wright says. "I've always enjoyed working with him, especially because he really is a gamer at heart. At the same time his strategic insights into the rapid evolution of the entertainment industry continue to inform and inspire me." Syntertainment focuses on "the intersection of entertainment and reality," and it is dedicated to "changing the world through uniquely fun and lasting user experiences," its About page reads. In May, Wright divulged Syntertainment's aim to make a game about individual lives. "I am very interested in basically how we build a game about the player, around the player's life, around the things that they they know, the places they go, the people they hang out with," Wright said. That sounds about (W)right.
Will Wright shares admiration for the three Ms: Miyamoto, Molyneux, Meier
Bespectacled brain Will Wright is one of the world's most revered game designers, both within the industry and in the more mainstream eye. But which game designers does he admire the most? Speaking at the Game Horizon conference in the UK via a video stream, Wright said he regards a great number of designers highly, including many up-and-comers. However, the Sims creator reserved special praise for three luminaries from his generation: Shigeru Miyamoto, Peter Molyneux, and Sid Meier. Nintendo veteran Miyamoto was "obviously" Wright's first choice. "He always takes the player first," Wright said. "Right off the bat he works with the controller, what does it feel like, how tactile and kinesthetic is what he's working on. He works from the inside out: 'what is the first five second player experience?' So his games have this craftsmanship behind them that's amazing and unique." The feeling is mutual; a few years back, Miyamoto said he was particularly impressed by Wright as "a very unique person and someone very special." Aw.
Will Wright's new IP focuses on players' individual, everyday lives
SimCity and Sims creator Will Wright elaborated on his next game at today's Game Horizon conference in the UK. Wright wants to bring gaming back to "normal, everyday life" with his new IP, and it'll be something "more mobile-based" than the likes of EA's SimCity. Wright, speaking via a video stream, said he wanted to make games that "are extremely relevant to the player, and extremely unique to each individual." To Wright, the ability to have different player experiences with single games is what makes the medium unique. "That really is the most important advantage that we have in games," Wright said, "And I don't really see us grabbing that and going down that path as fully as we could."
Will Wright resolves lawsuit with Hive Mind co-founder
Late last year, game creator Will Wright debuted a new startup called "Hive Mind," designed to create and develop some ideas on "personal gaming" that Wright was interested in. Unfortunately, while trying to put together funding for the company, Wright got bogged down in a legal dispute with co-founder Jawad Ansari. Now, says VentureBeat, those issues have been all cleared up."We are pleased to have reached a friendly and respectful resolution," says Wright in a statement. Ansari will go on to work at a firm called GCube Capital, and while the official status of Hive Mind isn't yet known, Wright is continuing his work with another startup, called Super Fun Club, and says that the plan for Hive Mind is getting to "where the operating team can take the company forward."
These games inspired Cliff Bleszinski, John Romero, Will Wright, and Sid Meier
Everyone in the industry has a story about their formative experiences with video games, but Jon-Paul Dyson, the director of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games, was a bit more blunt than most."Great artists don't borrow. They steal," Dyson said, borrowing a quote from Pablo Picasso as he introduced Wil Wright, Sid Meier, John Romero, and Cliff Bleszinski. Speaking in front of a packed house at GDC, the four industry luminaries shared the games that inspired them as creators, and continue to influence them today.
Will Wright reveals 'Hivemind,' his new, personal gaming venture
Will Wright has told VentureBeat that he, in conjunction with a new California-based social gaming startup named Hivemind, is working on a new genre of "personal gaming" -- the first installment of which shares the name of his new company. The "personal" aspect of Hivemind will be derived from the game's capacity for learning about "you and your routines." Wright added, "If we can learn enough about the player, we can create games about their real life." Of course, since we spend a majority of our time writing about games, we're worried about the potentially infinite feedback loop Wright's title would create. Don't get us wrong, we're just egotistical enough to enjoy such an experience, but it would pretty much be a game about writing about a game about writing about a game about writing about a game, and so on, forever and ever, ad infinitum.
Will Wright working on game based off Bruce Sterling short story, Maneki Neko
After leaving EA, founding StupidFunClub and launching a TV series, it would seem Will Wright is finally ready to talk about his next game. It's based on author Bruce Sterling's short story, Maneki Neko, Eurogamer reports. Wright summed up Maneki Neko (included in Bruce Sterling's A Good Old-Fashioned Future) as the story of "a karmic computer that's keeping a balance of payments between different people, and causing them to interact with each other in interesting ways to improve their lives even though they're strangers." He added that these people earn "karmic points" that can be redeemed by "having somebody else help them." This proposed game would ideally launch on tablets, smart phones and Facebook. Console gamers won't be left out, though. Wright alluded to "one or two" other projects for home consoles (lining up with previous reports that three projects are currently underway at studio), thought he didn't go into any specifics. "But most of our work is going to be everything else: PC, tablet, Facebook and mobile," he concluded.
Watch the GDC 'Classic Game Postmortem' talks for free
If you want to hear about Mark Cerny's first, overambitious version of Marble Madness for yourself, try to decipher Toru Iwatani's clues about a "singing Pac-Man" game, see the history of Prince of Persia in the time it takes to play Prince of Persia (one hour), or suck John Romero's Doom postmortem down, you are welcome to do so right now. The GDC organizers have uploaded video and slides of many of this year's presentations to the GDC Vault, most of which are restricted to subscribers. However, the GDC Vault offers the Classic Game Postmortem series for free, including the aforementioned talks plus Eric Chahi on Another World, Will Wright on his first game, Raid on Bungeling Bay, Ron Gilbert looking back on Maniac Mansion, and more.
'Classic postmortems' unveiled for 25th Game Developers Conference
Beyond the plain ol' postmortems taking place annually at the Game Developers Conference, this year's event features a special 25th anniversary spin: "classic" postmortems. Famous developers will take the stage to speak about their classic games -- everyone from Pac-Man's Toru Iwatani to Doom's John Romero -- and an eager crowd will bask in the light of their classic game knowledge. 11 classics are being given the treatment, though we're putting Will Wright's Raid on Bungeling Bay talk at the very top of our priority list. Another highlight (among a list made up entirely of highlights) is Eric Chahi -- developer of currently in-progress From Dust -- speaking about the development of Out of This World. Check out the full, incredibly impressive list after the break and start planning accordingly. Or rather, clear your schedule. If you can't make it to GDC 2011, the postmortems will be filmed and made available via GDC Vault at some point after the event.
Will Wright explains what The Sims and an ant colony have in common
Originally titled Home Tactics, Will Wright's hit people simulator The Sims was largely made possible by a bunch of simulated ants. During an interview with Doom creator John Romero at the IGDA Leadership Forum dinner last Friday, Wright revealed that his previous title, Sim Ant, was a key inspiration for -- and the basis for the core emergent gameplay in -- The Sims. "We decided to program Sim Ant as close to how real ants work as we could, which means that they're actually responding to pheromone trails, and the intelligence is distributed environmentally," Wright recalled when asked how The Sims came about. "We were able to get very complex behavior out of the ants just using these pheromone distributions. So I started to wonder how much of human behavior I could simulate the same way." As it turns out, a lot. "The basic engine for The Sims really ends up being one of any pheromones. Every object in the environment is sending out an 'advertisement' of pheromones in a particular flavor. The flavors are the eight basic needs of the Sims. So they can advertise 'food,' 'energy,' 'fun,' 'social,' 'hygiene.' Every object is described in those terms, being the collection of pheromones that it broadcasts," Wright explained. "A Sim is always sitting there, smelling all of the pheromones around it saying, 'oh I need to be clean, or I need to be fed' -- whatever -- so they follow that pheromone trail to the closest object that's producing it. The advantage of that -- the whole point of that -- was that we could add new objects into the game later without the Sims having any foreknowledge of what the objects were, as long as they had these pheromones." Romero began to ask Wright if he thought actual humans might somehow work this way, but stopped himself. He was probably picturing the audience as a group of hideous ant people, or imagining he could see clouds of pheromones wafting about. Even the guy who thought up the Doom demon would be grossed out by that.
Will Wright's 'Bar Karma' TV show formally announced
Will Wright and ex-Nickelodeon president Albie Hecht have teamed up with Current TV to create a new show -- this much we knew. Now we know what it's called: Bar Karma. According to the announcement, the series will put viewers "in control via an online application," which runs on technology created by Wright, called "Current TV's Creation Studios." Through this app, users (who register via the site) weigh in on "a rough outline" for the week's show and are able to contribute "storylines, plots and have direct communication with the production team." Viewers browse and merge ideas, voting on final proposals, before the production team turns the audience's vision into a 30-minute episode. "We will be taking our cues from the viewers, working with them and then quickly producing high quality, original content," said Hecht. "This is truly a paradigm-changing project that will showcase the creativity of the general public in shaping a television series." Bar Karma is set to premiere sometime in early 2011.
Will Wright gifts design docs and personal papers to Museum of Play
We already knew that Super Fun Club's Will Wright was a swell guy, but his recent donation of "personal papers and design documents" to the Strong National Museum of Play places him firmly is really swell guy territory. The International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) -- an institution within the museum -- has collected nine notebooks from Wright, featuring "original drawings, sketches, and notes for four of his SimCity, The Sims, and Spore games." Some of his donation will be on display this coming November as part of the "eGameRevolution" exhibit on the museum's second floor, for those interested in taking a peek. ICHEG director Jon-Paul Dyson spoke of the donation in a statement (via 1UP), "These papers document the creative process behind some of the most important games of our time. They have transformed our society, and we are pleased to preserve this record of how Wright created them." Wright lavished the ICHEG with equal praise, saying, "I know of no other institution that is covering the topic as comprehensively as they are." Wright's work will otherwise be housed alongside an enormous arcade collection -- what the ICHEG deems "the most significant games ever manufactured -- from Computer Space (1971) and Pong (1972) to Space Invaders (1978) and Pac-Man (1980) to Donkey Kong (1981) and Tetris (1988)" -- as well as an over 10,000-strong console game library. In other news, we totally know we're going when the Zombie Apocalypse goes down.
Will Wright's Current TV show shooting pilot this week
Will Wright and his Stupid Fun Club have a handful of projects in the works -- this much we know. And today, one of those projects became a bit more official: a television show for Current TV. According to a Current TV representative, Wright is working on "an original show" for the network. The pilot is being filmed this week just across the East River in Brooklyn (if you also happen to be in Manhattan). The show is presumably the not so well-guarded project that was detailed earlier this year, "The Creation Project," which reportedly relies on user-created storylines. (Wright has at least one more TV project in the pipeline.) We invite you to tell your own stories from the set photos seen in the gallery below. %Gallery-99976%
EA registers trademark for Spore's possible evil twin, 'Darkspore'
Oh, sure, Spore's a nice enough guy. But ... don't you sometimes wish he had a bad streak? You've always been attracted to the lone wolf, the rebel, the ne'er-do-well -- that goody-two-shoes Spore wouldn't know the first thing about satisfying your desire for unwholesome behavior. You know who does? His edgy twin brother, Darkspore. At least, we're assuming EA's recently registered trio of trademarks for "Darkspore," discovered by Superannuation, are reserving the title for the franchise's next, considerably darker iteration. Is it possibly the Spore title hinted at in EA's Q3 2010 financial report? Or is it an unexpected evil twin, making a soap operatic surprise entrance? Only time (and possibly EA's press conference at E3) will tell.
Miyamoto on retirement and the Wii's innovation
At age 57, you might think Shigeru Miyamoto would be taking it easy -- maybe plunking a few coins into his 401k, or taking to the garden to plant a few Fire Flowers. But not Shiggy, who tells gamesTM that retirement isn't an option quite yet. While Nintendo "has to retire me some time," he says, "I look around and see how aged cartoonists continue to work on their manga and how movie directors create new movies all the time, I understand that they would never retire. And by the same token, I guess I will still be making games somehow." Miyamoto also mentions Super Mario Galaxy 2, and says that the first numbered sequel in years was supposed to be version 1.5, but "we noticed that there were too many new experiences for it to be merely an incremental update." He gracefully refuses to comment on others' work, but affirms that Nintendo goal is "to provide fun and surprise" in video games, not merely to see "who can come up with the most violent depictions." Miyamoto says that the motion control mania going on with other consoles proves that Wii is "the de facto standard of the industry's control mechanisms," and new innovations, like the upcoming Vitality Sensor, are announced "only after being able to confirm internally that it is something that the general public will be able to appreciate." First we need to see just what the heck it does before we can start talking appreciation! And while almost every game developer out there has been influenced by Shigeru Miyamoto, who's impressed him? "Mr. Will Wright," he admits, "is a very unique person and someone very special." Maybe Miyamoto's taking notes on Wright's retirement, too: He's still having Stupid Fun after leaving the corporate life. [Via Industry Gamers]
Will Wright to produce Science Channel programming
Following the reveal of Will Wright's reported, user-generated television venture with Current TV, the sporadic game designer has signed a deal with Science Channel, part of the Discovery network, to create original programming with interactive online elements. The Hollywood Reporter describes the partnership as encompassing series and specials for Science covering stupid fun topics like time travel, other worlds and the future. "I want to take the way he engages an audience in gaming and bring that into a show," Science Channel GM Debbie Myers said. "Gaming is a rich and compelling way to tell a great story," Wright added. "I am so excited to bring that mindset to TV projects." With that mindset could come Wright's tendency to incubate his projects for prolonged development cycles. Luckily, the proposed topics for his Science shows fit right in with this strategy. Should he ever get that time machine running, Wright could journey back to our time and tell us all about the future. We'd watch that. [Via Gamasutra]
Will Wright to produce reality show with user-created storylines
That sneaky Will Wright always seems to be working on something amazing and/or secret, but this one caught us by surprise: His next project is actually a television show. He's working on The Creation Project in conjunction with Current, and eventually the show will involve viewers picking and choosing different storylines that will eventually be produced as two half-hour episodes of a real TV show. According to leaked planning documents, there's a big online and mobile component with the show as well, including a possible tool that would allow users to make and discuss their own storyboards. Of course, all of this is still in the planning stages, but that's okay -- it gives us plenty of time to work on our script about a game developer whose game is just too brilliant to be good. It'll be a hit for sure.
Will Wright predicts social games will grow to 25 percent of market
One of the big trends at this year's Game Developer's Conference is social gaming, thanks to wild success stories like Facebook-powered Farmville. While many see social gaming as the next big thing, Will Wright -- famed creator of SimCity, The Sims and Spore -- warned GDC attendees that expectations for the genre are unrealistic. "What people tend to do is apply a power curve to this," Wright explained using the above diagram. "And so when you make an extrapolation based upon that, you're really way off, when in fact, what we were really looking at was an S-curve." "It gets a lot of attention, of course, because investors, when they're looking to invest in something, they're looking to invest in the steep part of this curve. And so that's why there's so much business interest in this sort of platform," Wright hypothesized. But don't think your mom is going to suddenly lose interest in raising animals on her virtual farm any time soon. In fact, while the genre may not explode, it will ultimately represent a large percentage of the overall games business. "It's not that I don't think social games are going to be big ... I can imagine them doing about the quarter of the market, really." That's good news for Facebook, which is still looking for its Mario, its "iconic" game.
Will Wright on the Wii's toy-like sensibilities
Speaking to IndustryGamers in a pre-GDC interview, industry veteran Will Wright shared his thoughts on the Wii and where it fits in the current video game market. According to Wright, the Wii offers an experience that is "clearly different than the Xbox or the PlayStation." Specifically, he stated that the Wii differs from its console brothers in that it doesn't generally cater to long, in depth experiences. Rather, said Wright, the Wii offers "fun toys to pick up and start playing in five minutes." He added, "It really is more into what I would call the toy market." Elaborating, Wright said that all consoles will have a "specifically defined niche" and that Nintendo actively decided to approach the Wii in a different way. He stated that Nintendo opted not to directly compete with the hardcore sensibilities of FPS-heavy consoles like the Xbox 360. "I think it's kind of cool that they decided to go off and find a different sandbox to play in," said Wright, "I think it's been very good for the industry." Hit the source link for more excerpts from the interview.
