Last week’s delay in the poll was caused by the Oscars, so sorry about that!  Although it was beneficially the fact that it turns out you guys don’t mind me blasting about the dumb decisions EA makes.  With a total of 341 votes, only 60 prefer to read the news only while the other remaining 281 folks think that if they do something stupid, then they deserve every rant they get.  Good to know I’m not pissing off that many of you   Like I mention in the past, I’d love for more than anything to praise EA and The Sims Team for the awesome things they do.  Problem is, they haven’t exactly been awesome.  Perhaps one day they’ll claim that status, but as of right now they are still continuing a downward spiral.  They are bound to hit rock bottom though – it’s just a matter when!

Anyways, I didn’t put much thought into this week’s poll.  Just your generic “What career will you decide to choose when you get The Sims 3 Ambitions” question.  So lets hear them…You already know mine!

A number of articles have been flowing out to the net from Will Wright’s secret appearance at the Games Developer Conference 2o10.  Considering that they really don’t offer much of anything new, I’m lumping them in one post   Have to do these quick as I need to run back out to the auto service station to pick up my car!

The Game Developers Conference 2010 Program Addendum offers a short description of every lecture during the week, except for the one titled “Metaphysics of Game Design” by “Phaedrus.”  All it says for that mysterious lecture is “Do not miss this session!”  However, word got out that it was secretly Will Wright and a giant line formed outside the room right before it began.  Some people were even hoping Phaedrus was the name of a new secret game Will Wright was announcing.  It turned out that Will Wright was using a secret name because he wasn’t sure if he’d have time to give the lecture, and he wasn’t even sure what he was going to talk about when he signed up.

When Will Wright doesn’t know what he’s going to talk about, he talks about everything in the universe from why we forget our infancies to the history of rocket mail.  This read is only recommended for our nerdiest readers (it’s probably not half as interesting or funny without his fast-paced slideshow and comic timing anyway).

VGChartz – Highlights from Will Wright’s presentation

Will Wright is a fantastic speaker, but his ideas come fast and dense. Synthesyzing and analyzing his talk was incredibly intimidating and a significant challenge. This writeup — moreso than any of my others from this year’s GDC — contains a liberal amount of my own interpretation, due in large part to the fact that I had a hard time keeping up with him while taking notes on the session. But to be completely honest, this subject matter is really inspiring, and I frankly couldn’t help but examine patterns, correlations, and perspectives.

ThirdHelix – Will Wright GDC 2010 impressions

At the Game Developers Conference, which just wrapped up yesterday, many attendees wondered about one of the final sessions held at the show. Little was known about it, except its title, “Metaphysics of Game Design,” and its speaker, someone called “Phaedrus.”

It turned out that the mysterious session was being headed by none other than SimCity and Spore creator Will Wright.

“I am not Phaedrus,” Wright said, as he made his way to center stage amid thunderous applause. He said that the reason the panel was under a pseudonym was because he wasn’t entirely sure he could attend the conference.

Wright then proceeded to give a presentation on his ideas of the underlying principles of game design, imbued with humor, Star Trek references and his trademark profundity. Take a look a few select slides from the presentation, which may or may not leave you scratching your head:

1UP – Will Wright Makes Surprise Lecture at GDC, Includes Horses, Hello Kitty and M&Ms

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.

Joystiq – Wright predicts social gaming will grow to 25% of the market

Wright’s 70-minute session touched on a range of topics, from past successes to the crossover of the games and movie industries and social gaming platforms. The one thing he wouldn’t be drawn on, however, was his current work at Super Fun Club. He addressed this matter early on in his presentation, saying, “I can’t talk about anything yet…but soon.”

Talking about his inspirations, Wright specifically referenced Nintendo’s Advance Wars on the DS as the game that he’s played “probably more than any other.” Every morning, he sits down with Advance Wars and a cup of coffee, and spends 15 minutes spinning up his brain.

The relationship between players and game makers was perhaps the largest theme in Wright’s session, and he fed back some of the findings from his previous games. “Players are inherently narcissistic–we’d see that players would spend hours creating themselves in The Sims,” he said. He joked numerous times that he was essentially a drug dealer, as the end result of his work was to stimulate players’ “hormones, endorphins, and neurotransmitters”.

GameSpot – Will Wright “Game design is a lot like dealing drugs

Will Wright was the mystery guest for GDC’s final panel. The creator of the SIMs franchise, Spore and too many other games, Wright now plays in his Stupid Fun Club studio. His was an astounding rant that followed the job of moulding a totally engrossing game playing experience. The Game makers mixing the creation of the virtual life character, and all it’s traits, into the lives of those who play the game. He called this the ‘Metaphysics of Game Development.’

The relationship between players and game makers was perhaps the largest theme in Wright’s session. “In Sims, players are inherently narcissistic. We’d see that players would spend hours creating themselves in The Sims,” said Wright. Several times he referred to himself as a drug dealer, dealing out “hormones and endorphins, and trying to hit those neurotransmitters”.

CGSociety – Will Wright’s speech

“I’m working on a lot of secret projects I can’t talk about yet, but soon,” said Wright of his current work at Stupid Fun Club. While Wright had no specific product to talk about, he did dazzle the audience with a fast-moving multimedia presentation focusing on the rising rate of technological advancement and growing degree of interconnectivity across all entertainment platforms.

He touched on how after Nintendo’s Wii we’ve seen an increase of variety of platforms and approaches to gaming targeting many different demographics. “For the first time, we’re jumping the generational divide. [The Nintendo Wii] was an approachable platform, it was very different, and it was focused in a very different way. I think we had this kind of established trajectory that we were on, and over the last five years or so, it’s tremendous the diversity. All these platforms are exploding before our eyes very rapidly.”

The emergence of social networking sites, the potential of services like OnLive, and gaming on mobile devices like the iPhone are a few of the popular alternatives he mentioned in addition to traditional forms of gaming, such as on consoles. Yet despite the broad spectrum of possibilities for gaming, the industry is still vulnerable, with its share of casualties particularly in the form of recent studio closures.

IGN – Surprise – it’s Will Wright at GDC 2010!

During his talk, Wright essentially deconstructed not only the games industry, but the role of entertainment in general. When viewing the industry, he’s not necessarily coming up with a definitive answer to problems, but acting more as an observer, and acting upon the observations that he makes. “Perspectives are more valuable than solutions,” Wright said.

From Wright’s perspective, games are already strengthening their ties with player’s social habits and brains in general. “We’re going to start moving deeper into the brain, into the perceptual realm,” he said. “…I think that games will be able to absorb what we’re doing, then evolve to fit us.”

In this way, real and virtual worlds are becoming less distinct. Wright said he feels like as the two continue to blend together, in recent years, there is less of a tendency to draw a line between the two. “I think the value that we place in these worlds is changing,” he said.

Overlap is also occurring in the entertainment industry, which is traditionally separated into a few primary silos like film, books and movies. “The interesting stuff is [happening] in the intersections of these established fields,” Wright said.

article here

Will had a secret hour-long talk at the 2010 Games Developer Conference.  Titled ‘Metaphysics of Game Design‘, Wright used the alias Phaedrus due to the fact that he was unsure if he had the time to attend GDC or not.  The room applauded when he stood up and got on stage.  Everyone is delighted over his presentation, Twitter is flooded with tons of comments out his speech and the many great quotes that came from it.  EuroGamer has a brief report of his speech:

Wright kicked off by discussing how he left Electronic Arts last year to set up his own company. “From there I became an independent game designer with the Stupid Fun Club, and when I told my mother she of course reminded me that means unemployed,” he said.

“Games still have this cultural baggage. Most people think of a game designer as being kind of like a drug pusher, so I guess I’m a drug pusher – an unemployed drug pusher.”

Wright then recalled the furore over the nudity patch for The Sims 2, telling the audience, “The height of my professional career was when Jack Thompson called me a child pornographer. I took that as a medal of honour.

“Actually, that makes me now an unemployed child pornographer,” he added.

Gotta love Will.  And of course, the douche known as Jack Thompson (long story, but check his wikipedia entry if you are unfamiliar with him).  I’ll keep an eye out if his video pops up online and will post it as soon as it is available!

We know that ‘The Sims 3′ is slated to come to consoles and handhelds as EA CEO John Riccitiello mentioned it in the fiscal report back in early February.  Yet it hasn’t been confirmed to what they’ll appear on.  The Nintendo DS is a safe bet now as a folder was spotted titled ‘Sims 3 DS’ during Richard Evans’ powerpoint presentation about “Modeling individual personalities in The Sims 3.”

Richard Evans is an AI Specialist working at EA/Maxis on the Sims franchise, so it would make sense that he had some unreleased materials floating around his computer. As he was preparing his laptop (while plugged into the audience facing screens) the entire room got a look at the folder shortcuts on his personal machine.

While he was loading his PowerPoint slides, I was frantically reading folder names to try and see anything interesting. Well, there was. A folder entitled “Sims 3 DS” was nestled in between a few nondescript folders (SimpleSocializing and Tester).

Via N-Sider posted on GoNintendo

EA has released a factsheet for The Sims 3 Ambitions containing information of many things we are already familiar with. However, there is a blurb about bonus content that we’ll get after we register our game at the official site:

BONUS CONTENT: Register your game to get access to exclusive online content such as private eye cases, hairs, widgets for the inventing bench and sculptures to create with the sculpting station.

Here’s the full fact sheet below:

Become Fearless Heroes and Ace Entrepreneurs
As the second expansion pack to The Sims™ 3, the best-selling PC game of 2009*, The Sims 3 Ambitions allows you to pursue a variety of exciting paths and careers in your Sims’ lives that in turn affect your overall gameplay experience and neighborhood. While on the job, you have direct control over your Sims’ work and can choose how they spend their days. Decide whether your Sim will be the brave town hero or cause loads of mischief among their neighbors. Make your Sim save the day as a brave firefighter, change the town as a leading architect, or live on the edge as a ghost hunter. Choose the path of a stylist and explore the new tattoo system to make over your Sim neighbors in fashionable or catastrophic ways.

Will your Sim find success as a billionaire high-tech inventor or eke out a living as a bumbling mad scientist? Will they uncover secrets as a private investigator by dusting for prints or will they rough up suspects for information? For the first time, you are in charge of how your Sims’ career progresses and you decide if they will work for good or evil, pursue creative endeavors or technical affairs, climb to the top quickly, or be a slacker. The future of a Sims’ success or failure is entirely in your hands.

Features

• VARIETY: Be a hero or mess with the neighbors as a firefighter, private investigator, doctor, ghost hunter and more!
• CONTROL: For the first time ever, you control your Sims’ actions and interactions while they’re on the job.
• IMPACT: Your Sims’ on-the-job choices now change their town and affect other Sims. Modify the town’s structure as an architect or set neighborhood fashions as a stylist.
• NEW ACTIVITIES: Master the arts of inventing, sculpting and tattooing using your skills to earn Simoleons and advance your lifetime happiness.
• BONUS CONTENT: Register your game to get access to exclusive online content such as private eye cases, hairs, widgets for the inventing bench and sculptures to create with the sculpting station.

Specifications
Publisher: Electronic Arts Inc.
Developer: The Sims Studio
Ship Date: June 1, 2010 (PC/MAC)
Category: Simulation/Strategy

Coming right off of the huge custom working “Magic Wand” from Mod The Sims, a fan known as JordooSims put together a huge collection of over 50 items (61MB total) items for a fan-made mini-expansion called ‘The Sims 3 It’s Magic!“  Inspired by the magic wand, Jordo has included hats, objects, wings, wearable wand, makeup and much, much more.  These items are converted in package format ready to be placed inside your game.

Please note that this fake mini expansion contains objects not made by Jordoo, but rather just a huge collection to make it easier for magic fans to download at once!  Here are a few screens below:

Download the pack here

Thanks to JordooSims for sending me an email about this!

Meet the way we (sites in general, mostly) get our news – through the public relations representatives at various EA departments.  Both Rachel Steinberg and Lauren Svensson are the ones responsible for sending out press releases and sending replies to our questions of the various games coming out of the EA Play label (Hasbro, MySims, The Sims, Spore and other EA casual games).  At the official EA Play blog, they decided to share with us information about themselves and of course, pics of their offices:

Here at EA Play, we’ve got a great family of people who are super passionate about making (and playing) video games.  We thought it might be kinda fun to introduce you to some of the real people who work here and make games for a living.  Each month, we’ll share a short profile of one of our coworkers so you can get to know the people behind the games.

First up?  Us!  The EA Play Twitter feed is run by Lauren and Rachel.  We’re no corporate robots—just two girls who love to talk about video games!  Get to know us a little bit more by checking out our profiles below, and feel free to give us a DM or @reply to say hi and introduce yourself to us too!

read about them at the EA Play Blog

Thanks to reader Mati for the tip!

Will Wright is loaded with money, and I don’t mean US currency.  Nope, in fact one of his hobbies is collecting currency from other countries and sometimes using them for ideas to come up with his business cards.  I know this because he gave to me a 2 pieces of currency (real, not made into a business card) from Vietnam and Portugal with his name autographed on it when I met him back in 2004.  I keep them in my wallet at all times for good luck

Here are two pics from his current business card from Stupid Fun Club that a developer picked up at the 2010 Games Developer Conference last night.