HiveMind is a game, and it’s also the name of a new Berkeley, Calif.-based startup Wright is unveiling today in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat.

The idea is a new evolution in gaming that Wright calls “personal gaming.” It is a game that can customize itself for the individual player, taking into account aspects of player’s real-life situation as elements of the game.

It’s not an easy concept to understand, particularly because Wright isn’t describing the game in detail yet.

“Rather than craft a game like FarmVille for players to learn and play, we learn about you and your routines and incorporate that into a form of game play,” Wright said.

He noted, for instance, that there may be 50 different dimensions to a person that could be learned through data collection. Some of those dimensions could be location-based, like where you are, where your friends are, and how much money is in your wallet. It may sound like a creepy invasion of your privacy for game to know that about you, but Wright wants to emphasize the entertainment value of sharing and why people will probably share that information gladly.

So Will Wright has moved on from Bar Karma (which I don’t think we’ll be seeing a second season, sadly…onto a new project – HiveMind.  Reading the lengthy article from VentureBeat, I’d have to say I wish Will the best of luck, but I don’t think I’m going to take part of it.  I don’t like the idea of playing around with my personal info.  Sure, I do share my info occasional on Facebook – but I don’t use any of it when it comes to gaming…especially gaming on Facebook.

I really wish he’d come back to EA and take control over the Sims franchise as well as SimCity.  He’d rather move on to new things, but honestly I wish he would have stuck with what he is known for – the father of simulation.

Eurogamer: Were there too many The Sims expansion packs? Are there too many The Sims games?

Will Wright: We finished the very first version of The Sims, then it was suggested, ‘Why don’t we do an expansion pack for the game?’

I was like, ‘Let’s not bother with that. That’s wasted effort. Let’s do The Sims 2. Actually, I want to go off and do Spore.’

‘No, let’s just try it. Let’s try an expansion pack…’

I was actually one of the people saying I didn’t think expansion packs were a great idea. Boy, did I turn out to be wrong. The players loved it. It was good for the development team. They were able to get these things out without spending half their life working on them. We were able to explore what players liked and didn’t like very cheaply.

So when The Sims 2 came out we had a really good sense of which expansion packs they liked, which ones they didn’t. So it turned out the expansion packs were a great idea.

Eurogamer: Now you’ve left EA, what do you think they’ve done with your baby?

Will Wright: I don’t even keep track of it. Half of the expansion packs they showed on the montage I never played. Not once.

It’s funny. I’m like that. I make a lot of art at home, paintings and sculpture. I’m the same way with my artwork. When I’m working on it I’m obsessed with it every minute of the day. As soon as it’s done it’s like, hang it on the wall or throw it away. I don’t care. If somebody comes in and says they like it, I just give it to them.

I’m always involved in what I’m working on. But once I’ve finished it… It’s interesting to learn from and observe what the community does with it. But I don’t feel any deep attachment that I have to be driving it from that point on. I want to go off and do the new thing.

Eurogamer: So you don’t care what EA does with The Sims?

Will Wright: It would be kinda nice if they didn’t totally screw it up. I’m not controlling in terms of, call me before you do that! Oh, I can’t believe you did that! Because they’ve done The Sims things I didn’t think were the greatest ideas in the world, but it didn’t really upset me. It’s more like, OK.

Interview here

Bonus article – What’s inspired Will Wright’s next game?

Will Wright is making a video game inspired by a short story by science fiction author Bruce Sterling.

The game, which The Sims creator hopes to have up and running in a year, riffs off of the Sterling short story Maneki Neko.

“He describes 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,” Wright told Eurogamer in a new interview conducted at E3 in Los Angeles.

Keynote speaker Will Wright is the award-winning creator of Spore, The Sims, and SimCity. The head of the entertainment think tank Stupid Fun Club, Wright is widely acknowledged for creating the simulation video game genre.

Innovators in technology and design continually reimagine computer games. User-generated content for commercial games (Spore, Little Big Planet), social network games (Farmville), vast simulation worlds with their own economies (World of Warcraft), games using mobile phones to augment reality (Ghostwire)–ten years ago these were dreams, and now they’re part of the cultural fabric. As the imagined becomes real, the question of “what’s next?” confronts both academic researchers and the game industry.

“Inventing the Future of Games,” a day-long symposium April 15 in Silicon Valley, aims to explore the possibilities of the next decade of gaming innovation and technology. Sponsored by the UC Santa Cruz Center for Games and Playable Media, the symposium will gather some of the brightest minds of academia and industry to discuss the advancement of game design and technology.

The inaugural symposium, which starts at 8:30 a.m. at the India Community Center in Milpitas, Calif., will feature keynote speeches by Sims creator Will Wright, Linden Lab CEO Rod Humble (Second Life), and Michael Mateas, co-creator of Facade and director of the UC Santa Cruz Center for Games and Playable Media. Tickets are $100 for the general public and $30 for UC Santa Cruz students.

“We’re looking forward to starting conversations between academics and industry professionals on where the field of computer games might go,” said Mateas, an associate professor of computer science in the Jack Baskin School of Engineering. “Moving toward games that truly pay attention to the player’s actions and generate dynamic responses would allow games to create new types of experiences. It would open up new approaches in interactive storytelling. Multi-player missions and quests could be adapted to specific social play styles. A whole new world of games waits to be discovered.”

The symposium will include four sessions: exploring the relationship between games and cinema, making self-generating games, the future of games and culture, and creating new forms of character and dialogue.

Session speakers will include Jordan Mechner (Prince of Persia), Emily Short (Galatea), Ian Bogost (Georgia Tech/A Slow Year), Tracey Fullerton (University of Southern California/The Night Journey), Robin Hunicke (thatgamecompany), and UC Santa Cruz game program faculty members Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Marilyn Walker, Arnav Jhala, and Jim Whitehead. UC Santa Cruz’s John Funge, Warren Sack, Soraya Murray, and Sri Kurniawan will moderate the panels.

For more information, visit games.soe.ucsc.edu

“So apparently the E3 folks decided my new company (The Stupid Fun Club) isn’t in the electronic entertainment industry….” Wright says E3 is refusing to let his art director attend, adding, “I guess thats what we get for having a fun (and stupid) name.” [via @StupidFunWill]

I suppose everything will be alright though, as they do have a partnership with EA.  When time comes, I’m sure they’ll be able to get a special pass from them.

Via Kotaku

Official PR release:

CURRENT TV TO HARNESS THE CREATIVE POWER OF TELEVISION AUDIENCES WITH NEW ORGINAL SERIES

30-Minute Episodic Series to Serve as Sims Creator Will Wright’s First Launch into Television

Viewers Can Register at www.current.com/barkarma

New York, NY – October 6, 2010 – Current TV announced today that world-renowned video game designer Will Wright, creator of The Sims and SimCity, the most successful gaming franchise of all time, will bring his unique talents to television for the first time with a multi-episode series that will give audiences the ability to create and control the show’s storylines and plot developments.

Anchored by technology that Wright has developed exclusively for Current TV, the series, tentatively titled Bar Karma, will enlist viewers to join an online global community at a special web destination entitled, “Current TV’s Creation Studios.”  At this virtual television studio, users will participate in the development of all creative and technical aspects of production and communicate directly with the producers of the show.

Current has also signed Albie Hecht, former President of Spike TV and President of Entertainment at Nickelodeon, who has served as Wright’s co-creator on the project and will executive produce the series, with his digital entertainment studio Worldwide Biggies serving as the show’s production company. David Cohn, former General Manager of MTV2, will serve as executive in charge for the network.

“Bar Karma is a culmination of over a year’s work and I am very excited to see the results as we join together not only gamers and television viewers, but actually create a community that will be empowered with a professional production team,” stated Will Wright.  “To develop and lead an initiative like this fulfills a long held passion for television, and I am thrilled that Current would provide the resources and creative support to bring this to air.”

“I have always been excited by innovation and what we are creating is unlike anything on television,” stated Albie Hecht of Worldwide Biggies.  “The technology that Will has invented empowers viewers to participate, but also provides direct communication to me and my production team.  We will be taking our cues from the viewers, working with them and then quickly producing high quality, original content.  This is truly a paradigm-changing project that will showcase the creativity of the general public in shaping a television series.”

“Current is taking original programming to a new level.  Bar Karma will fuse the power of television, the internet and mobile devices and provide viewers the ability to truly create and control a television series,” stated Mark Rosenthal, CEO of Current.  “Will Wright is a phenomenal creator and we are thrilled he came to Current to launch his first television series.  Together, we hope to move television storytelling beyond passive participation and allow viewers to become true programming partners.”

Bar Karma will be comprised of four key production stages:

STEP 1 – JOINING – Viewers will log on to “Current TV’s Creation Studios” at

www.current.com/barkarma through their computers and mobile devices and join the online community.

STEP 2 – CREATING – Viewers will submit potential story ideas on an ongoing basis.  Each week the show producers will provide the viewing community with a rough outline for the upcoming episode.  Viewers will then have the ability to create various storyboards of unlimited plot possibilities.

STEP 3 – VOTING – Viewers will browse, comment and merge various ideas for the episode.  Final proposals will then be reviewed and voted on.

STEP 4 – PRODUCING – After the final storyboard is selected by the community, Hecht and Worldwide Biggies will adapt, shoot, produce and edit the winning storyline into a 30 minute television episode.

Bar Karma is scheduled to premiere on Current TV in 1Q11.  Specifics regarding the launch of the online community site, the production and casting of the show, as well as exclusive advertising sponsorships are to be announced in the coming weeks.

About Current Media

Current TV is an award-winning media company committed to exploring the world’s most important, interesting and entertaining stories. With a fully integrated television and online platform, Current connects its audience with what’s going on in their world through its blend of bold and unique original and acquired productions. Current is available in the U.S., U.K., Italy and Ireland in 70 million households through distribution partners Comcast (Channel 107 nationwide); Time Warner (nationwide); DirecTV (Channel 358 nationwide); Dish Network (Channel 196 nationwide); Verizon; AT&T; BSkyB (Channel 183); Virgin Media (Channel 155) and Sky Italia (Channel 130). More information is available at www.current.com.

About Will Wright

Will Wright, widely acknowledged for creating the simulation video game genre, unveiled the highly anticipated Spore^TM in September 2008. Spore is a “universe in a box” that allows players to create a species and guide it to sentience, help it build a society, develop its culture, and explore an infinite cosmos of worlds created by other players. Fans eagerly embraced the creation tools in Spore and have created over 100 Million pieces of user-created content, as of Summer 2009.

Spore has been distinguished with such honors as Popular Science’s “Best of What’s New Award,” Popular Mechanics’s “Breakthough Award,” PC Magazine’s “Technical Excellence Award,” Time Magazine’s “50 Best Inventions of 2008,” and the Jim Henson Technology Honor.

A true gaming industry legend as a result of his pioneering contributions to video games, Wright has been the recipient of several prestigious awards and honors. Rolling Stone named Will Wright “One of the 100 People who are Changing America,” in March 2009, placing him among artists, leaders, scientists, and policymakers who are “fighting every day to show us what is possible.” IN 2008, Will received the first-ever Gamer God Award at the Spike Video Game Awards as a testament to his revolutionary work. In 2007, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts recognized an individual in the Video Game Industry for the first time when it named Wright a fellow. He also received the Producers Guild of America Vanguard Award that same year.

Wright first rose to prominence when he developed SimCity^TM, the acclaimed, nonviolent, open-ended sim game. Wright then followed up the success of SimCity with a string of popular simulation games throughout the 1990s. Titles such as SimEarth: The Living Planet (1990), SimAnt: The Electronic Ant Colony (1991), SimCity 2000 (1993), SimCopter (1996), and SimCity 3000 (1999) introduced simulation games to hundreds of thousands of new fans, demonstrating the genre’s true potential.

Wright’s next groundbreaking game came in the form of The Sims (2000), which has gone on to become the best selling PC game franchise of all time, being available in 22 languages in 60 countries. Wright, who studied architecture in college, originally conceived of the game as an architectural design simulator. To “score” the quality of the design, he added tiny people who would inhabit the buildings. These simulated people quickly stole the spotlight, and Will realized that watching the lives of the Sims unfold was the real entertainment. The Sims franchise has now sold over 100 Million units around the world.

About Worldwide Biggies Inc.

About Worldwide Biggies Inc.is a digital entertainment studio producing and creating interactive IP for the digital family and designed for additional distribution across all platforms including film, TV and licensing.  This year, Biggies announced a development deal with Syfy for Worldwide Biggies’ first-of-its-kind transmedia property entitled Dr. What, a multi-project first-look deal with EPIX, and is gearing up for the introduction its latest character franchise, Bigby, initially as an iPhone game application to launch later this Fall.  The company has also launched two separate virtual worlds for kids, and is in development on a robust slate of iPhone/iPod Touch games, as well as a feature film called Swift with Sony Pictures.

Anyhow, Joystiq picked up on the fact that the pilot episode of his new TV project has begun filming this past week.  It’s storyline was contributed by many users from the group and will be an on-going series on CurrentTV.  According to ExhibitSims, this new television show of Will’s is called “The Man, The Myth, The Legend”.  Here are a few screens…

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Video game designer Will Wright has signed a development deal with Science Channel to produce programing for the network.

Wright is co-founder of Maxis (now part of Electronic Arts) and designer of hit game series “The Sims.” He is charged with creating series and specials for Science that explore topics including time travel, different worlds and the future. Each program will have online and interÂactive components and will attempt to reflect the sensibility of Wright’s video game work.

“I want to take the way he engages an audience in gaming and bring that into a show,” Science Channel GM Debbie Myers said.

The partnership reflects Myers’ strategy to expand the network’s programing from science-based content to shows that explore creativity. Science recently made headlines by partnering with Steven Spielberg for a documentary on rebuilding the World Trade Center site.

Wright’s most recent game was 2008′s “Spore”; last year, he founded the entertainment think tank Stupid Fun Club.

Via Space Oddity’s Spore Blog

In essence, The Creation Project is a TV series about the creation of a TV series. What we’ve seen suggests users will submit story ideas online and via mobile devices. This will lead to the users than discussing the submissions and voting for their favorite. Finally, the winning storyline is actually produced and will air as two half hour episodes.

There appears to be a major online/mobile device component to this series, including a “StoryMaker Engine” Wright has designed that will allow users to quickly make their own storyboards to accompany their ideas using pre-existing images or those uploaded by the users themselves.

We saw suggestions that the series could premiere by the end of the year, though presumably the online component may begin earlier. Of course, we should reiterate that this was all in the early stages and it’s likely elements of what we saw could be dramatically different by the time The Creation Project is on the air.

I have to be honest here…this does not sound interesting in the slightest bit.  I’m not much for reality tv, but it’s Will so I’ll give him a chance.

Thanks to TheSidDog for the tip!

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.

Sims.  Serious business.

The most interesting part of the presentation for me, however, was how Wright applied these concepts to his own games. He spoke about the process behind Sim City, how it first seems like a computerized train set, but after heavy usage, the consumer realizes they aren’t just playing with a set of possibilities; instead, they are creating worlds (he compared it to gardening). He designed The Sims to allow people to succeed or fail. He established that failure is just as much part of learning as is success. Therefore, he wants his games to have consequences (if your Sim dies, the people around it realize this and mourn) instead of just a simple restart that allows you to feel nothing.

The audience that packed Skirball seemed to be Wright’s target audience: gamers who understood his points and laughed at his jokes (I’ll admit, some were hilarious). My question is: how can we get this process out into the public? The Sims is one way of doing that. As Wright put it, “The Sims showed people that not only boys liked computer games.” Casual gamers are more interested in games such as The Sims, where they can control what happens, and the designers allow failure while giving very basic guidelines. This is why a game like The Sims, which has a huge following, becomes important and why Wright is as valuable as he is: he is literally teaching through his games.

NYU Local – Will Wright preaches learning and imagination at GLI

There were a few technical hiccups prior to the speech, so Wright offered to answer a few audience questions. When asked about why educational and serious games are typically lame, he replied that this is primarily tied to craftsmanship. Serious game developers are going for the most obvious depictions of real-world crises, but those are rarely the most fun. For example, he suggested that rather than controlling a Peace Corps member trying to prevent the spread of a deadly disease, it might be more fun to put the player in the “shoes” of the virus.

The Rumble Pack – Notes from Will Wright

Getting ready for Will Wright to take the stage.  He’s famous for designing Spore, SimCity, SimAnt, SimEarth, and of course, The Sims series.  I’m excited to hear what he says about educational games.  Many of his titles are considered educational games today, though I don’t believe they were originally marketed as such, with the possible exception of Spore.  It’s very odd, but things that get classified as educational games often aren’t games at all.  Things in that category usually more closely resemble interactive worksheets than games.  There’s often only one right answer, and sometimes the game is only playable if you already know the content it contains.

Ten Toed Inc – Live Blogging from Will Wrights GLI presentation

In a 300-slide presentation to an audience of “computer-savvy” Greenwich Villagers, he advocated using digital games to promote creativity and education.

In addition, Wright focused on making his games relative to both the outside world and the individual.

“The more personal a game, the more emotional investment is put into it,” he said.

Wright’s ability to preserve the human element in his work makes him appealing to a wide range of people.

Katya Hott, a student in NYU’s Educational Communication and Technology program, recalls that SimCity was the first digital game she played as well as her male friends. She was impressed by Wright’s game analysis and sense of humor.

NYU News – Will Wright talks at the Skirball Center

I will not attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of his talk, here are a few highlights regarding what stood out most to me:

• Story telling and playing games are crucial activities that support human learning and development.
• Unlike stories told via video or books, games tend to allow people to explore multiple different possibilities.
• Games are currently looked down upon by other media – this is always the case for emerging media.
• Future of media will need to include play, story and branding as core elements (also described as agency, empathy and identity).
• The “magic circle” continues to evolve and expand as new platforms for gaming, such as mobile, become commonplace.

Julio Terra – Will Wright: Gaming and Learning

Wright told Kotaku after the talk that he hopes he can reveal what his Stupid Fun Club is up to “soon.” He was no more specific than that. Pure video gaming, it sounds, is mainly going to be an amusement for him. He said he’s still avidly playing Advance Wars on his DS, has dabbled with Dragon Age, gotten sucked into Battlestations Pacific and likes messing with Scribblenauts (“I don’t even focus on the levels. I just sit there and pick out a cat and a ferret and see what happens. I’m just doing all these experiments in my head”). But the Sims was 10 years ago. Even Spore is now a ways back.

Maybe we should think of Will Wright, fresh off his first Toy Fair, as an exciting young toy maker now, instead.

But maybe we should have seen him as a toy maker all along. “I always thought of Sim City as a digital toy,” he said during our chat. “Most people call it a game, but, really, the rules structure is much looser than a real game. You can’t really win or lose in Sim City or The Sims. You can try for certain goal states and maybe achieve them or not. But I think my games have always been more like toys than games.”

Everytime Wright speaks and I hear him, he always makes me feel intelligent.  We still don’t know what he’s up to, but I’m sure as hell curious to know what his Stupid Fun Club team has planned.  Will it be the next big thing or just another product that you’ll find on the ground kicked under the shelves at Walmart?  I did manage to get a chuckle out of the fact that Will blew up a barbie doll by launching it into the sky and also for the fact that he thinks the Roomba vacuums “doesn’t vacuum worth shit”

article here

Anyhow the discussion grew to talks about how evil entered the world of The Sims Online, MMORPGs and even Second Life.  Last, he touched based on what future things we may be seeing coming from his Stupid Fun Club company:

I persisted in asking (bloggers are just as persistant as paparazzi) about why Will left MMORPGs. Would he ever come back? What really made him leave? And basically, he said that he did plan to come back in some form, and that his next project, the Stupid Fun Club, about which he said very little, would involve some of that.

But SFC also involves, he said later as we trailed him, television, which was more social than game playing, because people sit around in real life and watch TV together. (You know, they do a lot of that in SL too).

check out the whole article here

Wright takes what he called “an evolutionist view of human behavior.” When humans encounter a new situations, they collect data, classify it, employ empathy to try to predict outcomes, and figure out what kinds of action they can take, thus developing hypotheses. But when we’re young, we have limited experiences, so play and story allow us to enlarge our experiential range. Imagination lets us test possible scenarios, and thus develop metaphors and schema, which lead to world concepts.

Play has seeped into our culture at large, Wright said, pointing to all the devices we surround ourselves with. Along with their other functions, cell phones, cars, and even gadgets like the Roomba must now also entertain us. We have so much data coming in without natural filters that information is starting to replace instincts. But we can also use our devices as conduits to provide information: Because of computers and the Web, he said, and the overlap of online communities, we’re moving toward a sort of cooperative collective intelligence — a “hive mind.”

Videos and article from GearLog

*Update* think that’s is a wrap.  Pity that we don’t get to see/hear what his project is for the Stupid Fun Club, but he always has interesting things to say

• liamom Will Wright founder of Sims at #engageexpo keynote:’toys can expand our imaginations and change our future’
• HopeLab Will Wright: “ask not what toys can do for you, ask what you can do for toys”
• MargaretWallace Will Wright: toys that have memory of actual experiences are the future. Also predicts the will interact with other toys in shared memories.
• 360Kid “everytime computers seem 2 advance & appear 2 display traits of intelligence, we redefine what intelligence means” Wright
• MargaretWallace Will Wright: future of toys – networked toys, maybe biochemical or nanotechnology. Toys will be more intelligent.
• wallacelinden Will Wright: play infusing the world around us, virtual becoming real – in part via #AR.
• wonderlandblog Will Wright: virtual doesn’t mean anything to kids anymore. Their virtual is their real, too.
• wonderlandblog Will Wright: Jin from Lost’s wikipedia entry is longer than Barack Obama’s.
• jnusser Social interaction today is getting us closer to hive minds – will wright
• wallacelinden Will Wright: computers not so hot for #AI, much better for harvesting human intelligence.
• chriswandrew Google works because they harvest human intelligence – will wright
• wonderlandblog Will Wright: Check out the McMaster-Carr catalog. It’s the catalog of robot parts.
• jgatza subversive play goes around the rules…note: Barbie’s flight suit is not blast resistant – Will Wright
• wallacelinden Hot Wheels are particle accelerators for little kids. Will Wright
• HopeLab Will Wright – funny, frank, insightful, explains more data not always helpful, eg do rearview cameras really improve your parking?
• wallacelinden Will Wright: most of our intelligence is pre-conscious, telling us few things to tune into out of vast stream of data our senses take in.
• 360Kid “When I was growing up, I played with models. I love models.” – Will Wright
• HopeLab Will Wright: games as metaphor – Sims = dollhouse – makes sense!
• jgatza Play builds imagination. Games Test imagination. – Will Wright
• HopeLab Will Wright: play/games powerful life tools to teach categorization, causality, behavior – from animals to humans
• wallacelinden Will Wright: Moore’s Law impacting toy industry along with everything else.
• 360Kid Will Wright was a big fan of all things space, James Bond, chemistry sets and Martel’s VertiBird
• wallacelinden Will Wright: I spend most of my money on #Amazon and #McMaster-Carr — buying robot parts and other mechanisms.
• jgatza “I’m not an expert, but an articulate consumer” – Will Wright

Today is a pretty big day – the Engage Expo 2010 Toy Fair event has kicked off, starting with a presentation by Will Wright himself on the evolution of entertainment!  Here’s the official PR below, I’ll be updating with content throughout the day of his event as soon as it is made available! 

Will Wright, interpreter of social landscapes and human nature, toy enthusiast, promoter of play, and renowned creator of the world’s top-selling computer game of all time, celebrates his first ever visit to Engage! and Toy Fair with an opening day Engage! keynote.

Will’s presentation, “The Evolution of Entertainment, A Toy’s Place” will look at toys, play, and the product development process from a new perspective.

“In some sense, what I’m really looking at is the evolution of the entertainment industry,” Will has said of his new outlook.

Through his SimCity, The Sims, and Spore game franchises created at Electronic Arts, Will created over $1 billion dollars of value for the game industry. As founder and chief executive of a new independent studio, Stupid Fun Club — with toy designs among Will’s primary focus – can he do the same for toys?

• Don Hopkins worked with Will Wright and the original Sims, creating The Sims Transmogrifier, the famous object-creation tool.
• He persuaded EA into releasing the original SimCity as an open source project, but could not gain the rights of using the actual name, thus labeling it ‘Micropolis’
• He just recently was invited by Will Wright to join the Stupid Fun Club, so you’ll be hearing more from him in the future (welcome back, Don)
• His presentation starts at 7:19 seconds in (the first video), then jumps to the second video

We’re still left in mystery wondering what it could be from a brand new interview published by Gamesbeat today…But regardless, Will did mention many other things – while this is his first project he’s announced, there are a total of 3 that are still being worked on…

VB: How big are you guys getting at Stupid Fun Club?WW: We are very small and will stay small. We are 12 people right now. I don’t ever want it to go above 30. We looking to partners to help develop games. We want to be more of an early design shop, doing research and development.

VB: What are some examples of things you like now that point in this direction of a new kind of entertainment? I’ve mentioned Webkinz. What appeals to you?

WW: It’s interesting to look at media. I have my Tivo at home. I have my Amazon account. I download video on demand. At the same time, there are all of these huge interesting web communities forming around traditional properties. I am interested in the online communities around popular TV shows. The stuff the participants are doing are very extraordinary. The community around The Lost show on TV is one of my favorites. It’s awe inspiring.

VB: How many projects will you do?WW: Right now we have three we are pursuing three pretty aggressively. We might get up to four or five. I want to stay pretty focused. We have a lot of ideas that we want to do. But it’s just three now.

check out the full interview with Will Wright at GamesBeat