Will Wright

Reuters with Will Wright on HiveMind, his controversial (can we call it controversial?) upcoming project. A true bandwagoner everybody is becoming these days.

Q: What did you learn from past games like “The Sims” and “Spore” that you applied to “HiveMind”?

A: “Those games were in some sense exploring the idea of becoming more personal and involving the player in a very creative role. In ‘The Sims’ people were crafting doppelgangers of their real life, their friends, their house, and then they experimented with things. ‘Spore’ was a more fantastical environment that offered higher-level creative tools. Both of those games showed me that when something is personal to a player, they’re willing to invest in the experience. And the more emotionally attached they get, the more they want to share it with their friends and family.”

Q: Where did the idea for “HiveMind” come from?

A: “I’ve had a couple of experiences where I realized that I’m surrounded by opportunities in life that I’m not aware of. Every now and then I trip over one of these experiences — like a classic car show I happened upon in a Burbank Shoney’s parking lot. I realized that we could build a system — if we had a situational awareness about you, about who you are, where you are, what time of day it is, how much money is in your pocket, what’s the weather like, what your interests are, etc. — that could make your life much more interesting.

Q: How would a game experience work?

A: “If we had that much situational awareness about you and at the same time we were building this very high-level map of the world, and I don’t just mean where Starbuck’s is, but all sorts of things like historical footnotes and people you might want to meet. I started thinking about games that we can build that would allow us to triangulate you in that space and build that deep situational awareness. There will be all types of games, but the key will be focusing the experiences, including multiplayer, within the real world and away from the fictional world that games currently invest in.”

Q: What are the personal privacy challenges that exist with creating a game around players’ personal data?

A: “That’s something that obviously they would opt in for, so it’s not like you’d be stealing the info. They would want to play the game. It’s the same thing with the ARGs that are out there. We need to get the players on our side. Every time we gather some data about them, we need to reflect it back to an experience that got much better so they understand. Once we get them on board, hopefully they’re very forthcoming and they get more involved in terms of how they’re feeling and what they’re doing. The system can actually be used by them and benefit them with the more accurate data it collects.”

Q: Will “HiveMind” expand beyond gaming to include television?

A: “We’re finding television to be amazingly synergistic in some ways with this idea. We did do one television show, ‘Bar Karma’, that ran for a season on Current TV last year. It used crowd sourcing and the community we built came up with everything from the concept and storylines every week to helping cast the show with real actors.”

Q: Will you be pushing this type of interactivity with your new TV projects?

A: “‘Bar Karma’ was an interesting hybrid between crowd sourcing and professional television, but we learned a lot about how you get communities involved in creative activities. That will definitely feed into ‘HiveMind’ because there is going to be a very strong community component to this. I think crowd sourcing is one of the most interesting tools in our arsenal now as a designer.”

Q: The fact that new TVs offer Internet connectivity should help with this endeavor, right?

A: “It’s kind of remarkable. I’ve set up a couple of PCs and a few TVs over the last couple of years. Buying a new television and setting it up is far more complicated now than buying a computer and setting it up.”

Link (I didn’t want to leave anything out.)

Again kudos to iSims for the titbit. And… discuss!

Well this is a very interesting turn of events: Will Wright, “game god” creator of the groundbreaking Sims franchise, along with Spore and SimCity, recently joined the Board of Linden Lab, developer of Second Life. His name and stellar biography is now on the company’s site. This isn’t a totally surprising turn of events: Rod Humble, who became Linden’s CEO this year, is a longtime veteran of Electronic Arts, home to Wright’s first game studio, Maxis, and led development on The Sims 3, the latest addition to a franchise that’s sold 140 million copies since launching in 2000. What’s this mean for the future of Second Life? Too soon to tell — I hope to interview Wright about it soon — but I suspect this means a continued move to make Second Life more engaging and mass market, like The Sims, while still fostering diverse user-generated content, like The Sims. I spoke with Wright in 2002 about his original vision for The Sims Online, which ultimately wasn’t realized in the actual game, but here’s what he told me then: “I think another approach to [MMOs] is that you give the players that canvas,” Wright says, “and let the players create the back story and the theme and whatever, and you focus on being innovative through the [game] mechanisms.” Second Life has come closer to that vision, though so far hasn’t been able to do so while reaching critical mass. But now Wright himself will have a hand in taking the vision into SL’s next generation. Whatever happens, I will say this: Will Wright joining the board of Linden Lab is the most hopeful sign for Second Life’s future that I have seen in the last couple years.

When he got the position and what he’s going to do with it is a dashed bit uncertain. When it is, we’ll be sure to cover it with a blanket and bring it to our place for an interview. In addition: I’m surprised there isn’t a press release anywhere. There must be some kind of conspiracy ؟

Links: http://dwellonit.taterunino.net/2011/10/25/video-game-designer-and-maxis-co-founder-will-wright-now-a-linden-lab-director/

http://modemworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/spooky-will-wright-joins-the-ll-board/

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2011/10/will-wright-joins-the-board-of-linden-lab.html (Text Source) http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2011/10/will-wright-working-on-second-life.html (New Link)

Edit:

1. Because of the rush to post and my inner critic I choose to pick the above article as the story’s narration in lieu of me, who couldn’t have said it better than the above article did—or any of the other articles listed in the links for that matter.
2. I’m expecting to add more edits as the story progresses, if it does.
3. Apparently, Will’s been on board for about a month now. 
4. Peter Grey (of Linden Labs) releases the following official announcement: ‘We are thrilled to have a leader and pioneer of creative gaming and user-generated content join the Board of Linden Lab. His experience and insight will be incredibly valuable as we look to make the creativity that makes Second Life special today more easily and widely available.’