Will Wright
Will Wright Joins Linden Labs Board of Directors
Oct 30th
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 ؟
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:
- 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.
- I’m expecting to add more edits as the story progresses, if it does.
- Apparently, Will’s been on board for about a month now.
- 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.’
Will Wright gives out free money…
Oct 19th
As his business card. Sure, it’s old news if you keep up with news on Will Wright, but for newcomers that may not know, when you meet him in person, he’ll give out foreign money as a way to contact him:
But Sim City and Spore creator Will Wright’s got us all beat—he puts his personal information on actual printed money. Sure, it’s Yougoslavian money that has no longer has any actual value, but if anything, that makes it cooler.
I still have the old Nghia Viet Nam 100 Mottram Dong Bank Note he autographed and gave to me when I met him tucked away in my wallet. Can’t believe it’s been…what, nearly 8 years or so? LOL.
Via Kotaku
Will Wright on the 20th anniversary of the Oakland-Berkeley Firestorm
Oct 18th
It’s almost October 20th, 2011 and that will mark 20 years since the huge Oakland-Berkeley Firestorm of 1991. Will Wright was one of many whom lost their possessions, but in Wright’s case, was much more thankful that everyone else was safe (much like any sane person would be). He shares with us what it was like to be a part of this disaster:
“The wind was coming from the east which was unusual, and there was a lot of smoke,” he says. “I called 911 and they said everything was under control.” Wright went to shave and shower but the smoke was increasing at such a rate he was prompted to phone 911 again. “It was happening so fast and it was out of control,” he says.
His neighbors had left their two-year old child with grandparents and Wright knew they didn’t have a car. He had to persuade them to leave, but, eventually, they agreed to come with him and his wife. After Wright had grabbed some pictures, the group jumped in his car and headed down the hill. At this point, the fire was surging forth at such speed they were driving through a corridor of flames.
“We drove down Charing Cross Road which is where all the people died. We were about five minutes ahead when we got there,” he says. “Not once did we see a police officer or fire fighter.”
About a week later, Wright returned in a police car to see what was left of his home. “There were chimneys and Weber grills — one car was just a big puddle of melted aluminum,” he says.
Wright discovered that the loss of his possessions did not overly affect him. “The interesting part was to find out that I wasn’t really that attached to much,” he says. “I started assessing my material needs: a toothbrush, underwear, a car, a house… I was surprised how I didn’t miss stuff. The fact we got out and none of our family was hurt seemed so much more important.”
Will Wright on KCRW’s Guest DJ Project
Jul 21st
Will Wright shares with Radio program KCRW his 5 most inspirational songs as part as their Guest DJ Project – with a breakdown on each song and why he picked them.
Tracks
1. “Imagine” – John Lennon
2. “Thick as a Brick” — Jethro Tull
3. “You Only Live Twice” – Nancy Sinatra
4. “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” – The Flaming Lips
5. “Telegraph Road” – Dire Straits
(Pic by Rac-Fu)
So what’s your last song you got for us Will?
WW: “Telegraph Road” by Dire Straits. I’ve always loved Dire Straits and, in fact, in my mind, this was like the unofficial theme song for SimCity. I actually ended up listening to this song a lot while I was working on SimCity, and it really kind of describes the growth of this town — how initially it’s just some little grassy crossroads where the travelers would walk by and stop at a stream, eventually someone builds a cabin there, and from that point on it just kind of builds and builds and builds until at some point, people are sitting in traffic on the freeway listening to the radio.
It’s interesting because it kind of puts something that we take for granted – the environments that we live in – in this time based context, you know, that if you could just be wherever you are, driving home from work in your city and stop and think, ‘what was this city, what was this place like 200 years ago?’ And it was probably grassy fields, and there might have been a few cabins around, and it really was not that long time ago, and there was a very clear story as to why it grew up and how it built, and yet, we’ve utterly transformed the environment in these places. And if we could only kind of look back in time a few hundred years, we would understand what an incredible impact we’ve had in such a short period of time. So that’s one of the associations. It’s also a very nice melody, and I love the way that it builds over time.
ARS Technica – From SimCity to Real Girlfriend: 20 years of sim games
Jun 21st
A huge 6 page article on the many simulation games that have been released over the past 20 years. I’ve been a hardcore Maxis fan, passing by all of the other simulation games…after reading this article, I must say I’m going to explore the other fantastic games – Tropico 3, Cities XL 2011, Virtual City, and Space Colony all look like fun to play.
In researching this article, I came across two major stumbling blocks. First was the seemingly innocuous question, “What is a sim game?” Some critics take the narrow view that only vehicle sims can claim the label, while others think immediately of the Sim franchise (of which SimCity, SimAnt, and The Sims are perhaps most famous) developed primarily by Maxis and Will Wright.
Others take a holistic view, insisting that anything which accurately models or mimics real-life or real-life systems should be considered a sim game—but this is particularly subjective since it requires a definition of what, precisely, constitutes an “accurate” model and it rules out sims set in the future.
EuroGamer – ‘The Wright’ Stuff interview
Jun 6th
New interview from Eurogamer with Will Wright popped up shortly after delivering his speech at the BAFTA Awards event. I think he goes on to share with us his thoughts in which I don’t recall ever reading below. Some highlights: He wanted to move directly to The Sims 2 (and Spore) straight after The Sims 1 – didn’t want to do any expansions, doesn’t really keep up with The Sims anymore, finds some decisions by EA on The Sims series that annoys him, and his future gaming works.
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.
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.
Gamasutra – Sims Creator Will Wright Honored With Randy Pausch Prize
Apr 25th
Congratulations, Will!
Respected game designer and Stupid Fun Club founder Will Wright (The Sims, Spore) will be honored by Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) this month for “his success in mixing artistry with technology” as the receipient of the 2011 Randy Pausch Prize.
Bar Karma – Exclusive Will Wright Interview
Apr 25th
Humorous video in which Will discusses his work on his past Sim games as well as the season finale to Bar Karma.
Will Wright at Inventing the Future of Games
Apr 19th
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
Stupid Fun Club not eligible for E3
Apr 12th
Things aren’t looking good for the Stupid Fun Club. In a tweet last month by Will Wright, he stated that the folks behind the Stupid Fun Club were not eligible to attend E3:
“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
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