Archive for the ‘Stupid Fun Club’ Category

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!

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.

I must be one of those rare gamers that never played Doom, so I can’t say I am familiar with John Carmack.  Regardless there are millions of folks out there who agree he should be established as one of the greatest developers in the industry.  In the above video, Will Wright presents the lifetime achievement award to John last night at the 2010 Games Developer Conference awards show.

Via Kotaku

“I think the Wii is a very unique platform, and that’s kind of its core value. That’s why it’s been so successful – because it’s pretty clearly different than the Xbox or the PlayStation. I think the Wii provides very fun experiences for the most part, but it’s kind of a different level of experience; it’s not like these 40-hour involved RPG games as much as it is like these fun toys to pick up and start playing in five minutes. And it’s really fun with a group of people sitting around… It really is more into what I would call the toy market, because most of the Wii games I’ve enjoyed felt more like toys than like games,” he stated.

I can’t count how many of my co-workers own Wii’s and treat them more like a toy than a video game console.  The only games they talk about is Wii Sports and Wii Play…outside of those two games, I don’t even think they know what I’m referring to when I say ‘Legend of Zelda’ or ‘Super Mario Bros.’  In my opinion, I think Will may be right on this matter.  In the end, I don’t suppose it matters…as long as they are enjoying themselves and I have something I can relate to I’m cool with it.

IndustryGamers – GDC 10: Wii Belongs In Toy Market, says Will Wright

Have you added Will Wright as a friend on Facebook?  You may want to do just that.  He may not use it all that much right now, but according to this following chat that Simillions held with him (I can confirm Will was online at the time it took place) he’ll be using his page to push out his beta projects that he churns out from the Stupid Fun Club!

10:51am Aiden Artyo:  So do you really visit sim-fansites? what ones do you like?

10:53am Will:  Sims Resource has been around quite a while I like the offbeat ones though But too busy with new projects to spend much time surfing lately

10:55am Aiden Artyo:  I’ve just been very curious if you’re the real will cause All your account does is make friends

10:55am Will:  lol, yep, that’s about right Building up my Facebook army. I intend to start using it very soon

10:56am Aiden Artyo: 

10:56am Will:  It’s going to be my beta pool for new projects.

full chat at Simillions

Thanks to SimOperations for pointing this out.

A new article has appeared online in which Will Wright was interviewed on the matter of augmented reality after his speech from Engage! Expo.  He speaks on the fact that the Stupid Fun Club has a number of projects in the works which involves this kind of technology.

Tish Shute: Yes our dream is that the creation of augmented reality content will be as open, accessible and  simple as making an html page, or contributing to a wiki.

So in terms of AR games what is interesting on the horizon, presumably games also have to solve the problems of  delivering a hyper local experience.  The car that you described in your talk tried hard to use augmented reality to solve the problem of parallel parking and ended up making it harder.  So giving us the information we need, where we need it, when we need it, and specific to who we are is going to be a big challenge.  But I mean in terms of games, what kinds of hyper local experiences will be most fun and what have you seen that is interesting in terms of augmented reality games up to now?

Will Wright: I’ve not actually seen much at all.  I’ve seen people doing interesting stuff with like Google Maps.  They aren’t really entertainment oriented, but I think you can start thinking about…

I mean I think for a lot of people, Google Street View is entertainment.  But I haven’t really seen something that was really leaning into an entertainment application using existing technology and data that is already out there.

I mean I have seen some cool experiments-people playing Pac-Man in Washington Square and stuff like that, but nothing really serious.

interview here

Missed Will Wright speaking at the Engage! Expo event held last week?  No worries, the official Engage Expo website added his 30MB powerpoint presentation as well as three videos.  Get to watching!

Sims.  Serious business.

I’m kicking myself for missing the live stream of Will Wright’s presentation at the Games for Learning Institution!  Got the times mixed up and took a nap, ended up sleeping right thru it!   I suppose not all is bad, I can catch up reading and viewing the various bits and pieces that made their way onto the net about his speech.  Here’s what I managed to gather so far.  If any visitors here made it to his speech, feel free to drop me a link to your thoughts via the comments and I’ll add it to this post!

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