Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The guys over at 1up were lucky enough to get some time to sit down and talk to Will Wright at the EA3 event, and they’ve posted the video over at Game Videos. We, being repurposing blogger-types, have posted it after the jump. There’s not a whole lot of new Spore information, but it’s nonetheless satisfying to hear Wright wax about his game, and admit that the creature creator has been completely redesigned around ten times to get it to the state we find it in today.

Read the rest of this entry »

“”We want people to think about the world a little differently as a result of having played the game.” Hmm. Mandibley and tentacley, live together in perfect harmony? High Lord Wright talks about the scientific grounding behind his minigame-manic evolve ‘em up…

After Molyneux earlier in the week, my second interview has gone live over at the Guardian’s site. It’s with Will Wright. In it I talk about stuff, primarily his philosophy of games. Yes.

This talk is a couple of years old now, being a seminar organised by The Long Now Foundation in June 2006, but I had only had the MP3 previously. Today I discovered that it is also available in full as a video via the excellent Fora.tv. If you’ve not already seen or heard this, then you must.

A Will Wright interview on Gamespot has that Mr Sims guy saying some clever stuff about Go, not having a degree, and amplifying imagination.

Here’s a rare insight into the ways of a top-tier game designer. Don Hopkins, whose fascinating if slightly bewildering site we’ve linked to before, back when he was drawing back the curtain on the free version of SimCity for the One Laptop Per Child scheme, recently shared a remarkable game-history curio.

It’s Will Wright’s original code for The Sims.
Read the rest of this entry »

Lordy lawks, what could be more exciting than the thought of Simon Amstell as Doctor Who? How about a release date for Spore?!

This press release on Spore’s site reveals the news. Mr Wright, he say,

“The wait is almost over. We’re in our final stages of testing and polish with Spore, and the team at Maxis can’t wait to see the cosmos of content created by the community later this year.”

So, this September then. Woo!

[Twiddles thumbs]

[Evolves extra thumbs for increased twiddling] Okay, let’s watch the video…
Read the rest of this entry »

Spore: even after all those troubling delays, it’s still quite possibly the most exciting game of the coming year. When we hear that Will Wright is even demonstrating it to the spaceheads at NASA, it sounds like we get to nod solemenly at its cleverness as well as clap for joy at its gloopy, many-legged wonders. Here’s a from-the-hip recording of his presentation, which, not unsurprisingly, focuses on the planetary exploration and colonisation aspect of the impending evolve ‘em up: