Thursday, April 9, 2009
Will Wright’s Future in Toasters
Videogame creator Will Wright’s employment at Electronic Arts is toast–the very breakfast food that’s helped to inspire the next stage of his career.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Brian Eno’s Mutating “Spore” Score Reinventing Game Music
With games like Grand Theft Auto, Rock Band and Guitar Hero tripping over each other to license as much music as possible, at least one eagerly anticipated game is going in the opposite direction.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Gamers Fight Back Against Lackluster Spore Gameplay, Bad DRM
Spore, after more than 10 years of development time, is finally available for the PC and Mac. The game comes from the mind of the talented Will Wright, the man who gave us The Sims and the original SimCity titles.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
A Sneak Peek at Spore, EA’s Ultra-Web 2.0 Game
I finally understand why Spore has been delayed for so long. Originally expected for a 2007 release, the simulated evolution game from Electronic Arts studio Maxis was suddenly withheld, much to EA’s chagrin. Maxis head Will Wright explained the delay, saying that the company wanted to make the follow-up to its wildly successful Sims franchise more accessible. That turns out to be an understatement, as I found out this week at an advance press peek hosted at Maxis’ Emeryville, Calif., office.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Digital Things I’ve Been Wrong About
Shortly after Will Wright released yet another version of his SimCity in the mid 1990s, I was visiting Maxis’ studios and chatting with Will about evolutionary system and self-generating software. SimCity was a city that built itself according to a few rules — which the player tweaked and tried to maximize. It was the ultimate nerd god-game, the nerd playing god. Will offered to give me a peek preview of his next project. SimCity was so cool, I was expecting something even more generative, more ambitious, more god-like–something like Spore.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Game of the Year
If you haven’t heard of Spore, you will. Although it’s not due out before midyear, Spore is already the most eagerly awaited computer game of 2008–the recipient of more than half-a-dozen critics’ awards even before its release. That’s in part because of the oversized reputation of its creator, Will Wright, one of the world’s most famous and successful game designers. Starting in 1989 with his breakthrough computer game SimCity and following with titles that include SimEarth, SimAnt, SimLife, and SimFarm, Wright’s franchise of simulation entertainments has generated more than $2.5 billion in revenue. His biggest hit, the Sims, is the best-selling computer game of all time.
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