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Will Wright on Game Design
Torill writes "Celia Pearce interviews Will Wright in the article "Sims, Battle Bots, Cellular Automata Gods and Go", in Game Studies, volume 2. Wright talks about the philosophy behind his games, one of which is The Sims: 'What are you trying to do with this thing that you're creating? To really put the player in the design role. And the actual world is reactive to their design.'"
What's wrong with just playing MineSweeper?
A good FPS may entertain for some time, but a simulation game is great. It ends when you want it to, you control how things happen, You can save, come back, do something different and have the game go an entirely different way (try that with Duke Nukem).
Don't get me wrong, a good multiplayer FPS is great now and then. But I still turn to sim games more often than not.
Maybe it's my God complex : )
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Well, this was one of the things that was never done. Anyway, it would be really nice to see a MMORPG in which it would be allowed to create your own software controlled androids - and see how they survive and mix with real -human controlled -players. Not just "bots" that complete simple routines, but something that tries to learn, evolve and survive in that world.
Is anything like this happening already?
It's been that way for a long time, some games are great when you've got a good group of friends to play them with (FPS), and other games are great when you want to play alone (simulation). FPS games are less fun in single player or even LAN vs Online, whereas who wants to watch someone else play The Sims for 3 hours?
What?
Another recent Will Wright interview
CP: Question
WW: Answer
I just have to wonder what a question would be like to his child, Will Wright II.
CP: Question
WW2: Answer
And God help us all if he has a WW3...
Is anything like [Learning Bots] happening already?
Two examples:
1) Technosphere http://www.technosphere.org.uk/
2) RoboCode http://apps.alphaworks.ibm.com/rumble/
How many layers of self-reference are involved with my friend Dave? His Sims characters always end up in a destructive loop in which they only get gratification from staying home and playing computer games. Their social skills deteriorate until they get so satisfaction from other people, so they have to resort more and more to the games... Art imitates life imitates art imitates life...
The references to Pinball Construction Set -- had it on the C64 -- and old Avalon Hill-style wargames made a lot of sense. That Pinball title from EA was way ahead of itself; you had the sort of "how does the ball bounce" physics model to work around in a nonstructured way. Anyone who's ever made a map for Myth II would recognize the exercise.
And yeah, Sims games are sort of a natural (side)step from the "rules lawyer" problem everyone had playing Squad Leader. Even "real time" tactics/strategy games basically just use the processor speed of the cpu to grind through the "rules" better than we could with those 40-page booklets: think of the whole "fog of battle" premise for unit visibility in something like Warcraft or Myth, and then think of the impossible "hidden unit" scenarios in Squad Leader.
But the open-ended quality of the true Sims game is special, and we owe this guy. Or Dave does, anyway. It's the only satisfaction he really gets any more...
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
What are you trying to do with this thing that you're creating? To really put the player in the design role. And the actual world is reactive to their design.
Real good game design means _exactly_ not to put the player in the design role. That's whats just all the computer stuff for everyday work is all about.
Good game design lets you slip in a role of an actor, not a designer, thats what all the arcade stuff was all about. Gaming is adrenaline (defender, robotron) not administration(warcraft, sim xx) and should be not to time-consuming indeed.
Also i don't want to have a copy of the real life, i want computer games with unique styles and independent rules (role playing games in an middle ages style are not meant here;)).
And by the way: the disrespect of the pure gameplay aspect leads to an ignorant attitude against the need to rock-solid framerates, as you can see in nearly all pc-ego-shooters.
Am i really the only one with this opinion?
Of course you're not the only one who believes games should be as you say.
However, that's why there's a number of different genres, as well as game developers, so that theoretically you should be able to find a game in the style that you like.
Some people actually enjoy the challenge of design and management, think of it as the videogame equivalent of advanced lego.
Others would prefer to play the virtual equivalent of 'cowboys and indians' and pick up the latest FPS.
There's no one "right" way to game.
I read it and it was one of the most interesting articles seen on Slashdot for a long time.
IVAN Nethack is not the king anymore.
Lots of people share your opinion, that's OK--we all play differently. ;-) For example, I enjoy the kinds of games he's talking about. There's something voyeuristic and interesting about playing a game -similar- to reality, but not quite. I was constantly making up games as a kid. Card games that played like strategy board games, acted-out games, computer games that vaguely operated like arcade games...and what was fun was that given a very loose rule set, you eventually created a good game, with rules of your own creation. Typical toy soldiers scenario--take a hundred green plastic men, an unkempt bedroom, and anything can happen! One group defects. There are spies. A dog suddenly kills off a dozen of your country's best. This is great fun (for me)!
Strategy games, and also games like the Sims, are a foggy mirror on reality, and although there are sometimes 'better' ways to play each game, the rules are not limited to those in the book/code. For example, say in Civ I have a really successful Swordsman, who has had numerous victories under his belt, but now is becoming outdated. Instead of upgrading/scrapping him, I will usually send him to either the capital city, or the city last conquered, and station him there for eternity as a reminder of their courage. This action -definitely- doesn't affect the gameplay much, but it means the world to my gaming experience. With something like the Sims, the experience (like life) is composed almost entirely of those kinds of experiences alone. 'Oh, that's the guy who peed in my kitchen...ew.' 'I tried hitting on her once...didn't work.' These are experiences, which for me are a little more memorable than, for example, 'how damn high my resolution was.' Note that I enjoy FPS' as well, and you can build the same sorts of experiences playing those...I just meant to speak to the notion that open-ended games are interesting, at least to some.
Good game design lets you slip in a role of an actor, not a designer, thats what all the arcade stuff was all about. Gaming is adrenaline (defender, robotron) not administration(warcraft, sim xx) and should be not to time-consuming indeed.
... mmm hmm
I see, thats why mod'ability is becoming more and more of a standard feature on games these days. I guess all this time I've been having a blast designing a Warcraft III map, I really just been proving how bad the game is
I like playing Go, and i think he's dead on about when people ask how you're doing. Unless you are playing in the game, it's very hard to see who's going to win till mid-game. In fact, you need to sit down and watch a bit before you can make that determination as well. I just wish the Yahoo games version of Go wasn't so badly done with scoring. `8r/ The idea of 'taking pieces' is what most americans assume, and so it makes for very poor games. `8r/
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
In the middle of the article it was talking about a future version of the sims. This proposed version would periodically download what you were doing to the main server, and based on that would decide what your experience was going to be.
Maybe I should stop the "Murder and Mayhem" version of the sims where I invite people over then seal them into small rooms where they slowly starve to death. I might get a visit from the pre-crime unit (Homeland defense)
So Will is playing a game where he has to make sure that a million Sims players are happy playing their Sims game. I guess you could call him the only Sims player who is getting paid for playing. :)
Of course then there's the nerds like me who look at screenshots and descriptions of Doom3 and think "wow, that's gonna be one hell of a fun engine to play around with"
Will Wright is a genius though. When are we going to get the 21st century update of SimEarth and SimLife?
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
I have indeed. In fact, I have written a couple myself.
What I was alluding to was that
1. most people read slashdot for a digest of the news for geeks.
2. Most people want to respond/discuss the article before it moves off the front page
3. There is a history on these boards of people posting on the boards before actually reading the article. aka early worm ahem ahem early bird syndrome.
Now given the above, how many people would take the more than 10 minutes required to digest the very long interview before posting response.
Perfectly valid question if you ask me??
It really would make an interesting academic study.
i. people would read short articles and then post
ii. people will skim through longish articles and still post
iii. people will not read extremely long articles and will not post.(only 54 posts a day later!)
Live today. Tomorrow will cost a lot more!