Will Wright's Dream Machines

Mike writes "Will Wright writes in Wired Magazine, primarily centering his focus on imagination, how it affects the way we play games, and how it is affected in turn by the games we play. From the article: 'Games cultivate - and exploit - possibility space better than any other medium. In linear storytelling, we can only imagine the possibility space that surrounds the narrative: What if Luke had joined the Dark Side? What if Neo isn't the One? In interactive media, we can explore it.'"

Comments

Re:It's all well and good, but...

[maumedia]

You should take a look at what Will Wright is actually working on before making a broad statement like that. He knows what kind of crappy spiral MMOs are taking, he's trying to innovate beyond trying to get the outfits skimpier and the blood shinier:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8372603330 420559198&q=spore

Re:Eh ...

[MavEtJu]

The developer maybe, but that might not be the final developer. As a (former) coder on a MUD with an internal TCL scripting language, I was most of the time happily surprised to see what the people who build areas in the MUD came up with. A lot of that made me go "I never would have come up with it", but still I'm the one who made the original code which made this possible.

So possibilities don't end where you fantasy ends, it ends where the combined fantasy of others end. And that is often much further and in a way different direction that you can come up with.