Yesterday saw Will Wright give a keynote ostensibly called 'The Future of Game Design'. The creator of the Sims took the opportunity to address two of the topics that went heavily into the background work on his current title: Spore. Mr Wright was attempting to make the point that lots of research in the pre-production phase of the project is one of the best ways of knowing what it is you're setting out to do. Folks at
Kotaku,
The Game Chair, and
Game Girl Advance have some notes from the talk. Read on for my own brief impressions from the event.
The key idea I took away from the event is the level of intelligence Wright possesses. I always knew he was *smart*, but the man went almost a full hour, racing from topic to topic, at a speed that was almost breathtaking to behold. I initially started taking notes but the man just moves so dang fast, I eventually gave up and enjoyed the experience. He went from
the Fermi Paradox, to
Drake's Equation, to
Panspermia to
the Rare Earth theory in a series of four slides, only pausing very briefly to explain what he was talking about. Rather than confusing the audience, lots of the elements he brought up were totally understandable just within the context of his talk. He really hit his stride after the thirty minute mark, and actually managed to talk even faster than he'd started off. It was sort of like watching a manic college prof teach an entire semester-long class in an hour.
He did talk about Spore a good deal in there, detailing how all of the Astrobiology and research were distilled down into usable ideas for game environments and creatures. This was a talk, though, less about games and more about the joy of learning. Will Wright's gift as a speaker is to make his audience excited about something they may never have considered before, simply by the sheer amount of enthusiasm he exudes. I heard some shifting in chairs towards the end of the talk, but despite the highly technical nature of the presentation the Civic Auditorium was still packed when the event ended. Like the Battlestar event, Wright's talk only peripherally talked about games, but it managed to be all the more valuable (I think) to the audience as a result.
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The man's a genius. Lets see you come up with some of the things that he has. He's done more for the videogame industry than pretty much anyone out there and he continues to innovate. Now personally I don't care for the Sims, but SimCity was always awesome and I just can't wait for Spore.
I agree he is a genius, and I appreciate the fact that Wil Wright articles have replaced PS3 delay articles, but perhaps, maybe /. could avoid putting up everything he says?
The man's a genius. Lets see you come up with some of the things that he has. He's done more for the videogame industry than pretty much anyone out there and he continues to innovate. Now personally I don't care for the Sims, but SimCity was always awesome and I just can't wait for Spore.
Oh, I can't wait for Spore either, and I agree that Will Wright is one of the greatest game developers of all time. There are only a few that I would put ahead of him, even. Lord British, John Carmack, Sid Meier, and David Crane come to mind. My point is that most people here haven't even heard of Will Wright, but now we have 15 slashdot articles on him that all say the same damn thing.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Obligatory link:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/05/27
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
No video or audio yet? I loved his speech last year. I'm very interested in hearing about his thoughts on Rare Earth, especially how he related it to Spore in his speech. Does anyone know of a link to a full write-out or video or other media?
Demented But Determined.
Maybe he should talk less and get his game finished. Spore's been getting hyped for quite awhile now, with multiple talks and demonstrations. Although a neat idea, it's not as revolutionary as people think. The central wow factor in the magnitudes of scale, zooming out from the very small (spore) to the very big (galaxy), is very old news and comes from an original short by Charles and Ray Eames called "The Power of 10" (it may precede them, but that's as far as I have traced it back), and a similar short plays or has played at the Smithsonian in Washington at the Air & Space Museum). The other wow factor, the procedurally generated mechanics of the critters, is impressive, but other than that it's nothing more than a Civ/Sim game with multiple levels of zoom. So, although interesting, chill folks. Sliced bread reigns supreme. My speculation is that the above makes for good demonstrations, but lousy game play, and that's what is taking time to figure out, as well as the very nebulous MMOG elements mentioned in one of the demonstrations.
How could you forget Shigero Myiamoto?
I don't know! Another great Japanese developer that I forgot to mention was Yu Suzuki, the creator of Hang-On, Virtua Fighter, and Shenmue.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
No but he claims there will be DS, PSP and cellphone versions.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Google Video has a video of Spore's gameplay demonstration.
Hey, we all take these 'revolutionary game' ideas with a bit of salt, since we've been let down so many times in the past, but... still, that was a pretty damn awesome demo. Sooner or later, someone is bound to actually come up with a brilliant game.
Hell is being intelligent in a world full of idiots.
Astrobiology (the study of the potential of life on other planets) is more statistics than testable science; the idea being that if you can figure out exactly what is required for intelligent life, you should be able to figure out the probability of each requirement occurring in a large system (like the universe). From that probability, you should be able to estimate the number of intelligent alien societies (using Drake's equation). Interesting stuff.
Guesses for this galaxy range from 1.25 (including our own) to over a million. Of course, we haven't found any yet (that I know of, anyway), and that's the [Fermi] paradox: if it's so likely, why haven't we seen any? The Rare Earth hypothesis (capitalized because it's the name of a book) is that this isn't really a paradox at all, because it isn't that likely. The general take is that we'd only be here to think it was unlikely if we were actually here to begin with (if Earth didn't have life, nobody would ask the question "why not?").
Panspermia could either be in reference to alien seeding of life on Earth (pretty unlikely, IMHO), or some other way of life getting to Earth besides it just emerging from natural elements. Neither of these is very provable at this point from the available evidence (you'd need to see absolutely no evolutionary evidence before a certain level of life), but interesting ideas, nonetheless.
That's what Will Wright might have been getting to: when developing games, you turn to the interesting ideas you have at hand, and bring out the coolest parts of them for people to play with. Spore uses the ideas of panspermia (whether or not it's true) and lets you take life to other planets, a really cool idea. Wright took Drake's equation and ramped up the probabilities, making it really likely that there are other civilizations nearby, and actually produced these civilizations from data grabbed from other players (what if the Fermi paradox didn't exist, because intelligent aliens were all over the place?).
So, whether or not you think these ideas have any explanational merit, they're interesting enough to make a really great game (if Spore turns out to be what it seems).
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Made A tv show? The man is responsible for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" Movie and Tv Series
a good, geeky, series in the beginning and at the wrap-up, I won't talk about the "popular" days.
"Angel"
no comment since I'm not a Junior High School girl in love with David Boreanaz
and He also Co-Wrote on "Toy Story"!
Before you go and call something Shitty you might also want to consider what else the "Fox Network" has managed to kill off
If you haven't heard of Will Wright, you don't need to be reading games articles on Slashdot.
That's like reading the IT section and having never heard of that old Internet thingy.
Another thing you need to understand is, look at the rapid advances in tech, how long do you think an electromagnetic society would last in any given alien culture. For us, its only been going on for what 100 years? Now extrapolate that, electromagnetic communication is getting more and more specific, and soon(define soon however you want) we may even break into communication devices operating on a quantum level, how long do you think a society will last using communication methods that you can observe over the vast reaches of space? 200 years, 400 years? Not much time at all, because we would have to be listening for it, and how much longer will we be listening before we just move onto expanding into space? I'm sure there is a lot of room for arguments on both sides, but to me it seems less likely that we haven't seen evidence because seeing the evidence would take FAR more coincidence than forming life from the soup does.
Most people may not know who Wright is, but I can guarantee you that the vast majority of Slashdot's readers know of his games.
Ideas straight out of Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near. I completely agree with the argument that not seeing the evidence might just be that we don't know what to look for, but then you have to deal with the idea that if other civilizations exist at a completely higher level of tech than we are, why haven't we noticed them? Why haven't the effects of such a society been seen?
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
"Will Wright Talks Research, Astrobiology"
This is news?
I'm sure when Will's hungry we'll be subjected to:
"Will Wright Talks bagels, cumquats"
Or when at a stripper club:
"Will Wright Talks Boobs! Buttocks!"
Or when drunk:
"Will Wright Talks Blarforg Splabbappo!"
I can't wait Slashdot - don't let me down.
...is not so much to learn about his games, or even his ideas about what make a great game. It is to learn that *anything* can be used to inspire/guide game design. Too often developers set out to make a game and just look at the competition to figure out what (not) to do. That leads to this kind of thinking: "well, game 'X' let you do backflips, so we'll let you do TWO backflips!!" followed by many pats on the back for being 'revolutionary'.
Even if you don't like Will Wright's games (he has a fascination with sandboxes), his design philosophy is what should impress you when you hear him. I think it's the same kind of approach that led to games like Pikmin, or Katamari Damacy, or Brain Age. The way he can bring two totally unrelated things together is amazing. One example off the top of my head was when he explained how he used a model for the evolution of various animals as the basis for handling the desires for the characters in The Sims.
I...I'm attacking the darkness!
For a genius, he sure had a poor showing in getting last place in the mental arithmetic competition that Nintendo used as a demo at the show...
as much as he talked.. I wasn't convinced it all lead to a fun game. Everything he went over with the game made it seem like what the player does doesn't really matter.
It looks like you can create any half assed creature and it will survive long enough to build cities; that it doesn't really matter how you build your creature.
You can custom design buildings where the design has nothing to do with what it does - add a mushroom looking thing here for what?
The game looks interesting and I suppose will be fun for some novel interfaces and ideas... sort of like one of those pin art toys impression... but like that toy, you'll get bored of it quickly. It doesn't really look like a game any more than a graphics package looks like a game.