Changing The World With Videogames

Will Wright gave the keynote address at the Texas SXSW event, showing off Spore to a packed crowd and offering up hopes that 'Toys' will change the world. His hope is that offerings like Spore might force kids to rethink their understandings of nature. Likewise, non-linear storytelling via 'branching' gaming is what he sees as the future of the medium. He cites the movie Groundhog Day as an example, a movie which told the same story over and over again but never did it the same way twice. "'I think if we can teach the computer to listen to the story that players are telling,' Wright said, a game could detect patterns of what the player wants, and adjust music, lighting, and other immersive elements to reflect the story that a player wants to play. He thinks this modeling would best be accomplished by networks that constantly mine and refine player information." Alice, of the Wonderland blog, helpfully provides extensive notes, and Kotaku has a video of the demo the attendees saw.

Comments

yeah right...

[aadvancedGIR]

So the kids who torture real small animals for fun will suddenly gain a conscience when faced with simulated ones?

Be practical

[KingSkippus]

The game isn't meant to say, "This is exactly how evolution works." Not having played it, this is a guess, but it's supposed to illustrate some of the basic principles and let kids have some fun while learning it.

Animals also don't evolve as you go outside and look at the real thing; it's a process that typically takes millions of years. And I'm sorry, but David Attenborough is boring.

If you want your kids playing outside instead of playing video games, that's fine, I encourage it too, and more power to you. But I find it a little snooty to look down on something that is trying to be a little more intelligent than your typical Grand Theft Auto or Doom game that so many other kids are playing these days.

Maybe it won't change the world, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

Re:Shades of Orson Scott Card...

[Aladrin]

No, the virtual world in Ender's Game (which actually had nothing to do with the title, just to make that clear) was a system designed to lead the children on a path of self-exploration. It had very, very little to do with what the child wanted and had everything to do with what the child needed.

Wright's comment deals only with wants, and not at all with needs.

His comment is interesting, though. He's suggesting that a TheSims-type player would be playing a game with marriage, kids, and happy music while a Halo-type player would end up with lightning and dark music, and an alien invasion. A game that could adapt this much would pretty much be the ultimate game and would therefore destroy the games industry. Thank heavens it isn't possible yet, or in the near future.

This is NOT GOOD

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

"I think if we can teach the computer to listen to the story that players are telling," Wright said, a game could detect patterns of what the player wants, and adjust music, lighting, and other immersive elements to reflect the story that a player wants to play. He thinks this modeling would best be accomplished by networks that constantly mine and refine player information.

A few of the problems they will have is that people don't know what they want, and they play games to escape real life problems which stay resident in their mind like AOL on a PC.

You'll have games that won't satisfy people unless the theme goes completely dark, and has the person lost frantically searching for a ray of hope that leads to nothing (Like WoW for instance.)

Seriously though, I don't think I want the same thing from every game. I (used to) play WoW to have some feeling of accomplishment in my lame life. I play Need for Speed so that I don't hit 160mph on the freeway on a daily basis (I try and keep that to a yearly event these days...)

I play games sometimes to take risks that I could not take in real life. Sometimes I play a game to get away from stress knowing the game rules will not change. Yes kids, the rules of real life can change on a daily basis. DST anyone? Physics however (so far in my experience) has stayed the same.

Wouldn't it be awesome to teach kids that if you drive too fast and wreck your car that you loose & can't play the game for 3 weeks, because you don't have money to pay for the damage to other persons property & fix your car? Sure would have made me think twice that one time when I was 18...

It's a neat Idea, but I think it won't work for any game type other than MMOG. I don't think there is a gamer out there who wouldn't want to take his Ultima work, and apply it to EQ, then take his EQ avatar, and put him in DAOC, then take that DAOC extension of themselves, and move him to WoW.

That Idea rocks. It's solid because people get very attached to their Avatars. I know because I am going through separation anxiety right now as I tell Blizzard to eF off when they failed to reimburse my char for a scam. In real life, you don't get reimbursed for a scam. The bank says "sucks to be you, move along." In videogames, There is a trail of that money, and they know EXACTLY where it goes. They usually are supposed to be unevenly fair towards the player. It's really to bad I can't take that guy and stick him in a different game.

"Computers function as an amplifier of our imagination," Wright said. He spoke of the world's previous paradigm shifts, through technology or culture, or both. Now, he said, we're experiencing them "more and more often."

I think what he is saying here is just that games will drive the vision of technological growth in the future just as Sci-Fi & comic books did in years past. While that statement is true, It's also -1 obvious. There is no doubt that the future will be shaped, has been shaped by VG's. Just ask Block-Buster & Hollywood video, or the Movie industry in general.

Responses encouraged!