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Will Wright Leaves EA/Maxis For Stupid Fun Club

Posted by timothy on from the requires-flash-10-for-shame-for-shame dept.

Dave Knott writes "Gamasutra reports that SimCity, Sims and Spore game creator Will Wright is leaving EA/Maxis. He will now be acting as head of Stupid Fun Club, an 'entertainment think tank' that he was previously funding out of his own pocket. From the article: 'The club has focused mainly on designing and building robots, as well as creating video productions based on them. Wright and EA will co-own Stupid Fun Club, which will focus on developing new cross-media IP for games, movies, TV and toys. EA has the right to develop game concepts that emerge from the think tank, and both the company and Wright have an equal stake.'"

4 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. This might be a stupid question... by HexOxide · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This might be a stupid question...

    But, how is Will Wright actually leaving EA if EA co-owns Stupid Fun Club?

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    Can I leave this box empty?
    1. Re:This might be a stupid question... by Strange+Ranger · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Unless he controls 51% of stupidfanclub it's just a reorg and a nice promotion.

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      Operator, give me the number for 911!
    2. Re:This might be a stupid question... by physicsphairy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It sounds like EA's fifty-percent stake entitles them to share in profits and IP, but Will Wright is still totally in charge of his company (which makes EA more of an investor-with-benefits). And just because EA is a bigger entity does not make co-owner Will Wright an "employee" of EA. They can't fire him, for example. So it is correct to say that Will Wright has left his employment at EA.

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      When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
  2. Re:Spore by Rockoon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Will sacrificed his original goal, that of something similar to evolution, for a toy completely unrelated to evolution.

    Remember all of Will's talks about the high cost of content and how the game industry needed to change?

    He had lead everyone to believe that "procedural content" was the goal, when the real goal was apparently to get millions of people to create content for free: all your creature designs are owned by E.A and are automatically uploaded to their servers.

    And that explain the evolution sacrifice nicely, as well as the "free" creature creator. They wanted no limits to creativity in order to maximize the diversity and quantity of the free content they were going to aquire.

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    "His name was James Damore."