wired.com — Will Wright explains how games cultivate the player's mind through experimentation and trial and error. He argues that games are not always violent, addictive, and childish but they can inspire creativity, community, self-esteem, and problem-solving.
Mar 21, 2006 View in Crawl 4
lumirasMar 21, 2006
I don't consider you a geek at all for knowing who Will Wright is. He's probably one of the two or three most important figures in gaming ever. I would consider you a loser if you didn't know who he was :)
t35t0rMar 21, 2006
You deserve your fate. The way you think determines who you are. If you are a struggling developer who does nothing but blame blame and blame then that is the way you always will be. Everything is not some "entity's" fault, there is no "man" holding you down. Only your own mind is holding you down. You should read this book and it'll change the way you think: <a class="user" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060776579/ref=pd_kar_gw_3/103-9365608-9271842?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155">http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060776579/ref=pd_kar_gw_3/103-9365608-9271842?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155</a> .
osbjmgMar 21, 2006
I didn't know who he was, but I have never played the Sims.
mettaMar 21, 2006
Dugg. Will is a big brain in that industry.
finnMar 21, 2006
Will Wright, i deem you god of game theory (i know he's not the first, but he's a good level-headed figurehead representative vs the 'other side'). gotta love this guy; and no i'm not a Sims fanatic, thou i like the game i could never really get into it, but i do recognize it for its genius (the creator too)..as for Spore...trying NOT to keep tabs on it, as i hate the waiting game.
njankMar 21, 2006
"if you happen to own more than six of his games"If I have all of The Sims expansions, does that count as one game each, or one game total? If I bought them individually versus the Complete Collection?(not that it matters... I own about 5-7(??) of his other games too...
Closed AccountMar 22, 2006
No.
Closed AccountMar 22, 2006
I digg Wil Wright interviews on impulse, but this was a bit of a fluff piece designed to build hype for Spore. Only one thing worth commenting on--and it's a negative comment."Soon games will start to build simple models of us, the players. They will learn what we like to do, what we're good at, what interests and challenges us. They will observe us. They will record the decisions we make, consider how we solve problems, and evaluate how skilled we are in various circumstances. Over time, these games will become able to modify themselves to better "fit" each individual. They will adjust their difficulty on the fly, bring in new content, and create story lines. Much of this original material will be created by other players, and the system will move it to those it determines will enjoy it most."Does this bother anyone else?Pandora.com is the first and only "recommendation" system I've ever seen that works. No other system, of which I am aware, has even come close to working. I can only imagine how terrible it would be to play a game that feeds me "recommended" content in the fashion of NetFlix or WalMart.com video recommendations.What if I spend two hours practicing with a sniper rifle, just to get good at it, and my FPS turns into a pure sniping game?What if I LIKE drilling the same level, in the same way (time attacking), over and over again, but the game makes it impossible to do that?I don't know about you, but this whole idea feels a lot like "streamlining" to me. It's a concept that sounds good for mainstream appeal, but that will just piss hardcore gamers off to no end. I LIKE it that game worlds follow predefined and inflexible rules. I HATE it when games change the rules on me for no good reason--I call that cheating and a crutch for incompetent game designers. It's bad enough that some games change the amount of damage a bullet does (flaunting the laws of physics), but it REALLY pisses me off when they change that constantly and at their whim. I don't understand how I'm supposed to play in a world that has no rules.Sure, I would love it if a game gave me exactly what I want in a game. But a) I don't think anyone is capable of doing that, and b) it's no longer a game if there are no rules.What they should do instead is develop more procuderal and emergent content, which I hope will be Spore's legacy. Randomness is great. In the future, I hope every game is a procedurally-generated rogue-like. But game worlds also require persistence. Once you generate reality the first time, everything that follows must follow the same rules.
Closed AccountMar 22, 2006
Here's an example of how scaling difficulty on-the-fly could ruin a game:Sid Mier's Civilization allows the player to choose from seven different civilizations, each with different resources and lass mass at their disposal (assuming you play on the accurate world map). Starting in America gives the player access to two whole continents. Starting in Japan or England, however, gives the player only one tiny land mass with room for maybe three cities. I often choose those civilizations to make the game more challenging. The ultimate goal for me is to win without ever leaving my homeland. It becomes very difficult as the AI sends at you everything it's got and you have so few resources with which to defend yourself.Now, imagine that situation with on-the-fly difficulty levels. The AI would develop more slowly. The AI would become less aggressive. What you thought would make the game more challenging instead makes it more mundane. This is the inverse of something the original Civilization did wrong already--cheating as a crutch for poor game design. (Setting the difficulty level higher in Civilization actually bends the laws of physics to make AI towns produce units more quickly than is possible for the player.)Imagine throwing in a "recommendation" system to make the game "fit" the player. Civilization might decide that you don't LIKE combat. It might start sending diplomats to your doorstep instead of tanks. What are the odds that it could correctly interpret your behavior? Isn't it better to let the player interpret the behavior of the GAME and change HIS behavior accordingly?The kind of laziness engendered in this approach is exactly analogous to the laziness described in Wil Wright's paragraph about Hollywood. Designers should follow a user-centric approach to difficulty. Give the player tools to scale the difficulty himself. Give the player a persistent immersive environment with plenty of options for creating his own emergent gameplay. If a player decides enemy guns are too weak, it should be easy for him to pop open an editor and give them better guns. In other words, difficulty level is exactly the same as content.Player mods have only begun to scratch the surface. We need to be able to mod difficulty level, AI, gravity, etc., all within the game engine. I think developers are just afraid that, if they make a game right, no one will ever buy another one. They're much more interested in pleasing the lowest common denominator and moving on.
xinulMar 23, 2006
get off your how to think like a millionaire high horse this rant wasn%u2019t about me I%u2019m not a game or software developer and I do just fine. This was about the negative impact ea has had on the industry. Look over the years how many development houses ea has absorbed and how many classic creative ips have they received as an result only to abandon them as their profit margins were not high enough. Example google bullfrog games see igns profile of them several great ground breaking titles but ea comes along and goodbye to your chances of ever seeing follow ups to any of these ground breaking titles instead lets pump out fifa soccer every year because its a cash cow. Lets not even get started on their labor practices%u2026 with that said I do love will wright
naturalfix023Oct 4, 2009
Awesome article.Quotes about family<a class="user" href="http://deepquotes.info/quotes-about-family/" rel="nofollow">http://deepquotes.info/quotes-about-family/</a>