'Spore' creator inspired by intelligent design, social networks
— -- Based on his design of the SimCity games alone, Will Wright would have left his mark on the evolution of computer and video games. But the co-founder of game development firm Maxis went on to create The Sims, a game released in 2000 that has since has sold more than 100 million copies in its various iterations including The Sims 2 and The Sims Online.
Wright was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences in 2002, joining legendary designers Shigeru Miyamato (Mario, Zelda), Sid Meier (Civilization), Hironobu Sakaguchi (Final Fantasy) and John Carmack (Doom).
But Wright is far from finished. His long-awaited game Spore (for Windows and Macintosh PCs) engages players with a variety of gameplay features from first-person shooters, strategy games and, of course, simulations. Recently, Wright talked with USA TODAY's Mike Snider about Spore.
Question: Spore just launched. What are you doing now?
Answer: I'm spending a lot of time looking at what players are doing with the game. At this point, the transition for me is to become an anthropologist. We knew players were making a lot of things with the Creature Creator (a separate slice of Spore software released in June). Now they are starting to make other stuff in the game like vehicles and airplanes and spaceships.
Q: How many creatures have people created?
A: About four million.
Q: Does that meet your expectations?
A: The numbers are way beyond what I was expecting. As far as creatures, I thought we would have 100,000 by the time we launched. That was based on what I saw happen with (2004's) The Sims 2.
Q: How much does this say about people's interest in generating content and how much of it is people's comfort level with technology? Or how much of it is people are just interested in the game?
A: It's a bit of each. A lot of what we had modeled in terms of social features of Spore was based on social networks. In multiplayer games there's not a lot of expressiveness. Spore is much more about what you create. No two players will create the same thing.
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