Will Wright

This for a Concept Development assignment. It got a bit wordy, as things I write tend to do.

Behind Shigeru Miyamoto (designer of Mario, Zelda, Metroid, &c., &c.) Will Wright is possibly the most well known game designer currently working, and with good reason too. Will Wright’s first hit was SimCity, first released in 1989, which allowed players to design and maintain simulated cities. This spawned a line of similarly-named games exploring similar themes: Simulation of real-world systems, and giving the players a lot of power to be creative in the manipulation of these systems. Will Wright’s second major hit was The Sims in 2000. The Sims again attempted to simulate a real-world system, this time suburban family life. It appealed greatly to ‘non-core’ gaming audience (women, mostly), and is credited with expanding the audience for video games. The Sims is still one of the most highly selling games of all time. Will Wright is currently working on the upcoming game Spore, which simulates evolutionary biology, social evolution and space exploration.

Will Wright’s creative process involves detailed exploration of everyday but complex ideas. This is something not usually seen in games, which are often explorations of more outlandish and simple concepts. The ideas that he explores are also taken from experiences or concepts outside of games. The Sims was created from the initial concept of giving the player a dollhouse where the dolls were alive. The main inspiration for Spore were taken from Drake’s Equation, which was an attempt to mathematically determine the number of civilizations in our galaxy. Will Wright’s game designs are also usually created over long periods of time, working with small teams. The Sims was first pitched by Will Wright in 1993, though actual development did not begin on it until 1995, five years before it was released. Spore has also been in development for more than five years. Much of this development time is spent on small throwaway prototypes to test specific concepts that may or may not be used in the final product. Will Wright’s creative process involves gathering ideas from external sources and iterating until they work.

Articles:
Innovation, design
Prototyping

Video:
Will Wright at NASA