Will Wright's Design Philosophy

Kieron Gillen has a new interview with Will Wright up over at The Guardian, discussing Wright's game design philosophy (more or less):

"What I want to do is craft this landscape of experiences where the player has a huge degree of control over what they encounter," he says. "I think that's what games have as an advantage over any other form of media; that the player is half the author of the experience if the game is done well - or even more so. I think this is the first form of medium which has really achieved that and it allows us access to emotional regions that are inaccessible to linear narrative."

Is Spore going to be the success many think it will be, or will it confound the average user (unlike The Sims) as Ian Bogost suspects? Or will people lose interest together before the thing is finally released? I guess we'll find out ... eventually.

Unlocking the power of parallel play [The Guardian via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

Will Wright is speaking at NASA's upcoming Yuri's Night Celebration in the Bay Area this Saturday.

Yuri's Night is an annual celebration of space exploration. On April 12th, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human being in space, orbiting around the Earth once during a 108-minute flight. Exactly twenty years later, on April 12th, 1981, the United States launched their first Space Shuttle into space.

Wright will be joined at the public event by a variety of scientific speakers, artists and musicians. The developers talk will focus on astrobiology, the history of the Russian space program and Spore. The game will also be on display.

Back when I was at the Palm Beach Post I was actually one of three reporters who helped cover shuttle launches. Watching a shuttle literally push itself away from the Earth and rip through gravity's pull is probably one of the most amazing things I've seen in my life.... and there was swag. No lie, NASA actually had a little kiosk set up at every launch selling shit. I think it was because all of the visiting general and dignitaries always wanted shirts and hats to give to their kids. So funny.

Yuri's Night

Ian Bogost on Spore's Universal (?) Appeal

After taking Spore's creature editor for a spin at the ICE 2008 conference and watching the average, non-gaming public's response to the editor, Ian Bogost has some opinions on the universal appeal of Spore (or lack thereof). Unlike The Sims, Bogost says, Spore is facing a significant challenge in getting to the general public:

... The observation that surprised me the most was how people totally unfamiliar with Spore reacted to the very idea of a creature editor. From my perspective, it's a brilliantly engineered, elegantly constructed content authoring tool. But from theirs, it's an unfamiliar interface to an almost deviant act.

... Among the newbies, there was a significant amount of uncertainty and performance anxiety. People weren't sure they would be able to build something, even with encouragement and example. One even said, over my shoulder, "I'm not sure I'm creative in that way." I found this reaction fascinating.

Is Spore 'For Everyone'? [GameSetWatch]

GameSetWatch notes that Will Wright has signed on as one of several co-curators for an upcoming museum exhibition in Vancouver that mashes up the worlds of anima, comics and video games.

KRAZY! The Delirious World of Anime + Comics + Video Games + Art will be on show at the the Vancouver Art Gallery from May 17 through Sept. 7 and will feature original sketches, notes, concept drawings, animation cells, 3D models, published work and last, but certainly not least, a "sneak preview" of Spore.

The show will travel to New York next year.

KRAZY! The Delirious World of Anime + Comics + Video Games + Art [Canadian Architect, via GSW]

Probably my utter fascination with Care Bears. I could tell you more than you want to know about Care Bears. Oh, you want to know about Care Bears? ...Yeah, 'cause they live in Care-a-Lot, which is above the Forest of Feelings where the Care Bear Cousins live, which is above Earth... But the Care Bear Cousins aren't even Bears. They're like lions and monkeys and things, but they call them Care Bear Cousins. Yeah... They have these particle beam weapons in their stomachs, and when they get really upset, they fire this Star Wars thing. Yeah, they're cool.

Will Wright Gets all Brainy on Drunk Audience

Spore Creature Creation Preview

Spore Launches In September

After years of eager anticipation, EA has finally announced a concrete release date for Will Wright's latest potential masterpiece. A link of the front page of Spore.com takes you to a video that proudly proclaims, "Earthlings, get ready to leave your galaxy...September 7th, 2008." The video was heralded by a message from Will Wright himself, sent out with the first official Spore newsletter.

While we finish up the game over the next few months, we'll be sharing more information with you and other fans. As a newsletter subscriber, you'll be among the first to get new Spore information, screenshots, videos and other cool features from the Spore team. Check out our launch date teaser, and of course you can visit Spore.com for updates anytime.

The Spore Launch Date Annoucement Trailer [Spore.Com - Thanks Deadeyereborn!]

EA CEO Calls Spore The Greatest Creative Risk In The Industry

2008 is going to be a very strong year for Electronic Arts. Whether we are talking about Spore, which has been talked about for a long time. Personally played the software, it is very impressive.

Will Wright on the Making of the Sims

EA Details Spore for the Mac

Earlier today Cnet broke the news that Electronic Arts' hotly anticipated sim, Spore, would be hitting the Mac and the PC at the same time.

Now EA has sent out a release backing that story up with a touch, just a touch more information. The Mac version of the game will be full featured and will run on TransGaming's Cider Portability Engine, which is what has been used for previous EA Mac games.

"I am excited that we'll be able to bring Spore directly to the Mac community. The intuitive Creature, Vehicle, and Building Creators in the game are so powerful that the possibilities are limitless. Players can create anything they can imagine and see them come to life in the game," said Lucy Bradshaw, Executive Producer of Spore.

Hit the jump for plenty of PR speak and not a single date.

Harvest Moon Creator Wants to Make Spore-Like Game

Eventually, I'd like to make something like Spore, where you create something, and from there, new stuff is going to be created again and again and again. In a micro world, like The Sims for example, you have the city expanding but you can't see it. But you want to be one of the people living in the city, and to be a part of this growing too.

It's Official: Spore Coming To The Wii

Digs Wii, Xbox 360 "Collecting Dust," No PS3

We've got an Xbox 360 collecting dust in the background, a Wii hooked up that we use quite a bit. I don't have a PS3... At the moment I can get better graphics on my PC than I can on the PS3... The only next gen system I've seen is the Wii — the PS3 and the Xbox 360 feel like better versions of the last, but pretty much the same game with incremental improvement. Bu the Wii feels like a major jump — not that the graphics are more powerful, but that it hits a completely different demographic. In some sense I see the Wii as the most significant thing that's happened, at least on the console side, in quite a while.

Will Wright Wants Next-Gen Interactivity

With the next-generation games systems, unfortunately a lot of that CPU is pretty dedicated to graphics, so it's not like you instantly get 50 times more computing power; you get 50 times more graphic computing power and so I think it's actually more interesting if we had 50 times more general processing that we could then apply to physics, interactivity and AI.