I have been doing my best to keep track of the various article, videos and images from Will Wright’s keynote speech held earlier this week during Siggraph 2009.  Should of been smart and created an official post earlier – but I don’t think, I act (which is why I probably always end up saying/doing things incredibly stupid).

This thread is for the various articles, images and videos from his keynote that I found while surfing the net.  Make sure you click ‘continue reading’ to view them all!  And keep checking back, as I’ll be adding to it as soon as more content is made available!

Oh and what makes it official….ummm…no reason, just decided to toss that word in 😛

  • 8/6/09 9:22 PM CST – Fixed broken images, added a few more
  • 8/6/09 12:47 PM CST – Added article from CGW
  • 8/6/09 8:34 AM CST – Added video about the ‘Cuteness Scale’
  • 8/6/09 8:33 AM CST – Added images
  • 8/6/09 8:19 AM CST – Added link to CGSociety article
  • 8/6/09 8:08 AM CST – Added link to ControlAltTV article
  • 8/6/09 8:03 AM CST – Added video of Will Wright podcast interview
  • 8/6/09 8:02 AM CST – Added links to articles from Variety, Virtual World News, Icrontic, Reuters, Gamasutra
  • 8/6/09 8:01 AM CST – Post created

Articles

Will grabbed our attention instantly by showing images of cute, fluffy kittens. He informed the audience that, although the talk was called Playing with Perception,he would actually be talking about his cat, Argon, who’s picture he had uploaded to KittenWar.com, a site where the masses rate the cuteness of cats. Will’s cat won some comparisons and lost some, and the end result, as he accurately calculated, were that his cat was in the 65th percentile of cuteness. He presented a very scientific model. He uploaded different pictures of the same cat and compared the results with the first picture’s. He found that people liked smaller cats, softer cats, and that the direction of the pupils and the poses made significant differences. And what does this have to do with computer graphics and interactive technology? Well, everything.

CGW – Student Volunteer Blog #5

Wright was working the room and the stage for a very visual, long awaited keynote. He spoke (rather fast) of the game industries’ creation of products to influence user-perception. The diagrams he used were comical, thought-provoking and told of the lesser-known underbelly of research in the industry. He spoke about the immense research, engineering, art, manufacturing and merchandising of a product/media/game that going on, to make the consumer want to buy more of the same product/media/game. “All so the right chemical can be released into the brain,” he quipped, “Basically we’re all drug traffickers.”

CGSociety – Will Wright at Siggraph 2009

Wright also injected himself in a brewing battle between animators and studio executives on 3D movies.  While watching an advance screening of a 3D animated movie, he felt more connected to the short clip before the 3D movie.  While it wasn’t a total slam to 3D movies, he did feel that some movies should be in 3D because they give the audience the feeling like your actually there, like the Jonas Brothers’ 3D concert movie.

ControlAltTV – Siggraph: Will Wright keynote

Of course, Maxis’ experience with The Sims and Spore back this up. User created content was not core to The Sims, but it was useful. “We had 100,000 user created assets in a few years,” said Wright. “So for Spore, we decided to look at how of the artistic process can be automated and then use the technology to make (content creation) more fun and improve our content overall.”

The success of this strategy was immediately clear after the release of the Spore Creature Creator before the game was even released. The Sims‘ high water mark of 100,000 assets after several years was beaten in 22 hours, and a million assets were created in a week.

“This proved that the value point was in the data,” said Wright. “The goal became to move that data into different directions” These directions included opening up the Spore API and allowing creators to move their models out of the game via Maya format export.

“The data becomes the hub for other experiences,” he added. “The IP sits on the data model and the community a data hub for entertainment moving forward. The game becomes a tool set for creativity.” Says Wright.

Gamasutra – SIGGRAPH: Wright Talks Perception And ‘Entertaining The Hive Mind’

Wright, 49, said he was fascinating by watching gamers using the editing tools provided with “Spore” to make over 100 million user-generated alien species, space ships and even design games.

“We’re taking the idea that you can have a million people engaged not just in entertainment, but also have them creating huge amounts of content for other people to experience,” said Wright.

“The question is how can you transfer that to other fields besides games,” he added, while refusing to divulge the details of the project he is working on.

In an industry that has more failures than successes, Wright has distinguished himself in the game world by attracting mainstream audiences to his creations.

Reuters -Gameworld: “The Sims” creator eyes the world beyond games

Will suggests that consumers really don’t care how they receive media. He compared his iPhone screen size to that of an iMax screen. The difference, of course, was staggering, but Will thinks that despite the difference in clarity and detail, users become too distracted by tech to be concerned by such an unimportant detail. Our phones can show us a movie while we text a friend, which can be done while watching television, listening to music, and surfing the internet on a laptop. The point is, we bombard our senses with media today, and this has led to the creation of a collective hive mind, meaning a massive body of unified thought over a large group of people.

Icrontic – Will Wright SIGGRAPH 2009 Keynote

Of course, it had to start in typical Will Wright style — quirky, unpredictable, and sometimes deafening in intellectual/pseudo-intellectual depth — by focusing not on a game or a toy or a theory, but on a cat.

Yes, it was Will’s own kitty, Aragon, who dominated the introduction to his future vision of entertainment. And for good reason: Wright’s point with showing off pics of Aragon were not so much to convince us that Aragon was cute, or more or less cuter than any other kitty, but that certain cat traits and ways of photographing cats that accentuate those traits act on our perceptions and result in the conclusion that kitty A, B, or C is the prettiest of the bunch –- “it’s not that Aragon is cute, it’s the picture that is cute.”

Virtual Worlds News -Will Wright in New Orleans: Perception Is Everything

In his Siggraph day-two keynote address, “Spore” creator Will Wright laid out the beginnings of a “unified theory of entertainment” and challenged the gathering to look toward a future where different forms of entertainment are created by a single “entertainment designer.””Imagine we had a group of people who designed houses and that’s all they did, and another group of people who design skyscrapers, and another group of people who design factories — but we did not have the concept of the architect. In entertainment, it kind of feels that way. We have filmmakers over here, game designers over there. Musicians down here.”

He said “mood management theory” gives a hint at how entertainment works at the deepest level.

Viewers choose what to watch or listen to alter their mood, often in ways they aren’t conscious of. “Basically enjoying this content is causing certain brain states to occur, releasing certain hormones, endorphins and neurotransmitters in their brain. So in some sense we are drug dealers,” said Wright, getting a big laugh from his audience.

Variety -Wright talks ‘entertainment designer’ at Siggraph

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