A number of articles have been flowing out to the net from Will Wright’s secret appearance at the Games Developer Conference 2o10. Considering that they really don’t offer much of anything new, I’m lumping them in one post 🙂 Have to do these quick as I need to run back out to the auto service station to pick up my car!
The Game Developers Conference 2010 Program Addendum offers a short description of every lecture during the week, except for the one titled “Metaphysics of Game Design” by “Phaedrus.” All it says for that mysterious lecture is “Do not miss this session!” However, word got out that it was secretly Will Wright and a giant line formed outside the room right before it began. Some people were even hoping Phaedrus was the name of a new secret game Will Wright was announcing. It turned out that Will Wright was using a secret name because he wasn’t sure if he’d have time to give the lecture, and he wasn’t even sure what he was going to talk about when he signed up.
When Will Wright doesn’t know what he’s going to talk about, he talks about everything in the universe from why we forget our infancies to the history of rocket mail. This read is only recommended for our nerdiest readers (it’s probably not half as interesting or funny without his fast-paced slideshow and comic timing anyway).
Will Wright is a fantastic speaker, but his ideas come fast and dense. Synthesyzing and analyzing his talk was incredibly intimidating and a significant challenge. This writeup — moreso than any of my others from this year’s GDC — contains a liberal amount of my own interpretation, due in large part to the fact that I had a hard time keeping up with him while taking notes on the session. But to be completely honest, this subject matter is really inspiring, and I frankly couldn’t help but examine patterns, correlations, and perspectives.
At the Game Developers Conference, which just wrapped up yesterday, many attendees wondered about one of the final sessions held at the show. Little was known about it, except its title, “Metaphysics of Game Design,” and its speaker, someone called “Phaedrus.”
It turned out that the mysterious session was being headed by none other than SimCity and Spore creator Will Wright.
“I am not Phaedrus,” Wright said, as he made his way to center stage amid thunderous applause. He said that the reason the panel was under a pseudonym was because he wasn’t entirely sure he could attend the conference.
Wright then proceeded to give a presentation on his ideas of the underlying principles of game design, imbued with humor, Star Trek references and his trademark profundity. Take a look a few select slides from the presentation, which may or may not leave you scratching your head:
1UP – Will Wright Makes Surprise Lecture at GDC, Includes Horses, Hello Kitty and M&Ms
While many see social gaming as the next big thing, Will Wright — famed creator of SimCity, The Sims and Spore — warned GDC attendees that expectations for the genre are unrealistic. “What people tend to do is apply a power curve to this,” Wright explained using the above diagram. “And so when you make an extrapolation based upon that, you’re really way off, when in fact, what we were really looking at was an S-curve.”
“It gets a lot of attention, of course, because investors, when they’re looking to invest in something, they’re looking to invest in the steep part of this curve. And so that’s why there’s so much business interest in this sort of platform,” Wright hypothesized.
Joystiq – Wright predicts social gaming will grow to 25% of the market
Wright’s 70-minute session touched on a range of topics, from past successes to the crossover of the games and movie industries and social gaming platforms. The one thing he wouldn’t be drawn on, however, was his current work at Super Fun Club. He addressed this matter early on in his presentation, saying, “I can’t talk about anything yet…but soon.”
Talking about his inspirations, Wright specifically referenced Nintendo’s Advance Wars on the DS as the game that he’s played “probably more than any other.” Every morning, he sits down with Advance Wars and a cup of coffee, and spends 15 minutes spinning up his brain.
The relationship between players and game makers was perhaps the largest theme in Wright’s session, and he fed back some of the findings from his previous games. “Players are inherently narcissistic–we’d see that players would spend hours creating themselves in The Sims,” he said. He joked numerous times that he was essentially a drug dealer, as the end result of his work was to stimulate players’ “hormones, endorphins, and neurotransmitters”.
GameSpot – Will Wright “Game design is a lot like dealing drugs
Will Wright was the mystery guest for GDC’s final panel. The creator of the SIMs franchise, Spore and too many other games, Wright now plays in his Stupid Fun Club studio. His was an astounding rant that followed the job of moulding a totally engrossing game playing experience. The Game makers mixing the creation of the virtual life character, and all it’s traits, into the lives of those who play the game. He called this the ‘Metaphysics of Game Development.’
The relationship between players and game makers was perhaps the largest theme in Wright’s session. “In Sims, players are inherently narcissistic. We’d see that players would spend hours creating themselves in The Sims,” said Wright. Several times he referred to himself as a drug dealer, dealing out “hormones and endorphins, and trying to hit those neurotransmitters”.
“I’m working on a lot of secret projects I can’t talk about yet, but soon,” said Wright of his current work at Stupid Fun Club. While Wright had no specific product to talk about, he did dazzle the audience with a fast-moving multimedia presentation focusing on the rising rate of technological advancement and growing degree of interconnectivity across all entertainment platforms.
He touched on how after Nintendo’s Wii we’ve seen an increase of variety of platforms and approaches to gaming targeting many different demographics. “For the first time, we’re jumping the generational divide. [The Nintendo Wii] was an approachable platform, it was very different, and it was focused in a very different way. I think we had this kind of established trajectory that we were on, and over the last five years or so, it’s tremendous the diversity. All these platforms are exploding before our eyes very rapidly.”
The emergence of social networking sites, the potential of services like OnLive, and gaming on mobile devices like the iPhone are a few of the popular alternatives he mentioned in addition to traditional forms of gaming, such as on consoles. Yet despite the broad spectrum of possibilities for gaming, the industry is still vulnerable, with its share of casualties particularly in the form of recent studio closures.
Ok I know this might be but I don’t think that anybody (including me) cares about Will Wright .