Tag Archives: will wright

Will Wright’s told Gamespot that the first Stupid Fun Club projects are to be announced in the coming months.

The designer confirmed he’s leaving EA to start the company yesterday. The firm’s described as n “entertainment think tank”.

“I think it’ll be a few months away,” Wright said on the subject of announcements.

“It’s going to depend on how things develop from here, but we’ve got several projects in the works right now and it’s just not clear when they’ll be announced. That’s my best guess yet.”

It’s highly likely we’re going to see more open-ended simulators from Wright. He told Kotaku last night that there’s going to be “an almost unbroken lineage” between his work at Stupid Fun Club and his previous Maxis games.

Spore-creator Will Wright has told VG247 that he believes Cloud will work if supported properly by developers and publishers, and that the concept represents a “great opportunity” for the industry.

“In the future, if people are really browsing these things, it’s a great opportunity,” he said, talking of Cloud-based systems like OnLive, which was announced this week at GDC.

If Cloud gaming’s successful, however, Wright said it wouldn’t affect the way he develops games.

“No, not really,” he said when asked if a surge in Cloud popularity would change his content.

“With hardware I really don’t care if it’s Xbox, PC or Cloud.”

OnLive caused quite a stir earlier this week with its remote-play concept, a theory apparently debunked yesterday by tech specialist Richard Leadbetter.

We’re about to go live with coverage from David Perry’s Luminaries Lunch, this year featuring Will Wright, Warren Spector, Nolan Bushnell, Rob Pardo and, the man himself “Big” Dave Perry.

The session is the biggest of the big guns waxing lyrical on dev issues. You may well be in for some surprises, so keep those peepers peeled.

It’s scheduled to start at 1.00pm PST, or 8.00pm GMT. Get all the updates after the break.

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The Iwata keynote may be over, but don’t you dare touch that dial. We’ll be liveblogging the Luminaries Lunch at 1pm PST today, and the line-up’s stellar.

Will Wright, Warren Spector, Nolan Bushnell, Rob Pardo and David Perry will all be on the panel: you’re guaranteed to get some monster quotes.

That’s 1.00pm PST, 8.00pm GMT and 9.00pm CET. See you then!

Gama reports that Will “Spore/Sims” Wright is to talk at this year’s SIGGRAPH conference in New Orleans in August.

Apparently, he’ll be rapping about how game development influences other industries.

“His selection to give a keynote presentation this year is a perfect fit as SIGGRAPH 2009 integrates gaming as an expanded focus of the conference,” conference chair Ronen Barzel said earlier today.

Will Wright will also be at this year’s GDC, spreading the awesome. Be there or be square, innit.

Hit the links for more.

It’s so on. VG247 has learned this morning that Will Wright, Warren Spector, Neil Young, Rob Pardo and Phil Harrison are all confirmed for Dave Perry’s Luminaries Lunch at GDC next month.

The chat takes place on March 25 at 1.00pm PST.

The inaugural event at last year’s GDC bore witness to some spectacular quotes from Harrison, who openly criticised Sony’s approach to gaming as a whole. He quit the firm days later.

The addition of Wright and Blzzard boss Pardo to the line-up for 2009′s panel will only add weight to what was dubbed “GDC’s best session” last year by some.

Discussion will be about the future of the industry, new concepts in technology, recent non-gaming related developments and entertainment trends.

It’s invite-only, Ringo. We’ll be there, obviously, which means you will be to. See how that works?

Happy New Year. We’re glad we shut down over Christmas. You didn’t miss a whole lot.

By far the most important story over the break was news that Free Radical cut its workforce by 140 to just 40.

The developer was confirmed as being in administration just before the Christmas holiday.

Speaking to 1UP, Cameron Gunn of administrators ReSolve Partners said, “We made around 140 employees redundant yesterday, effective 31 December (the date up to which they had been paid). We’re still trading on with the remaining 40 or so employees, have advertised the business for sale and have received some strong interest.”

News broke mid-December that staff had turned up for work only to be locked with a notice on the door telling them to adjourn to a nearby hotel.

Free Radical aside, other noteworthy Christmas news included confirmation that Mistwalker JRPG Cry On has been cancelled.

“AQI decided to cancel the project after analyzing the current market environment and forecasts for the future. We deeply apologize for troubling those who were awaiting its release,” said a company rep.

Cry On was apparently part of “Hironobu Sakaguchi’s triumvirate of Xbox 360 titles,” says this 1UP piece (the other two being Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey), and for those of you who don’t know, the game “was to be an action-RPG featuring a Nobuo Uematsu soundtrack [and] character designs by Kimihiko Fujisaka.”

Full round up below.

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Will Wright’s confirmed to Joystiq that he’s already working on a brand new game.

“I’m working on a big new project that I’m very excited about, but I don’t want to talk about it yet because if it takes three years to come out I don’t want people saying ‘Wow, he’s been talking about that for a loooong time,’” he said, talking at last night’s Spike Video Game Awards.

Spore’s only really just got going, with the game releasing in September and the first content packs making it out in the last month.

Time magazine has named Spore the 20th best invention of 2008, saying, “It’s blasphemy, brilliance or both to take the entire evolution of a species — from a single-celled animalcule in a drop of water to a space-faring, galaxy-exploring sentient being — and turn it into a video game.”

The retail DNA test was top of the chart, which is kind of fair enough when you think about it. Actually, you don’t have to think about it that hard.

More through the link.

According to this Joystiq report, EA’s confirmed a new Space phase expansion for Spore, to ship next spring.

The new product is in addition to the now-confirmed Creepy & Cute parts pack, releasing in the US in November.

Apparently “players’ space faring creatures will be able to beam down from their spaceships to explore new planets and earn rewards for completing challenging missions” in the Space expansion, and “a new Adventure Creator will allow players to build and share online their own custom missions.”

More through the link.

According to this MCV piece, citing a Develop story, both Will Wright and Bobby Kotick have contributed to John McCain’s White House charge, while Strauss Zelnick and Sam Houser have spent money on helping Obama into power.

Didn’t know you were a right-winger, Will. We never forget, you know. Others:

Republican contributors:

• Will Wright: (Spore, The Sims) $3,000 to McCain; previously donated $2,350 to Giuliani
• Bobby Kotick (Activision CEO) $2,300 to McCain; previously donated $2,100 to Romney
• Curt Schilling (38 Studios) $2,300 to McCain.

Democratic contributors:

• Strauss Zelnick (Chairman, Take-Two) $2,000 to Obama; had previously donated to $2,500 to Edwards, $1,000 each to Biden & Richardson
• Ben Feder (CEO, Take-Two) contributed $1,000 to Biden in 2007
• Sam Houser (Rockstar) $4,600 to Obama
• Patricia Vance (president, ESRB) $2,000 to Obama
• John Riccitiello (CEO, EA) $4,600 to Obama
• John Smedley (Sony Online Entertainment) $2,300 to Obama
• Richard Garriott aka “Lord British” (Ultima series, NC Soft) $2,300 to Hillary Clinton
• Alex Rigopulos (CEO, Harmonix) $32,900 to Obama
• Kathy Vrabeck (president, EA Casual) $2,300 to Obama
• Gabe Newell (pres., Valve) $2,300 to Dodd

Will Wright’s told MSNBC his top five gaming series of all time. Top is Flight Simulator, and we bet he’s put some hours into that. List below.

1. The Flight Simulator series
2. Advance Wars on the DS
3. Battlefield series
4. Grand Theft Auto series
5. The Civilization series

Disgruntled Spore buyers have launched one star Amazon scores at Spore en bloc over the fact you can only install each copy of the game three times.

The title’s security system have been branded “draconian” and “a show-stopper” by the hundreds of negative reviewers.

Maybe someone should get the message? You can torrent Spore for free, for God’s sake. These people are trying to buy it.

Speaking to MTV, Will Wright’s pretty much agreed with criticism levelled at Spore in a now-wide swathe of reviews, saying the game targets a casual audience, will sell more than Half-Life, and that’s as should be.

“We were very focused, if anything, on making a game for more casual players,” he said. “Spore has more depth than, let’s say, The Sims did. But we looked at the Metacritic scores for Sims 2, which was around 90, and something like Half-Life, which was 97, and we decided — quite a while back — that we would rather have the Metacritic and sales of Sims 2 than the Metacritic and sales of Half-Life.”

Wright’s also unfazed by the fact many reviewers have claimed the game is a Jack of all trades and a master of none.

“The feedback we’re getting from people is that everyone has some level they like and some level they don’t like,” he said. “A lot of the reviews I’ve read have said that the Space Stage was far and away the best and they were disappointed by the earlier stages because they were too simple. Other people have said the Creature Stage is their favorite and that the Space Stage seems too complicated.

“We knew, since we were using different genres with every level, that everyone would have ones they really clicked with and ones they didn’t. We’ve pretty much seen that. There hasn’t been any consistent feedback. Some people have said the Civ phase is the best.”

More through the link. We love you, Will.

Speaking to the BBC, EA’s Will Wright said he believes that Spore – released today – will be a turning point for games in general.

“Spore will change the way people look at games forever and change hopefully the perception people have of their own creativity,” he said.

Wright added: “We see the players make and share content and we see the player as a co-developer. People are still getting used to the fact that they are creators as well as consumers and we see this in how people pick their own TV shows or their own music.”

More through there.

According to this Xiotex Studios post, EA customer support has confirmed that Spore’s experiencing technical difficulties on its first day at retail. Check this email out:

“Thank you for contacting us here at Electronic Arts Customer Support.

We deeply apologise for the inconvenience that you are currently experiencing with SPORE. It appears that there is an ongoing issue with the accounts server and the registration process for the game. We would like to inform you that we are already investigating this concern and in the process of resolving this issue. For updates with regards this concern, you can visit the SPORE site at http://www.spore.com.

We appreciate your continued patience and understanding in the meantime.”

More through there.

Lazard Capital’s Colin Sebastian has predicted that Spore will move 2 million units for EA this month.

September in general will be hot for the firm, said the analyst, noting that there’ve been more than 650,000 sign-ups for WAR in the US alone.

There’s more on GI.

PC Gamer’s 91 percent Spore review’s been published online, as you can see here.

As reported yesterday, the German PC mags have been less kind to the EA epic, with Gamestar and PC Games giving it 79 and 73 percent respectively.

Online reviews in Europe are embargoed until the game releases on Friday.

Update: We’ve just been told that other major German PC mag, Gamestar, has scored the game at 79 percent.

Uh oh. Leading German mag PC Games has reviewed Spore at 73 percent, VG247 has learnt today.

Apparently the review can be summed up thus:

For:

• The Creature Creator
• Great animation
• Endless Content through downloads
• Tons of community features

Against:

• No real depth until the fifth stage
• Uneasy mix of simulation and strategy
• It’s easier to wage war then to be diplomatic
• No “one more go” aspect

We’ve also been told this morning by German and Scandinavian sources that online European reviews are strictly embargoed until the game launches on Friday.

EA was unavailable for comment at the time of writing.

The German score comes after UK’s PC Gamer gave the game 91 percent in a cover review.

Consider our ears pricked up.

Will Wright’s going to be on hand to answer fan questions and HMV’s Oxford Street store tomorrow, if you fancy popping along to worry the poor old sod.

The event, rather obviously, is in honour of Spore’s launch this week. Details:

Event will be wristbanded to 200 fans. Fans can pick up free wristbands at HMV which allow them access to the event. Wristbands will be available only from hmv 150 Oxford Street from 9.00am on Wednesday 3 September on the day of the event onwards. One wristband per customer maximum, in person only, while stocks last, subject to availability, at participating store only. Due to the whimsical nature of the entertainment industry, events are subject to change without notice.

Press release after the link.

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