Response to Article: Profiles Game Master

Will Wright's story seems a familiar one. Someone who's disparate skills happen to fit a situation that would later be recognized as a fulcrum moment of development. In Will's case it was his ability to introduce a new game model into the fledgling gaming business. At a time when other game developers where interested more in levels and “winning” Will had the insight and interest to explore the game space – in that he, “was more interested in creating the buildings on the islands than in blowing them up.” . In the New Yorker article, Mr. Seabrook lists many possible reasons for Will's ingenuity – from his youthful ideas of becoming an astronaut, his experiences at the Montessori school to the borrowed ideas from the Game of Life. Ultimately these influences all effected the development of SimCity.

Initially not many thought the game would not be successful, yet it became one of the most beloved and successful games in the history of gaming. It seems in part that because of this Will's recent project, Spore, has been given free range from EA. In an industry where most production schedules are based in months, Will has been granted six years as well as given access to the company's best programmers. Because of the time it has been in development, and the person that is developing it, Spore has become one of the most anticipated games in the history of the industry.

It is hard to make judgments on Spore as I have yet to seen it, or had the chance to play it. The game seems that it will be fully immersive. That one could play for ever and not explore the entirety of the system. In fact the games concept of evolving seems not only to relate to the gamer but to the entire system of the game. With its emergent system, the game can adapt to the user and also to the combination of users, in essence constantly changing possibilities for game play. This also gives the player the ability to change the system in ways that the programmers may never have expected. It a game I look forward to playing but also hope in a way that it is not so engrossing that I end up spending all my time playing it.