Web 2.0 Expo Preview: Will Wright, Sims and Simulations If you head on over to O’Reilly Radar, you will see that editor Kurt Cagle caught up with Will Wright for a short interview. Kurt Cagle: What impact do you think Sims 3 will have? Will Wright: It’s hard to say. You know, the Sims I think for a lot of players that are really into it, it’s more of a hobby than it is a game. They sit there and it’s kind of a creative endeavor. Some of the players go off in different directions and some are very much into the architecture and they’ve done really cool houses and share them with other people. Other ones like young characters or putting their friends and family in and kind of replaying their life in a weird surreal dimension. A lot of the players just kind of play it for several weeks and then put it aside. They’ll buy an expansion pack. Pull it off the shelf. Play it again for a few more weeks. Put it aside. But they’ll actually kind of end up playing it ongoing over several years. And I think the Sims 3 is kind of reflecting this universe that it’s familiar to players that have bought the Sims 1 and maybe Sims 2 and maybe a few of the expansion packs. And with Sims 3, every generation of Sims we’re kind of trying to bring the walls further out so they have more possible experiences in the game. Because really, a game like the Sims is all about the player-driven story. The player’s the storyteller. We’re giving them a system where they can put anybody into it they want. They can put up all of these different situations and play out their own soap opera or drama or whatever. And we find what several of the players do with it, in certain areas where they’re trying to pick their stories, but they hit a brick wall or the simulation doesn’t support this in whatever dimension. Maybe the behavior of the Sims or something about the environment. So the Sims 3 is trying to make that storytelling more seamless because we’ve found these players in a sense too were spending a lot more time having their Sims roam across the entire environment, you know, going to visit their neighbors. Going downtown. Doing this. Getting a job. Going to school. And so with Sims 3, it makes that environment much more seamless really and a smoother storytelling experience. Web 2.0 Expo Preview: Will Wright, Sims and Simulations
