As you know, we sometimes like to cut the wires and take things Off the Grid, which can lead to bouts of surfing through websites like BoardGameGeek until 5 in the morning ... allegedly ...
However, all of that browsing paid off in spades when we stumbled across Quirks, a board game from the magical year of 1980. Looks a bit familiar, doesn't it? We wonder if Will Wright ever sat down with this back in the day. He would have been around 20 years old when it came out, and he's admittedly a huge fan of board and strategy games, so you do the math. Find out more about genetic manipulation in the 80s after the break (spoiler: it wasn't all big hair, bangle bracelets, and friendship pins).
Is it any wonder that Spore keeps getting pushed back further and further when creator Will Wright is doing things like taking his sweet time to make a cameo appearance in The Simpsons Game? Good lord, man. Every waking minute you have should be spent poring over Spore. In fact, now that we think about it, do you really even need to sleep? At this point it is probably assured that Will has rigged up some machine that eliminates his need for sleep cycles altogether. Probably whipped it up during downtime while developing The Sims.
Check out Game Head's latest video above, which includes the fabled Will Wright appearance. He's sandwiched between Call of Duty 4 tidbits, but it's a small price to pay for his lines alone. Plus they make his little mustache look evil as well. Now, get back to work.
Video of Will Wright's TEDSpore presentation from March has recently appeared online. Wright expands on prior Spore demos, giving an overview of the game and explaining parts of his design process.
The information-packed 17-minute video keeps us interested in the total life simulation -- from origins to galactic colonization -- but reconfirms how wildly ambitious the project has been. We've been trying to play over/under on the projected ship date window of April, 2008 and March, 2009, but nobody wants "under." But whenever Spore finally arrives, we hope Wright and the other designers can deliver on the unique concept.
The last we heard from Will Wright's ambitious Spore, it was conspicuously absent from Electronic Arts' fiscal year 2008 plans, which put the release sometime past March 2008. The latest issue of Game Informer (via CVG), which seems to have a wealthof exclusivenews lately, has also mentioned that the game has been pushed back into fiscal year 2009, which starts April 2009 2008. [update:fixed a 365-day typo]
We aren't sure if the magazine writers are using the same EA fiscal report or if they have different contacts, but the wording implies this is confirmation that the Sim Everything title will be a ways off. We already knew that, but we hate hearing it again.
While SimCity DS was already released for -- having been developed by -- Japanese gamers, the simulation hasn't gotten much coverage for is upcoming American release. At a recent EA event, it was apparent that the title should get the recognition it deserves soon enough, with its June release.
Based approximately on SimCity 3000, SimCity DS seemed about as complicated as the most recent versions of the title. While the graphics represent a throwback to earlier SimCity games, the core gameplay is current. The title looks like it'll be a great match for portable simulation fans because of the touchscreen interface.
It's worth noting that Spore isn't in the 2008 fiscal year plans for EA. This means that Spore is not expected to release until, at a minimum, April of 2008. Observant readers probably saw this coming when last month Soren Johnson, lead designer for Civ IV, joined the Spore development team, meaning that there's probably still a little way to go. We'll just make the pain of this post come to a abrupt end by saying that Spore has been in development since 2000 and only prescient aliens evolving on some other planet know when it'll actually release.
We're live in Austin, front and center for the Will Wright keynote speech, where the attendees seem a lot more excited for this one than they did for the Dan Rather speech yesterday. I guess that might change if Dan Rather was actually working on a groundbreaking new game that has almost as much buzz around it as the Apple iPhone.
Will Wright is wandering around visiting with peeps, and he his arm in a sling for some reason. As we find out, we'll let you know. Maybe he's been spending too much time Spore-ing.
1:56pm: They've started playing celestial new-agey Yanni-type music and showing slides of the solar system. Maybe Will Wright has decided to become the new Carl Sagan. Now the music sounds like a twangy version of the Firefly theme song. Browncoats, FTW! The slides keep pulling farther back and showing beelyuns and beelyuns of galaxies and stars.
2:06pm: Will Wright is sitting right in front of us and talking with a Tucker Carlson lookalike, complete with floppy hair and bow-tie. Wright is wearing a sort of muscle-shirt combo with the sling. It's very steampunk and aggro. We snuck a look at his XPS laptop on the stage .... no screensaver.
What is a magic crayon? If you're envisioning Harold and his purple outlet of creativity, you wouldn't be far off from the intended metaphor. Chaim Gingold, design lead for Spore's editors and cell game, described the magic crayon as a toy that is simple to use and yet gives the user enough power to create something they'll appreciate.
Gingold kicked off his presentation, one of the last after a marathon of lectures and roundtables at this year's Game Developers Conference, by defining a magic crayon through example. Photoshop is not a good magic crayon, for example, because it is very hard for most people to use. Neither is Super Mario Bros., since you are not changing anything in the world. Kid Pix fits the schema for a magic crayon, as does the Mii creator, which is an "absolutely beautiful, wonderful magic crayon," he said.
In a massive eight page interview, game industry legend Will Wright talks about everything from the sociology of online gaming, his aspirations growing up and perhaps most importantly, his upcoming title, Spore.
While the whole interview demands a read from those interested in anything Wright related, combing through it reveals a few tidbits regarding the looming project.
Wright is still aiming for a Fall, 2007 release and while he doesn't go into the specifics of other consoles (Spore is, after all, a PC title), he does mention how the game is agnostic enough to go from the PC, to the Wii and even a cell phone. While it's nothing terribly new to us, he does go more in-depth as to the argument for each platform.
The majority of the article revolves around Spore and the incredibly complex nature of its design. So grab a drink, relax and wrap your head around one of this year's biggest titles.
Given the conference's acronym, it only seems fit that Will Wright's ambitious Spore have a presentation at this year's Design, Innovate, Create and Entertain (D.I.C.E.) Summit. However, in an atypical move for the Sims mastermind, Wright asked four members of his development team to do most of the talking.
Ocean Quigley, Chaim Gingold, Jenna Chalmers and Alex Hutchinson discussed their roles in the development cycle and explained the hardship of trying to make the game not only work, but work efficiently and with as simple amount of input possible from the player:
Quigley focused on the challenges of letting players create their own species and objects while avoiding any potential problems associated with said freedom.
Gingold discussed making object editors simple and powerful, expressing his mantra that "if [the game testers] don't notice that it sucks, then it must be good."
Chalmers' presentation outlined all their ideas for the space travel missions, and how she hopes the final game will be able to create new, entertaining missions on the fly. Though she noted that many ideas will not make it to publication, one mission that gave us a chuckle was having to drop a T. Rex onto an unsuspecting planet.
Hutchinson's speech covered his role as the overall gameplay designer, and lauds Spore for its ability to splice genres.
Wright's example of "an interstellar war between the Care Bears and the Klingons" keeps us intrigued on the title, so long in development already. However, even though Wright has a great track record with delivering on promised goods, we can't help but worry Spore won't live up to the enormous hype that follows it around. We'll find out later this year when Spore spawns on the PC and, eventually, every platform known to the human race.
That's Brian Eno, mind you, not Japanese musician and bonkers Enemy Zero designer, Kenji Eno. For those still scratching their noggins for reasons other than unexpected flea infestation, Brian Eno is recognized for his unusual, sometimes "unclassifiable" ambient music. The artist, professor and thinker (it says here on his website) has confirmed his invovement with upcoming everything sim, Spore.
In a very interesting WMMNA article detailing one of Eno's recent lectures, it is noted that Will Wright and co. "wanted sound that is just as procedural as the game itself," preferring to avoid any looping tunes that change with each level. Eno is already working on a program called "The Shuffer," which will use sampled bits and pieces to craft Spore's soundtrack, without ever creating "the same composition twice within a lifetime."
Meanwhile, in an alternate universe, Kenji Eno actually does get the job -- too bad the other Spore is a survival-horror game set in an underwater laboratory.
Here at Joystiq we don't always pay proper attention to PC gaming. Luckily FiringSquad has picked up the slack. The site has issued its 'Most Anticipated' games of the year list, featuring twenty upcoming titles. Here's a look at the top five:
Supreme Commander (Gas Powered Games/THQ) - spiritual successor to Total Annihilation; sci-fi RTS with dual-monitor support
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars(Splash Damage/id Software/Activision) - prequel to Quake 2; two playable sides (Human and Strogg) are said to offer vastly different gameplay experiences
World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade (Blizzard) - the expansion to end all expansions ('cha-ching')
Spore (Maxis/EA) - from single-celled to universe conqueror; the video game to end all video games
Crysis (Crytek/EA) - it has the looks, can it live up to the hype?
Which games are you planning to upgrade your rig for?
Legendary game designer Will Wright visited The Colbert Report last night. Surrounded by a nativity scene and lacking his standard comfort mustache, Wright and Stephen Colbert philosophized on why anyone would want to, as Colbert put it, "go into another world to live a life that is just as mundane."
About four minutes into the interview, the discussion transitions into Spore, which Wright describes as a "spreadsheet for God." This brings up a debate on Evolution versus Intelligent Design, which should not come as a surprise for anyone familiar with the show. Wright notes that it is a hybrid between the two theories, though "the designers aren't necessarily that intelligent." The evolution aspect, Wright explains, comes with the online world where your creations are pitted against everyone else's -- it's like "competing gods on the playing field of the world," they conclude.
Watch near the end where Wright almost gets Colbert to break character by "confessing" he is almost fluent in Sim-lish, the language of The Sims.
Newsweek's N'Gai Croal, who described the designer as polymathic (that means he's edumucated), followed Wright to the set to get some behind-the-scenes perspective of the interview and reveals some insight into Wright's gaming habits, like that he doesn't like MMOs because of the "rote treadmill" of leveling characters.
Spore, according to Wright, is on track for a release the second half of 2007 and is currently in Pre-Alpha Five phase, which means five months until alpha phase, which means there are some lucky EA employees playing the full version of Spore right now. The full Colbert Report interview is embedded after the break.
It's doubtful that when Will Wright birthed SimCity he imagined the game one day playable in the palm of the hand, using a cell phone keypad. Nevertheless, EA Mobile Games has made it happen.
For $1.99, SimCity will surely attract some impulse buys, but perhaps its legacy -- as the starting block for the Sim phenomenon -- is best kept with fond memories; or at least, a better suited platform. As with Geometry Wars, we just can't imagine that mobile SimCity is any good.
Will Wright is the ultimate spokesperson for gaming. The same way Bill Gates made being a nerd not only acceptable, but desirable, Wright embodies everything that can be great about video games. Writers find in him a sort of mad scientist, with an impish grin and a clever streak running through him a mile long (he's done the calculations to determine how many stars have received radio broadcasts of The Dukes of Hazzard). He's the "god of God games," an innovator, a risk-taker, a rainmaker. He's a "genius," with the backstory and the charisma to make it palatable to the masses. And that's who his story is being told to.
Rarely do we see the sort of long thoughtful hagiography in the enthusiast press that we often find about Wright in the mainstream press. A recent New York Times Magazinepiece revered him as "the most famous and most critically acclaimed designer in the young medium's history." This week's The New Yorker dedicates an incredible 10,000 words to the "game master," covering everything from the history of Electronic Arts to panspermia to his affinity for dueling robots (seriously) to the negative impressions of video games that Wright himself, as a personality, does so much to disassemble. How much can you really criticize a game whose primary influence is the convergence of Drake's equation and The Powers of Ten?
And that's why every time Wright is put on a pedestal -- as a creator, as an artist, and as a genius -- it advances the acceptance and appreciation of video games far more rapidly than the industry's ballooning profits ever have.
Video of Will Wright's 
While SimCity DS was already released for -- having been developed by -- Japanese gamers, the simulation hasn't gotten much coverage for is upcoming American release. At a recent EA event, it was apparent that the title should get the recognition it deserves soon enough, with its June release.
What is a magic crayon? If you're envisioning Harold and his purple outlet of creativity, you wouldn't be far off from the intended metaphor. Chaim Gingold, design lead for Spore's editors and cell game, described the magic crayon as a toy that is simple to use and yet gives the user enough power to create something they'll appreciate.
That's Brian Eno, mind you, not Japanese musician and bonkers Enemy Zero designer, 
