IG: You've accomplished a ton in the game industry already. Have you ever had any thoughts about retirement creeping into your head? Did that perhaps factor into your move away from EA, needing to branch into other things?
WW: As a designer I was definitely very interested in branching into other things for the creative challenge, but in terms of retirement, I can't imagine anything more boring than being retired. [laughs] So that thought hasn't crossed my mind, no.
IG: Working with games like Sims and Spore, AI is obviously a very important part of the design, but AI in general seems to perhaps lag behind others areas in gaming (graphics, sound, etc.). What kind of advancement do you think we'll see when it comes to AI in video games?
WW: Well AI is a funny term because it means so many different things to different people. For some people it's route planning, for some people it's conversational ability, for others it's strategic goal planning. AI is really just a bunch of tricks... One thing I think we've found in general, especially with the net and things like Google, is that computers are much, much better at kind of collecting and distilling human intelligence than they are at fundamentally recreating it. If you think about Google's search results, that's what they are – a distillation of thousands of people's decisions of what pages they've decided to link to. But it gives this impression of this search engine that's very smart at figuring out places you might find useful.
And in Spore it's almost a distillation of human creativity. Spore as a program is not creative at all, but it does a very good job of distilling the creativity of millions of individuals and presenting them back to you. I think you can get a lot more traction using that approach, and I think reversing that we're also starting to look at how we can analyze human metrics inside of a game or any kind of computer experience, and then change that experience to customize it to that person. Using the intelligence of other people is kind of the base data set for that. So I think we're going to see a lot more progress in what we think of as AI from that approach. For the future, there are still people out there fundamentally trying to recreate human intelligence... but they're still on this very slow, linear slope, whereas the other approach is really taking off exponentially.
IG: Regarding Stupid Fun Club's investors, we know EA is a partner with you, but is there another investor in this?
WW: The only other investor is the partner I started Stupid Fun Club with, Mike Winter. He's kind of a minority shareholder as well.
IG: Obviously you're front and center with Stupid Fun Club, but what kind of recognition will the other team members receive?
WW: I think as things develop, they're going to be each championing their own projects., bringing them out into the world. One of the guys is Marc Thorpe who's actually the guy who started Robot Wars, which is how Mike [Winter] and I met. He used to work as a model maker for Industrial Light and Magic; so it's people like him who I've known for many years that inherently have done a lot of cross-media design who are involved in this.
IG: When the news first broke that you left EA, a number of analysts and industry pundits categorized it as a big negative for EA, especially since they just had a down year fiscally. Do you feel this is going to hurt EA?
WW: I don't think so. I think actually with what I'm expecting to come out of the club and the success I'm aiming for... EA is a financial participant in that, not just on the games that come out but as an investor. I think overall – and I know most people don't see it this way – EA is going to earn a lot more from me as I branch out into these other formats and they're a participant in that than if I just stayed in the game box.
IG: The iPhone has taken the game industry by storm. Have you personally thought about creating some games for iPhone? Is that something that appeals to you or you're more focused on these other projects at Stupid Fun Club?
WW: I actually find the iPhone very intriguing. Not just the iPhone in particular, but that it's representative of the first generation of smartphones. When you look at all the competitors, they're scrambling to catch up with Apple. By the next generation, these things are going to be very widely distributed. That very much excites me, that next generation and even this current generation of smartphones and what that means for gaming... how you integrate these mobile devices and that experience with larger entertainment experiences. I think [smartphones] will be one of the major legs upon which we build new things going forward, but they're helping support experiences on other platforms as well – they're not just standalone little “lite” games.
IG: A lot of people think iPhone is hurting the portable market for Sony and Nintendo, taking away DS or PSP sales. Do you think that's the case?
WW: I personally spend as much time playing games on my DS as I do on my iPhone, and they're very different platforms. And especially with the demographics of it, most people aren't going to give an iPhone to their 8-year-old to play, and it's not nearly as rugged as the DS. But I'm kind of platform agnostic in that sense. I don't really care who makes the platform or where it comes from, but just knowing what the capabilities of these mobile platforms are for me as a designer, I can now count on that going forward as one of the foundations of the entertainment experience. It might be the next generation DS or iPhone, I don't really care.
IG: So as a designer, what do you think about what the DSi offers?
WW: I've not spent much time with the DSi yet, but I have to say that Nintendo continually impresses me, even when they have weird ideas. When I first saw the DS, I remember thinking, “Oh what a horrible idea. Who's going to want that? A clunky machine with two screens.” Then over time I started playing with it and there was some really cool, innovative software coming out, and it just became one of my favorite platforms. I'd say the Nintendo people are probably smarter than I am because whenever they come out with something that looks like a bad idea to me, it ends up being a great idea. So I'm not going to say anything about the DSi. [laughs]
IG: Will, thanks very much for your time. It was a pleasure chatting with you.
