It's not everyday that we get to speak with one of the game industry's true visionaries. IndustryGamers had the pleasure of chatting with Will Wright back during GDC week, which of course is before it was revealed that he's signed on with The Science Channel. Wright could not talk about much detail concerning what's going on at his studio, Stupid Fun Club, but we were able to pick his giant brain about the impact of The Sims franchise, the iPhone and iPad, Wii and upcoming motion controls like Natal, and much more. Our entire Q&A is below. Enjoy!
IndustryGamers: What can you say about what’s going on now at Stupid Fun Club? What’s the latest progress update that you’re allowed to talk about?
Will Wright: Well, I mean, I can say we’re working on several projects. It’s just that none of them have been announced. We’re working with external partners on these projects, and so in terms of us giving visibility into them, that’s something that we’d have to decide with our partners on a project by project basis, but some of these projects are covering a lot of different areas in the toy and game industry, including games, but not just games.
IG: Yeah, I remember, back in October, there was an interview you did, where you said that there were 3 projects and how one of them was definitely in the realm of toys and how a couple others were video game related or game related. Has that changed at all or can you give any an update on that?
WW: No, I mean, we’re still working on those projects, but again I can’t really talk about it.
IG: Well, generally speaking, one thing I find interesting is that you talk a little bit about blurring the lines between games and toys and sort of using the web as kind of a connective tissue, I guess sort of similar to what Jordan Weisman has been doing with his projects. Could you give me your take on how it is that the toy industry and the game industry will come together for you?
WW: Well, I think that a lot of the video game industry came in and took a big chunk of what used to be known as the toy market and kids are getting very comfortable with play experiences and virtual online environments, or even offline. But for kids, when it comes to play, they don’t make a big distinction between playing with a physical toy and playing with a virtual environment; and so I think the fact that these things want to blend and mix…in the same way that people are investing more and more time in their Facebook stuff and friends and profiles, but it intersects the real world and so they see a very smooth blending between the virtual and the real and they’re in some sense self supportive; they’re not exclusive of each other. I think a lot of parents only see their kids playing with video games, like “Oh, why don’t you play with your toys instead of playing with video games?” For them, they’re very different experiences. They put a wall up between them.
But you look at younger people, at adults having kids, and I think they grew up in an environment where the virtual…it was in bits instead of atoms but it was still very meaningful, and they had friends online and online communities and they had real communities and real friends and real experiences. So I think we have a generation growing up that doesn’t make a huge distinction between those two and I think it’s pretty natural that the play experiences that they consider, whether they’re toys or games, consist of a blending of the two. And I see games going the other way in a sense; I see games involving more and more of the real world.
IG: I know you've said before that you feel video games as a medium have been focused on the 12-year-old boy, and that in order to mature, the industry needs to do more for all sorts of people of all ages and in all genres. What sort of progress do you think the industry has made in that regard, getting away from targeting the 12-year-old boy?
WW: Well, I think it’s been tremendously successful in that way because I think you see things like the Wii bringing in a much wider group of people, social experiences, bringing in more women, etc. I believe the demographics of people that are consuming these experiences, the rise of the social games element as a platform, that in some sense that’s what seems like the major destruction happening in this industry right now, is the fact that our demographics and platforms are broadening so dramatically and so fast. It’s something we’ve talked about for years, but now it’s happening in kind of this asymptotic slope.
IG: Speaking of social games, when you look at Facebook and companies like Zynga and Playfish, that sector’s absolutely exploded in the last year. Do you see this as something that maybe is going to be very long lasting in terms of its impact or is it almost fad-like to you? What in your mind will the impact of these social networks and social gaming ultimately be on the game industry?
WW: I think it’s going to be an established area of games; I don’t think it’s going to take over the world. People were saying that about online games before that and they were saying that about portable games before that. There’s always, when a new platform or a new niche emerges, there’s explosive growth in that niche; it’s like this void that’s being filled very rapidly, where there was a vacuum. So right now we’re at the steep of that curve. If you extrapolate that out, it looks like “Oh, that’s gonna be the whole market in 5 years,” but of course the curve never stays that steep. It’s kind of like the ecosystems are in this gigantic disruptive phase. Whole new niches are opening and other ones are shrinking and so we’re seeing some very steep deltas in different directions right now. I get the sense that in a year from now we’ll start seeing these things plateau towards what their natural equilibrium is.
IG: Are you personally a fan of social games? Do you spend some of your free time in FarmVille or Mafia Wars or any of those things?
WW: No, just enough to get a sense of them, but it’s not a big time thing for me.
IG: I’d like you to reflect a little bit on the legacy of The Sims. EA recently celebrated the 10th anniversary and 125 million sold, and obviously none of this would’ve existed without your creating it. What is your thinking about how far The Sims has come as a franchise and as a business and its impact on the games industry?
WW: That’s an example of one of those vacuums that opens up and all of a sudden something comes in and fills that vacuum. That was a vacuum that people didn’t really realize existed and The Sims has done a really good job of coming in and filling that vacuum. What’s still remarkable to me is that there hasn’t really been a viable competitor for it. Usually when a genre opens up you get several competitors coming in to fill that genre, but in some sense The Sims is a game of its own genre, which for various reasons nobody’s really copied. It’s almost like if you look at where The Sims was seven years ago, I think that’s where social gaming is now. It’s like this big vacuum that’s opening and it’s gonna fill with a certain type of play experience, a certain type of demographic. We’re gonna fill that, but then we’re just gonna have another genre. In a sense, we’re getting a more diverse set of play game opportunities out there to the consumer, which is part of games really starting to come into their own and have more diversity, that’s kind of representative of other entertainment media. If you look at movies or books, there’s a pretty wide selection of kinds of movies, TV shows, etc. I don’t think the video game industry had that degree of diversity, thematically or demographically, but we’re very rapidly approaching that.
IG: But what are you personally most proud of or happiest about in terms of the overall Sims franchise and how it has really changed the industry and brought in tons of new gamers? Is there a certain thing about the game or the process or an achievement? What are you most proud of?
WW: For me, it's always about the community built up around The Sims. So The Sims for the most part is an offline experience, but yet it encourages creativity, and that drives people to socialize, and they go and build these websites and they make stuff and they share them and they tell stories with it and all that and I’m still just really amazed at just how large that community is and how much interaction it actually fosters even though it’s not really an online game. It basically builds a lot of communities out there in different areas that are based upon sharing creativity rather than, like, shooting each other.
