The other day I had the privilege of listening to Will Wright give a talk on Spore - the game, the thought process that went into it, and the history of gaming that evolved into creating a game like this. It’s hard to capture everything he said within that hour into this short little blog, so I won’t even try. But I will say that he is one of the most creative geniuses that I’ve seen. From Sim City to the Sims to Sims 2 and Spore, he’s one of those people who can not only reach out to the hard core gamers, but also the casual or even non-gamers.

He started the talk by demonstrating how throughout time, people have liked to create and invent things - for example, the industrial revolution. And even though these “creative” things eventually became part of the everyday world, people continued to want to personalize and customize these things - from suped up cars, modded computers, to your own personal sense of clothing style. He also said that people create a lot of “crap” (in a nice way) and that there’s not enough “great” stuff out there and what they’re trying to do is allow a way for people to make more “great” stuff, feel good about it, and in a sense, build this esteem that they too can create fabulous things and make other people ooh and ahh over them. One idea that really stuck with me was that he wants gamers to not just want to be the Luke Skywalkers or Frodo Baggins, but he wants them to be the George Lucas or J.R.R. Tolkiens and have that kind of power to create something amazing. Enter Spore. Built with an extremely open ended editing tool (for creatures, vehicles, plants, buildings, and more) and the ability to then take these things you created into different environments and worlds, Spore takes you from the past to the future all in giant scalable game.

This is the second time I’ve seen the game demo in person and I’m still amazed at it. In the past, I’ve never really any game developers or designers who I’ve admired, but now I can say that I’m adding Will Wright to my list. And did I mention that he plays the DS? Another brownie point right there. I know there’s a lot of hype and anticipation for this game, but I really believe that it will live up to all of that. I can’t wait!