IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 30
r
p
e
S o
engineering
How will wrigHt, creator of The SimS, gave life to
His evolutionary-and revolutionary-new game
I
t's time to make a creature. Let's
start with its body. Stretch down a pair of
legs and pull out two arms so that it looks
long and lean. On one end of the body, pop
on intelligent eyes behind large round
glasses. Add a mop of peppery hair and a
prominent nose and ears. Sprinkle on scruffy
semibeard growth. Call it Will Wright.
Now put the creature in its habitat: the
workspace of a computer game developer in
Emeryville, Calif. Spread the studios of Maxis
Software, which Wright cofounded in 1987,
over the floors of two nondescript office buildings. Sprinkle the interior with dirt-encrusted
mountain bikes leaning against cubicle walls
and overgrown, pumpkin-orange beanbag
chairs. Now surround Wright with others
of his kind, hunched behind desks, typing at
keyboards, PC monitors glowing.
The software engineers, artists, and others who work at Maxis, now owned by videogame giant Electronic Arts, have migrated
here because Wright is a legend. Over the
past two decades, the 48-year-old Wright,
who studied architecture and mechanical
engineering at Louisiana Tech University,
36
NA * iEEE SpEctrum * SEptEmbEr 2008
has utterly transformed his industry with
hits like SimCity, in which players build
virtual towns, and the best-selling computer game franchise of all time, The Sims, in
which players create virtual people and then
watch them interact. In the process, Wright
has helped forge a new, more toylike frontier
in computer gaming, where the main goal is
not so much to score points or kill bad guys
but to create cool stuff.
The game they're working on this
bright February day is called Spore, and
it's the most ridiculously ambitious simulation game yet. Sure, there've been virtual worlds like Second Life, which let you
customize your characters. In games like
Fable and Black & White, the characters
even evolve in appearance and reputation
based on how the player defines them: the
more evil your beast, for example, the more
feared it becomes. LittleBigPlanet, an upcoming game from Media Molecule for Sony's
PlayStation 3 game console, is built around
player-made terrains and characters. But
Wright's Spore is by far the boldest in terms
of unleashing players' creativity. In Spore
www.spectrum.ieee.org
PhoTo-illuSTraTion: Sean mccabe; original PhoTo: ryan anSon/aFP/geTTy imageS
By david Kushner
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum September, 2008
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - Cover1
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - Cover2
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 1
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 2
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 3
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 4
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 5
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 6
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 7
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 8
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 9
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 10
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 11
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 12
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 13
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 14
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 15
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 16
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 17
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 18
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 19
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 20
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 21
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 22
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 23
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 24
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 25
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 26
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 27
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 28
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 29
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 30
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 31
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 32
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 33
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 34
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 35
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 36
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 37
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 38
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 39
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 40
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 41
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 42
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 43
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 44
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 45
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 46
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 47
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 48
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - Cover3
IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - Cover4
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