Will Wright

[sstyrnol 21]

Originally posted by: mimolay

I totally agree with you Jasoncw.  Take for example on the actual SimCity 4 website.  The site has not really been updated ever since 2004 or 2005.  The only thing that was updated this year on that site was the copyright.  I love SC4, don't get me wrong and it's my favorite game, but the only places that keep SimCity 4 and in fact the whole frachise alive is Simtropolis, SC4 Devotion, and other 3rd party websites.  I think that it's a shame that EA and Maxis have just turned everything to profit rather than actual gameplay.  These gaming corporations know that when you break the Security seal on the case of your game, you can't even return it, unless if you sell it on Ebay.

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This kind of reminds me of MS Train Simulator. It is a 2001 vintage game with an aged DX7 graphics engine, but it has still a solid - if slowly shrinking - following. Some dedicated artist have been able to churn out incredible assets for that game, some where I think were not considerable right in the beginning.

The game has survived two failed successors and one EA debacle. The same with SC4! It has incredible depth, people are still expanding the game and I think it still is the best city building game around!

However I doubt there will ever be a worthy successor: With the current design philosophy of the gaming industry and their perception of todays gaming community attention span, they will only do more "shallow" games!

But just THINK, what kind of SC game could be done with todays computing power and graphics engines!!! But then again, it would rapidly become "too complex" for the core target group of teenagers and thus only attract a small group and thus would not generate the returns expected by the major game companies...

[The_Dalai_Llama 15]

Will Wright speaks yet again, this time to Gamespot.  Interesting little interview.

Fun fact... he knows way too much about Care Bears.

[jkais1j 10]

SCS was a game developed because there was a general thought that SC4 was "too hard." What they then did was turn their backs on their loyal fan base and create a disgrace to its namesake. What needs to be done to appeal to the "easy does it population" as well as the "define too hard" population, is something that has already been in place....easy, medium, hard. Except this time move beyond money levels to more depth. Example: it is was hard/challenging/fun to micromanage all the budget aspects of SC4 and make good money. In a new SC5 type game make the more difficult levels have the micromanagement style of game play while in easier levels have this taken care of automacally. BOOM you have the fun of a city game without the budget mess that may make it "hard" and at the same time you have restored faith in a great fanbase with a new true Simcity. Plus a new game would need tons of new cool stuff mention in other threads...

[GlobexCo 33]

"This is the 42-year-old Wright's other project, an unbridled creative collective called the Stupid Fun Club, which occupies a 3,800-square-foot warehouse along the Amtrak train tracks in Berkeley. The club, which is funded entirely by Wright and has two full-time employees and a small army of part-timers, falls somewhere between a think tank and an incubator for wildly innovative TV ideas. The concepts are eccentric, genre-busting--and all focused on Wright's first love: robots. And if the reactions of TV execs are any indication, the Stupid Fun Club could be the vehicle that finally takes Will Wright, the Cecil B. DeMille of the videogame world, to Hollywood."

No more Will Wright in PC, we'll see him as an actor....

"On a recent afternoon, club members copied a version of the robot's brain onto a laptop, and then set up a conversation between the robot and its downloaded self. The resulting jumble of miscommunication got Wright thinking... and several pages of diagrams later, he had concocted a new project, called Chatbots. The idea is to develop a cheap text-to-speech and voice-synthesis platform, then integrate it into every toy doll, from "Simpsons" figurines to Powerpuff Girls to Muppets. When placed in close proximity, the toys would talk to each other. "I'm thinking of this as 'Toy Story' come to life," Wright says."

or like a doll!

"Hey, it sounds weird, but so did The Sims 10 years ago. And now Will Wright's alternate reality is conquering the world."

No

[MattShizzle 11]

Great idea to have a more diverse way of setting difficulty - like one for money (instead of just what you start with there could be lower or even no "maintenance costs" at easier levels) one for development difficulty, etc. Also, get rid of the advisors! Didn't EA get rid of the Maxis name anyway? Not sure when they bought the company but Maxis wasn't owned by EA when the original SimCity came out.

[Grover_G 3]

Originally posted by: MattShizzle

Not sure when they bought the company but Maxis wasn't owned by EA when the original SimCity came out.

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EA acquired Maxis in 1997/98, before SimCity 3000, I reckon. But Maxis was in trouble back in the late-1990s. Management was a mess and they were releasing too many mediocre titles. And to think, before EA gobbled up Maxis, the folks at Maxis wanted SimCity 3000 to be fully 3D when PCs were just crawling out of the realms of 2D graphics. If EA didn't go ahead purchasing Maxis, we wouldn't have enjoyed The Sims and SimCity 4 the same way we do now.

EA during the 1990s was still alright, before it started thinking dollars and less sense. During the early 2000s alone, problems started to sprout when EA dissolved Westwood and Bullfrog, fouled up the Need for Speed series with that Underground crap, and pushed aside the SimCity series in favour of The Sims.

How things change.