Jake Fruia
Will Wright is known to many as a game designer and creator of such games as ‘The Sims, ‘SimCity’, and Spore to name just a few. However, as we learned at the Transvergence Summit, Wright is also a leading member of the transmedia movement, and has a pretty diverse history when it comes to entertainment. He has also created a number of companies, most recently Syntertainment, which “lives at the intersection of entertainment and reality” and is “dedicated to changing the world through uniquely fun and lasting user experiences”.
After an awesome keynote presentation, Wright was willing to give us a few more minutes of his time to talk about a number of things. One of the most interesting was his views on education and gaming, and how they should intersect. He also talks more about his innovative and interactive television series, Bar Karma, and non traditional storytelling. Other topics include crowd source content creation and the nature and future of interactivity, in games and in general. It all comes together to become a really great interview with one of the greatest minds today.
You can find our full interview at Provideocoalition.com. You can also find out more about Will Wright’s Syntertainment at www.syntertainment.com
Here’s a snip from Clint Milby’s ProvideoCoalition article:
The Transvergence Summit, was a true meeting of the brightest and most innovative minds in new media. It was also an opportunity to witness one of the best, (and fastest!) power point presentations I’ve ever seen by Mr. Will Wright.
If you’re not familiar, Will Wright is probably best known as the creator of “SimCity” and “The Sims” the best selling PC game of all time. Wright was also the co-founder of the game development company Maxis, now part of Electronic Arts (EA). In April 2009, he left EA to run “Stupid Fun Club”, an entertainment think tank in which Wright and EA are principal shareholders. His first success as a game developer was actually “Raid on Bungeling Bay” for the Commodore 64 game system in 1984.
Since that time, he has gone on to produce an interactive television series, “Bar Karma” which was the first online, community-developed, network television series. Essentially, online users pitch their own ideas for scenes using a tool designed by Wright called the Storymaker. Some ideas were eventually chosen by the production staff and utilized to help create new episodes.
*Interview shot with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera
