Will Wright on Game Design

Torill writes "Celia Pearce interviews Will Wright in the article "Sims, Battle Bots, Cellular Automata Gods and Go", in Game Studies, volume 2. Wright talks about the philosophy behind his games, one of which is The Sims: 'What are you trying to do with this thing that you're creating? To really put the player in the design role. And the actual world is reactive to their design.'"

Interactive non-interactivity

[jukal]

We once designed a somewhat "smart" software controlled character for Ultima Online. The idea was that it would be thought the basic available possibilites: what you can do, and how. And then give it a goal and see if it achieves it and if it learns anything new.

Well, this was one of the things that was never done. Anyway, it would be really nice to see a MMORPG in which it would be allowed to create your own software controlled androids - and see how they survive and mix with real -human controlled -players. Not just "bots" that complete simple routines, but something that tries to learn, evolve and survive in that world.

Is anything like this happening already?

Re:The only good...

[Peyna]

It's been that way for a long time, some games are great when you've got a good group of friends to play them with (FPS), and other games are great when you want to play alone (simulation). FPS games are less fun in single player or even LAN vs Online, whereas who wants to watch someone else play The Sims for 3 hours?

Re:Interactive non-interactivity

[AAAWalrus]

)Is anything like this happening already?

Actually, here's a page that has (or had at one time) several links [virtualave.net] to AI contests a-la "bots". "Robocode" is probably the most well known. For Microsofties (not many around here, I know) they have a peer-to-peer persistent world of organism-bots called "Terrarium". I prefer "Robocode" because it's easy to get a bot up and running, quick to see the results of a contest, and potentially deep if you start getting into cached events and stuff like that. Alas, I digress offtopic.

The interview was really good, but really thick. In my opinion, someone who puts that much thought and analysis into games seems to take some of the fun out actually playing the game. As for my behvaior during games, if a game is fun, I typically play it lots. If something isn't fun, I leave it alone. And that's I'll I care to analyze about my game-playing behavior. *grin*

-AAAWalrus

why they ever don't get it right about game design

[bashee]

What are you trying to do with this thing that you're creating? To really put the player in the design role. And the actual world is reactive to their design.

Real good game design means _exactly_ not to put the player in the design role. That's whats just all the computer stuff for everyday work is all about.

Good game design lets you slip in a role of an actor, not a designer, thats what all the arcade stuff was all about. Gaming is adrenaline (defender, robotron) not administration(warcraft, sim xx) and should be not to time-consuming indeed.

Also i don't want to have a copy of the real life, i want computer games with unique styles and independent rules (role playing games in an middle ages style are not meant here;)).

And by the way: the disrespect of the pure gameplay aspect leads to an ignorant attitude against the need to rock-solid framerates, as you can see in nearly all pc-ego-shooters.

Am i really the only one with this opinion?

Re:read the article??

[hexxx]

I read it and it was one of the most interesting articles seen on Slashdot for a long time.

Re:why they ever don't get it right about game des

[mborland]

Good game design lets you slip in a role of an actor, not a designer, thats what all the arcade stuff was all about. [...] Am i really the only one with this opinion?

Lots of people share your opinion, that's OK--we all play differently. ;-) For example, I enjoy the kinds of games he's talking about. There's something voyeuristic and interesting about playing a game -similar- to reality, but not quite. I was constantly making up games as a kid. Card games that played like strategy board games, acted-out games, computer games that vaguely operated like arcade games...and what was fun was that given a very loose rule set, you eventually created a good game, with rules of your own creation. Typical toy soldiers scenario--take a hundred green plastic men, an unkempt bedroom, and anything can happen! One group defects. There are spies. A dog suddenly kills off a dozen of your country's best. This is great fun (for me)!

Strategy games, and also games like the Sims, are a foggy mirror on reality, and although there are sometimes 'better' ways to play each game, the rules are not limited to those in the book/code. For example, say in Civ I have a really successful Swordsman, who has had numerous victories under his belt, but now is becoming outdated. Instead of upgrading/scrapping him, I will usually send him to either the capital city, or the city last conquered, and station him there for eternity as a reminder of their courage. This action -definitely- doesn't affect the gameplay much, but it means the world to my gaming experience. With something like the Sims, the experience (like life) is composed almost entirely of those kinds of experiences alone. 'Oh, that's the guy who peed in my kitchen...ew.' 'I tried hitting on her once...didn't work.' These are experiences, which for me are a little more memorable than, for example, 'how damn high my resolution was.' Note that I enjoy FPS' as well, and you can build the same sorts of experiences playing those...I just meant to speak to the notion that open-ended games are interesting, at least to some.

Re:Different strokes for different folks . . .

[Lemmy Caution]

Gaming is growing up, fitfully and slowly. There are those of us who believe that was is now called gaming will become the definitive media of the 21st century, the way that film and television were the definitive media for the first and second half of the 20th. For this to happen, the media will have a number of explosions past its existing boundaries and expectations. Did you know that film got its start as an amusement park curiosity and as an arcade amusement? If you began with the early history of film - Lumiere, Melies - you would have had virtually no way of predicting it would become a social institution in which hundreds of people sat together in dark rooms watching 2 hour long narratives.

he's right about Go

[GoNINzo]

I like playing Go, and i think he's dead on about when people ask how you're doing. Unless you are playing in the game, it's very hard to see who's going to win till mid-game. In fact, you need to sit down and watch a bit before you can make that determination as well. I just wish the Yahoo games version of Go wasn't so badly done with scoring. `8r/ The idea of 'taking pieces' is what most americans assume, and so it makes for very poor games. `8r/