Historical Figure
Will Wright
b. 1960
American video game designer and entrepreneur (born 1960)
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Biography
William Ralph Wright is an American video game designer and co-founder of the game development company Maxis, which later became part of Electronic Arts. In April 2009, he left EA to run Stupid Fun Club Camp, an entertainment think tank in which Wright and EA are principal shareholders.
In Their Own Words (3)
Somebody asked me what I thought next generation meant and what about the PlayStation 3 was next generation. The only next gen system I've seen is the Wii - the PS3 and the Xbox 360 feel like better versions of the last, but pretty much the same game with incremental improvement.
In a movie, one can always pull back and condemn the character or the artist when they cross certain social boundaries. But in playing a game, we choose what happens to the characters. In the right circumstances, we can be encouraged to examine our own values by seeing how we behave within virtual space.
It almost feels like a zombie at this point; it's the walking dead. It's such an abrupt end to what was E3, which had been this huge escalating arms race....Right now we're in this kind of dicey, do we have an event, what event is it, which one do we go to? I think we're in an uncomfortable transition zone when really the real E3 died a couple of years ago."''
Timeline
The story of Will Wright, told in moments.
Released SimCity after years of rejection from publishers. No one believed players would enjoy a game with no way to win. Co-founded Maxis with Jeff Braun to publish it themselves. It sold millions.
Released The Sims. A game about managing virtual people doing laundry, cooking dinner, going to work. It became the best-selling PC game of all time. The franchise eventually sold over 200 million copies.
Released Spore, a game simulating the evolution of life from single-celled organism to interstellar civilization. Sold 406,000 copies in three weeks. Reviews were mixed. Wright left EA the following year.
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