A wise colleague of mine pointed me to this video of Will Wright talking about his new game Spore to the TED conference (I was invited once, years ago when I was in Australia, but it was a lot of money at the time, on an academic salary with the exchange rate then…). It’s a fascinating talk, covering the game design but also the philosophy behind it.
Will Wright, in case you don’t know, is the genius behind Sim City and The Sims, two famous games. He’s revered among game designers because his games are complete leaps to a new game space, and successful. He has a talent for taking something he finds interesting, building a model (a simulation is just a model, a scenario is when you put it in an initial state and ask the player to take it to a goal state, and a game is when you tune that experience until it’s engaging), and then making the experience of manipulating the model into a game. In particular, one of the hallmarks of his work is his ability to tune it in unique and non-obvious ways (e.g. monsters coming in to smash your cities) to create a compelling and yet thought-provoking experience.
Here he talks about the game design, but couples it to important issues. How games are toys that can help us learn. It’s the final statement that resonates, about using this new game as a tool to foster long-term thinking. Really, that’s what I’m on about, using games as tools to develop new ways to think. And here’s a master. Enjoy, and reflect.
Clark,
With all the delays of Spore, it will be interesting to see what the final product looks like. The latest news is that it will be out for the holidays. Games can be a great tool to develop thinking skills, like problem solving and risk management.
Getting the acceptance from the mainstream business and educational establishments will be a great challenge. Games are criticized by people who do not play games and are just going on what they have heard about a game. For example the latest controversy about “Mass Effect”. An article from Wired.com (http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/01/mass-effect-mes.html) says that “No-one from Fox News played any of Mass Effect before reporting on it, and instead gathered their information about its sexual content by “watching it on the Internet.”
If the critics are basing their criticism on second or third hand information we are in for a long public relations battle to bring games into corporate and educational institutions in a meaningful way.
Richard
Learn2Day.com