The New Yorker has a very in-depth article on Will Wright and the game industry as a whole. It’s written for people who don’t know much about the history or state of the industry. I found it fascinating.

I have seen the future and it belongs to Will Wright (Spore video. From last year’s GDC, I think.). I know everyone’s been saying this for a year now, but Spore looks like the game to end all games. I read a lot about procedural generation, emergent behavior, and user-created content, but it didn’t really click until I watched that presentation. Seriously, next time you have thirty-five minutes to kill and you want to see something really impressive, take a look at that video.

Looking back in ten or twenty years Will Wright is going to be remembered as the most important figure in the nascent field of interactive entertainment. The Orson Welles of games. He recently gave a talk at Georgia Tech about… well… everything. The state of the industry, where it’s headed, relationships with other fields, Japanese Zen Gardens, etc. You can read Raph Koster’s notes on the talk at his blog.

A couple of quotes:

“When picturing game devleoper job roles, we think of artists, programmers, designers, producers. But he’s seeing more value in programmers with design skills, artists with programming skills (particularly for procedural art), and designers doing more programming, which a lot to do with prototyping. Designers need to be fluent in process. That’s our medium. Also producers more fluent in design, understanding iteration and process, which helps them manage better. Basically, looking at more interdisciplinary teams.”

“Simplicity: the [Zen] garden is not complete unless there is nothing else you can remove. In games we often do the kitchen sink.”