This was a cool thing that happened. Congratulations to anyone involved in setting this up.
Will Wright’s a creative mind that few others in the games industry match and it’s great to hear his thoughts on the new entry in a series that he initially created.
The pair of him and the new game’s creative director (and owner of a fantastic name) Ocean Quigley discuss the game being a “guilt driven experience” made possible by the tiny scale displaying the people affected by your actions as a city planner. You can, through inaction, make everything terrible for people just trying to act in earnest to do their best.
Will talks about emotions being emergent in games when they definitely aren’t through other non-interactive media.
The pair discuss the different types of play, from those that just want to build a large city and game the economy to those that want to concentrate right down into the specifics and pay attention to everything their actions have brought about.
It’s made me think a lot more heavily about what Sim City achieves than I had when I was playing the Beta. The limited length of time it was possible to spend meant that I was exploring the larger parts of what the system allows rather than getting into the minutia of examining my city and the people within it.
The video has also reminded me that, damn, I’ll listen to Will Wright talk about anything. I’ll listen to him talk about shower curtains if he has a specific observation about them.
