I just finished watching Will Wright talk about game design at an SDForum Speaker Series event. It’s an old talk, but it still gives you insight into his thought process when designing games such as The Sims.
It’s a long talk that starts about 14 minutes into the video, although I still enjoyed watching Bill Budge, of Pinball Construction Set fame, introduce Wright.
Wright talked about emergence in more detail than I’ve seen elsewhere. He explained the thought process behind the design of certain elements in The Sims and SimCity. He talked about feedback loops in everything from the basic interactions all the way down to the player’s mental model of the game world. It’s amazing to think about creating interesting yet simple rule sets that take advantage of the player’s ability to identify the possibility space and game play landscape. Wright takes a lot of these complex ideas and explains them well.
Even the Q&A session at the end was fascinating. Someone asked Wright to give the top three good trends and top three bad trends he sees in game development. We can see how some of those trends are working out today, especially in games like Spore.
Watching such a talk can only get you fired up to work on your own game designs, so set aside some time and enjoy!
[tags] game design, will wright, [/tags]