Dull and Empty

Will Wright has left EA but it seems he hasn't gone far.

By John Gillooly on 22 April, 2009

In recent years, EA has spent a lot of time and money elevating Will Wright to rock star status in the game development world. So, it was with great surprise that he recently announced he would be leaving EA to focus upon his ‘Stupid Fun Club’ think-tank.

This was far from him eschewing the bonds of EA and going out on his own, though. EA is part owner of Stupid Fun Club, and has the rights to any game concepts that emerge from it. Wright has now confirmed that he will be continuing to consult on Spore, and one assumes other Maxis products. Considering that actual development has been out of his hands for a while, one wonders just what has changed with this departure.

Hopefully, it will mean a final return to the complexity that Wright used to be known for. In his time at EA, Wright has become the poster child for ‘casual’ gaming. The breakout success of The Sims (otherwise known as ‘that game wot chicks play’) built on an accessibility that Maxis had mastered in previous titles. While it may have spawned an evil empire of relentless expansion packs and ruthless monetization, The Sims was undoubtedly a game that had the mythical ‘it’ factor.

Spore took this accessibility too far, ending up with a game that felt artificially restrictive. It needed a shallow learning curve, however, the chopping and changing between genres meant that gameplay lacked any depth. Even for the Sims crowd it was a little too simplistic, and despite promises that it will change with the Galactic Adventures expansion, what could have been a deeply interesting game about evolution ended up a collection of ‘creators’ interspersed with simplistic minigames.

Spore features some pretty awesome technology. The procedural generation techniques used for creating creatures and buildings are astonishing, and the sheer number of things made with the creators is testament to this. My real worry with the Stupid Fun Club is that it will generate these sorts of great ideas, which will then get smooshed into bland, easily digestible paste with a Maxis logo on it.

What would be much better is to see the technology being handed to other, more interesting hubs of development within EA. Imagine a real-time strategy based around the procedural generation of vehicles, or a role-playing game that used the social interaction AI of The Sims. Hopefully, despite the financial doom and gloom, the latter will happen and we’ll see a wider use of innovation. Or maybe it’ll just be part of another Spore expansion.

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