Will Wright
Yes... well, I used to have a pilot's license.
Well, I think the camera freedom is something that we've resisted for a long time and feels like probably the biggest stretch. But it has some huge benefits.
We're experimenting with new ideas we can put into it, which makes it hard for me to say exactly when we will be done with them.
We really want to have most of the failure in a game be based on things that the player did, as opposed to things outside of the player's control.
We have spent quite a bit of time considering a good space game, and I can't really say anything at this point, but we are definitely still interested in that area.
We also have future versions of the single-player Sims currently in the works.
There are several projects I have never ended up doing, for various reasons, but I still find myself researching them.
There are a lot of issues that I hope we deal with at some point that we haven't up to now, for various reasons. Some technical, and some more political.
The Sims is kind of an interesting case because we had all these expansion packs. We were able to incrementally add on and explore without invading the core dynamic or the core game play.
The second thing for me, probably a few clicks down, is the idea that The Sims smoothly age and have different concerns and motivations and needs at different age ranges.
The problem is you're trying to target the current gamers, rather than lead them.
The new generation of consoles has as much power to do the kind of games that we do as the PC does.
The console games, as they come out with this new generation, will have a temporary advantage in price performance, but there are still many things you can do on a PC, more conveniently than you can do on a console machine.
The big thing is that we have five percent or less of the hardcore players actively entertaining the other ninety-five percent.
Players like to know that they've discovered things that even the designers didn't know were in the game.
On vacation, I totally unplug. I don't bring a laptop with me.
It's gotten to the point now where I surf the fan sites everyday and download cool things the fans have created, which is really ironic in a way!
It used to be that you knew your neighbors and maybe your coworkers - the people in your physical vicinity.
It becomes more of an epic, almost Michener-like multigenerational thing... the story that you're playing through.
In some sense that fear of not dropping the ball can really hurt you, in terms of not stretching and kind of going off in interesting new directions.