Will Wright, creator of the Sim City and Sims franchises, is interviewed by John Battelle at the Web 2.0 Expo.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET)SAN FRANCISCO--Are video games really all about feeding your ego? Maybe, suggested legendary game designer Will Wright in a keynote interview at the Web 2.0 Expo on Thursday morning.
"Most people are very narcissistic," said Electronic Arts' Wright, creator of the Sim City and Sims franchises and now last year's avant-garde Spore, onstage with Federated Media's John Battelle. "The more you can make the game about that person, the more interested, the more emotionally involved they will get."
Advancements in technology have made it possible for the customization craze of the social-networking world to permeate the console and PC gaming sectors, and that has begun to open up the industry to new users who didn't see the appeal in hardcore gaming or immersive role-playing virtual universes.
He suggested that virtual world Second Life was on the right track by making it possible for members to create elaborate in-game items, but they were too difficult for most members to partake in. "The sophistication...was pretty high," Wright said. "For a lot of people, programming does not sound like entertainment."
Even though games--especially role-playing games--have a reputation for being a lonely form of escapism, Wright suggested that mainstream appeal can be found in, well, getting to be yourself. And that's where it gets back to the narcissism.
"The more this game can be about me, and my real life, and my real experiences and where I live, and my real friends (can mean more than) 'I'm going to go to the game and become an orc and get a real sword'," he suggested. Granted, Spore is all about building and growing strange creatures in a bizarre, science fiction universe. But there's a lot more out there, he said, as we're seeing a "Cambrian explosion" of ways to play and interact.
"The Wii, to me, represents the idea of non-immersive gaming," he said. "When you think about the Wii...most of the entertainment is not happening on the screen, it's about watching your friend act like a doofus swinging the thing around and maybe throw it into the TV set."
So maybe gaming can temper that ego, too.
FriendFeed's new iPhone app is now hand and eye-friendly.
(Credit: FriendFeed)Here are some news tidbits from today that were too small to fill out entire posts. We've grouped together three that are worth your time.
FriendFeed puts out an iPhone app. Social aggregator FriendFeed has launched an iPhone-friendly version of its news feed (http://friendfeed.com/i). Previously users had to use a service like FFtoGo to get the stream of news reformatted to match the resolution on the popular handheld device. The new look incorporates image sharing, using a bit of a work-around with Mail2FF, a service that posts e-mailed photos and messages to your activity stream or private rooms.
Netvibes adds Google search, trend tracking. Netvibes users will find a new Google search box in their start pages. Any search will show up with results that keep the user in the Netvibes environment, and will be saved as a new tab. As TechCrunch noticed, the company also soft launched a new section called Buzz that tracks some of the most favorite links using Netvibes' starring system. Results can be honed down to within the last hour or the last two days.
A Spore with more parts. Too cheap to shell out $10 for the full version of EA's Spore Creature Creator? Computer maker HP is offering a free demo version that has a few more parts than the standard demo offering. Like I said when I checked it out earlier this month, this is one piece of software that's got a fully connected Web 2.0 presence with a community site and YouTube integration.
Next week game publisher Electronic Arts will unleash a cleverly packaged marketing device upon masses of hungry gamers awaiting the release of one of this holiday's biggest titles--Spore. The software is a "creature creator" letting players put together 3D characters with an interface nearly as simple to use as Nintendo's Mii maker seen on the Wii. The 300MB download will be available next Tuesday, though some diehard fans and "influencers" got their hands on it last night.
The upcoming game focuses on creating a species and taking it from the microbial stage of life all the way to multi-universe exploration and colonization--a mix somewhere between a science experiment and a game of Risk. The creature creator is the first step in showing potential users what they'll be getting their hands on in just three months time.
What may be more interesting though is how publisher EA has begun to integrate the Web into its latest titles--Spore included. For instance, in this new piece of software you can take pictures of your creation and send them to buddies via e-mail. You can also record video that can be uploaded straight to YouTube--like the clip I created and have posted below. Last year's Skate (also by EA) had similar features, although all of the content was hosted on EA's servers.
Others seem to have taken notice of this trend. Last month Sony integrated YouTube into its developer tools to allow PS3 developers to code in the option to record and upload clips to the popular video host without requiring gamers to leave the couch. Microsoft has also had its own system for letting gamers grab in-game screenshots and have them post it to special mini game sites that are linked up to the user's Live.com ID.
That's not to say EA is letting other companies house all that content though. The creature creator and eventual game will go hand in hand with Spore's official site which launched with limited functionality this past Monday. The company is touting the site as a way to build out your profile and discover other people's creations, but it's essentially a photo gallery full of in-game screen shots and creations people saved.
Sporemail is pictures of your creature captured in-game which can be sent to friends and viewed on Spore.com. Some shots double as character models you can pull into your software and re-tool to make your own.
(Credit: CNET Networks)These photos have an additional use too--you'll be able to drag and drop what you see from other members into your own software be able to play with that same creature. Users will also be able to send creations to third parties to put into things like online comic books, or to print out into a 3D mold. The company is expecting this to lead to people making small changes to their in-game characters, or browsing through other people's creations while away from their home machine. These changes will sync up with their in-game characters the next time they play.
Each user-created creature is also a piece of something larger called SporePedia. Not unlike Wikipedia it's completely sourced and managed by players. They'll be able to upload their creations to the SporePedia with descriptions and bits of game data which will completely searchable both in-game and from the Web. EA is hoping it will provide a way for novice gamers to very quickly discover new creatures created by others, or simply archive what they've made without having to worry about saving it to local storage.
Also thrown into the site are widgets people can put on their blog or social-networking profile that showcase their latest creature creations and an RSS-powered news feed of what your friends have created. The site is currently the only way to view in-game screenshots, which are hosted with ratings, comments, and a tracking system that assigns special badges to popular or featured content.
In the end the creature creator is a far cry from the experience gamers will be getting in September. It's a very svelte game demo that's been packed with Web elements and the start of one of the stronger first-party community sites I've seen.
I really would not be surprised to see more games take advantage of the Web in the coming years, not just for the marketing potential, but for the extra sticking power. March Madness and fantasy sports suck up absurd amounts of time from office workers because the Web has become a gateway to some of the things we do on our off-work hours. There's not much keeping future games from doing the same if they begin to build up what players are able to do while away from their fancy hardware.
Related:
EA unveils 'Spore' tribal phase images, video
'Spore Creature Creator' to see light of day in June
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