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That makes it a bigger bet across all media categories, right? VB: You and Will have said that you thought of this as a franchise from the very beginning. It’s a combination of a solo game and a social game. We can track player content and see how many galaxies their creatures were used in. You can bring all those creatures created by others into your world. You have a galaxy that is entirely your own. VB: Do you call it a massively single-player game still? We just realized that we could make it into something grander with the networking. We saw that with sharing, social networks on the Internet - that meant we had a much bigger opportunity. It was bigger than we thought it would be. We wanted to make sure players could take advantage of the player creations. LB: Will has been on it five years and I have been on it for three. VB: How long have you worked on it and what stretched out the schedule? You can beat the campaign or you can just explore and create. Like with The Sims, a lot of people never played through the entire career campaign. It becomes a larger area to experiment in. In the space stage, you look at your colonies and whether your empire is expanding. In the cell phase, you do things like eat and grow and survive. VB: How do the cell, planetary, and galaxy levels of the game differ? You may be taking on an ally and making an enemy of another one. When you do, you realize the repercussions of some of those actions. In the space game, you can accept missions from other aliens that have consequences down the road. LB: It’s about building up an artificial intelligence so that you feel like you are living in the moment.
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But they can at least assign gamers tasks to do. VB: How would you do things like missions? In Grand Theft Auto IV, they have an open world where you can do anything, too. Some of the challenges have been in the details, not the whole. Then, some of the difficulties have been about how we get the pacing right in this open world so that the game mechanics can really sing. We had to make sure we had the technology to do those mechanics. You could foresee the game mechanics early on that could be fun. LB: There were a lot of prototypes that got developed. VB: Did you wonder if the great idea of moving from a cell level to a galaxy level could be translated into a great game? We got in there and realized we had to go deeper than we originally thought. To realize the depth of creativity, we had to go deeper. When I started on the project, I thought we would have much simpler games around each one of the stages. He was never quite sure he could pull this off. I thought it was important to put top people like Ocean Quigley, Andrew Willmott, Chris Hecker and others so that we could make a believer out of Will himself. VB: Did Will have any trouble selling you on the idea? We didn’t know if we could get the underlying technology done.
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Most of the work had been done on what the creators would do and whether we could do the procedural animations, To be honest, Chris Hecker was just beginning to think about how to do the procedural animations. Will was building prototypes, shaping the scope of the project. Then I came onto Spore when it was ten people. How does the pending launch of Spore compare to that?
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VB: I remember talking to you about the launch of The Sims in 2000. Now she and Wright are teamed up again on EA’s biggest game. Bradshaw joined EA in 1997 after stints at Activision and LucasArts. No stranger to the big time, Bradshaw spearheaded the production of “ The Sims 2,” produced “ SimCity 4,” and played a big role in the development of “The Sims,” which along with its offspring has sold more than 100 million units. The game is a year late, but Bradshaw says the team has now had the time to polish the game play and execute on all of the grand ideas for sharing content via YouTube, email and other means. The vice president in charge of production at Electronic Arts’ Maxis studio in Emeryville, Calif., Bradshaw runs the team for Wright’s latest brainstorm, “ Spore.” It is one of the most anticipated games of all time, and Bradshaw heads the 80-person team cranking the video game out for its Sept. But Lucy Bradshaw is the one that turns those ideas into bestsellers. Register here.Įlectronic Arts game designer Will Wright may come up with the billion-dollar game ideas that get him on the cover of Wired magazine. Connect with top gaming leaders in Los Angeles at GamesBeat Summit 2023 this May 22-23.
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