Will Wright’s BAFTA talk
(Visited 8137 times) Game talk
Sep 012006
Liveblogged at Functional Autonomy.
Part one is the talk itself:
Making games is like the scientific method in reverse. A small number of algorithms are meant to generate many possiblities. Games have topology, and that topology has to be as interesting as possible.
Old media are just rides. They’re linear.
And part two is Q&A afterwards.
Q: What’s your favorite game? (Laughter from cynical bunch of game developers)
A: My favorite game is an old Chinese board game called Go. It has only two rules, but really deep strategy. Games are meant to have simple rule sets that generate maximum possibility space. Go seems to have the best ratio in that respect.
4 Responses to “Will Wright’s BAFTA talk”
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Dr. Wayne Saunders at the Museum of Man in San Diego talked about Go in June. I don’t think anyone was paying attention to the San Diego IGDA website at the time though.
[…] It seems to be a landmark sort of talk, Koster mentioned it, so I blogged back a response. […]
What he says in that talk to me is both timely (to what I’m working toward)and relavent overall. The possibility space for games as a driver for change is important now and moreso going forward. The old modalities of throwing money at an issue and hoping it goes away by creating an inefficiant breaucracy no longer apply to a particapatory world where the threshold level of involvment in the process to change things (barrier to entry) is getting lower.
Accountability is created by active paticipation, whether its political change or tackling social issue. Evidence: the blogosphere’s impact on public opinion and the political process.
Bring on the electronic voting system!
Bring on the games that are meaningful!
GJ Will Wright!
This talk highlights my experience when I look at the very latest graphic technologies unveiled for upcoming games in the FPS market (in particular). I know that as an avid FPS gamer, I want to play those games. Yet, I also know that once I’m “in there”, I’m participating in an activity relatively unchanged since the days of Castle Wolfenstein.
Static spaces and static worlds are well and truly modern equivalents of our Parker Brother roots, huddled over Monopoly boards of yore. It is quite unfortunate that the natural proclivities of modern computer systems are steadfastly ignored in favour of dumping as many polygons and sound onto our senses that we could possibly want. The true power of computers lay in their processing abilities.
Our games are so static, they’re like playing inside a painting. It’s refreshing to see someone like Will Wright gain broad prominence in this media industry. His designs are almost the antithesis to the so-called high fidelity trend in gaming.