Will Wright’s Design Philosophy

Kieron Gillen has a new interview with Will Wright up over at The Guardian, discussing Wright’s game design philosophy (more or less):

“What I want to do is craft this landscape of experiences where the player has a huge degree of control over what they encounter,” he says. “I think that’s what games have as an advantage over any other form of media; that the player is half the author of the experience if the game is done well – or even more so. I think this is the first form of medium which has really achieved that and it allows us access to emotional regions that are inaccessible to linear narrative.”

Is Spore going to be the success many think it will be, or will it confound the average user (unlike The Sims) as Ian Bogost suspects? Or will people lose interest together before the thing is finally released? I guess we’ll find out … eventually.

Unlocking the power of parallel play [The Guardian via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]