Saturday, September 13, 2008

This week in ´neues´: Will Wright interview



Will Wright interview

A few days ago, I was able to interview Will Wright at some length about ´Spore´ and user-generated content in general. The interview was conducted for the weekly technology show I work for, 3sat neues. Simply click on Will Wright to download the full 25 minute interview in English.

We discuss ´Spore´ and user-generated content in general. We go into some depth about quality assurance, the design of the editors, the use of artificial intelligence in ´Spore´ and balancing freedom with guiding the player. We also discuss some of the surprisingly low ratings by a number of reviewers, especially out here in Germany. Further, I ask Will Wright about the commercial failure of ´The Movies´ and whether that shows inherent limitations of user participation.

We go on to discuss Sporenography and whether it presents a threat to the idea of user-generated content. Will Wright then reveals what he considers the main challenges for a possible ´Spore´ sequel (or similar game). He also believes that this trend is not exclusive to the games medium, drawing parallels to the Web 2.0 phenomenon. Please check it out.

Other gaming-related topics

Tomorrow's show will also focus on ´LittleBigPlanet´, show a feature on hobby developers in Germany, a report from this year´s ´Ars Electronica´ art and media festival, as well as a portrait of Julian Oliver, designer of the ingenious augmented reality game ´LevelHead´ (you can also download the entire interview with him - in English - from our website).

Our studio guest this week is Benjamin Nitschke, co-founder and head programmer of ex:Dream Studios (´Arena Wars´, ´XNA Racing Game´) who talks about user-generated content, middleware tools like XNA, indie development and how hobby developers can turn professional. Finally, we review Google's Chrome browser. The show is in German. You can watch it on television at these times:


Sunday, 14th of September, 4:30pm CET (3sat)
Tuesday, 16th of September, 1:50 am CET (ZDF)
Thursday, 18th of September, 1:30 pm CET (ZDF-Infokanal)


You can also watch it online through our station's Mediatheque. This direct link should go live Sunday afternoon. Soon after, you can download the entire programme through our podcast page, where you also find the above bonus content.

Source: 3sat neues

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

logogogo

-IALStress

Anonymous said...

I haven't listened to it yet- did you discuss the DRM stuff with Wright?

Falafelkid said...

No DRM issues were raised. The interview was conducted a week before the game's release, so that discussion did not exist by then. There are some very interesting other angles in the interview, though, I believe. Check it out for yourself.

Anonymous said...

holy shit mr falafel ..have you seen the new monster hunter 3 scans on gonintendo?...they look bloody good!!!!

This is what a wii game is supposed to look like... first tme ever that I'm not disappointed by Wii graphics!!

Seriously those graphics kick a lot of ass and make up for all lot of bs!

I think you should make a news story based around these scans...this is easily on par with some 360 /ps 3 stuff

peace
-IALS

Anonymous said...

Thanks for useful review!

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