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Better knowing Will Wright

Posted on April 29, 2007 by xDiablis

Will Wright was born in Atlanta, Georgia on January 20th, 1960.  Will attended Montessori school as a child and later attributed much of his success to its teachings of creativity and problem solving.  As a child Will found out that he loved to make models of ships, cars, and even a scale model of the flight deck of the USS Enterprise.  Will described himself as “obsessive” in his interests.  He would become focused on one thing for a year and learn everything he could on the subject.  Because of the way he learned he could discuss complex systems at a very young age.  He and his father would talk about life on other planets, stars and NASA.  Wills ambition was to join NASA and form colonies on other planets to relieve over-population.  Will led a very eccentric and happy childhood.

When Will was 9his father died of leukemia.  After this his mother moved the family back to their home town of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  Here Will was enrolled in an Episcopal school that ended up changing his views on the world.  While there he decided he was an atheist and generally became disillusioned with the schooling system.  He graduated at 16 and enrolled in Louisiana State University.  2 years later he would transfer to Louisiana Tech. and begin with an architecture degree which he changed to mechanical engineering, and eventually fell into computers and robotics.  As his obsessive nature kicked in he began to excel at subjects he enjoyed like architecture, economics and military history to name a few.  But he was held back by his high minded and impractical goals.  After 2 more years he left for The New School in Manhattan.  While here he spent his spare time going to electrical surplus stores trying to find spare parts.  After 1 more year of college Will returned to his home town without a degree, ending his 5 years of college.  This was not wasted time however, Will learned many things and even met his future wife while at college.   

Will later claimed that since games ate up so much of his time he may as well make them.  His first game was called Raid on Bungeling Bay for the Commodore 64.  He found out that is was more fun making the levels for his game tan actually playing it, a situation mirrored by Sid Meier.   Thus he began work on the game destined to become Simcity.  Unfortunately he had difficulty finding a publisher.  This changed in 1986 however at “the worlds most important pizza party” when he met Jeff Braun.  The next year they formed Maxis and Simcity has since been called “one of the most influential games ever made”. 

            Wills reputation was cemented with various other Sim games and Maxis went public in 1995 with $38 million USD and stocks toping out at $50 a share.  Maxis was bought in 1997 by EA.  Will decided to finally act on a game that had been dreaming about since the early 1990’s.  He pitched his idea for a virtual doll house to EA.  It was a difficult idea to sell because nearly half of Maxis had been laid off.  In February of 2000 EA released the Sims and Will was thrust into the center stage of game design again.  This was by far his biggest success; the Sims eventually overtook Myst as the most bought PC game of all time. 

            Will received a lifetime achievement award at the Game Developers Choice Awards in 2001.  The next year he became the fifth person ever to be inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame.  He was the only person to have both honors until 2006.  He has been called the most important person in gaming by many publications, and was given the lifetime achievement award by PC Gamer in 2005. 

            He built competitive robots for several years with his daughter, but he no longer does so.  He is a former Robot Wars champion in the Berkley robotics workshops Stupid Fun Club.  Will developed a technique that is now banned called “cocooning” where his robot would encapsulate the opponent in gauze to stop its movement.  

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11 Comments

1. swc19 - Aug 30, 2008 05:33 AM

Trust me he didn't do SC societies, read the box and see who developed it or search the web...

2. colass - Aug 11, 2008 06:17 AM

And the Great wright looked down upon the world and gifted us with simcity, but that was not enough, the he gave us sims, but tht still was not enough. After that he gave us sims 2 ,awsome but not enough , the simcity societies, which was definatly not enough. Finally, after much delay we shall have SPORE , and that my children shall be enough!

3. Meemo - Jun 17, 2008 07:59 AM

Mr Wright - we are not worthy.....

4. sporeman100 - May 10, 2008 07:05 PM

This sounds like an advanced Simlife... AWSOME!

5. sporefann - Apr 28, 2008 10:23 PM

I love the sims 2!And Spore just 500,000 times better!Go space phase!!

6. 55k0 - Apr 21, 2008 08:18 PM

i have the organl sim city it sucks but at that time it was great sims 1 crap sims 2 rule

7. Rone - Mar 26, 2008 12:48 PM

I_WANT_SPORE- try some caps and punctuation.... But anyways, yeah I totally agree with that last statement there...

8. LePedro - Aug 21, 2007 04:02 PM

Oh, we have other Portuguese! I will warn Mortis... :p

9. leftright - Jul 28, 2007 01:53 PM

I used to have simcity, it was an awesome game. I got simcity 4 though. Spore looks like it will put will wright down in history for good. I don't think any head person for a video game was ever thought of as a genius as much as WW.

10. moranguita - Jul 26, 2007 05:25 AM

I just wanted that game come to POrtugal soon.

11. I_WANT_SPORE - Jun 21, 2007 12:06 AM

interesting sounds like any nerd but hey the world needs nerds to make sweet videogames none of us could hope to understand... plz will i beg you release a demo so i can sleep..i mean stay up all night and play



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