SPOnG caught up with Will Wright recently for a quick catch up on what is probably one of the most hyped games on the planet right now - Spore.
Will told us again all about his inspirations for Spore; the ageing educational documentary movie
The Powers of Ten (which SPOnG urges you to download and watch if you have still to see it); the SETI programme (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) and ‘astrobiology’.
Wright defines astrobiology as the science of, “Looking at the probability and form of life in the universe. It’s a subject which involves all these other subjects, like physics and chemistry, astronomy and sociology. It’s interesting because all of those different sub-fields end up mapping to different scales, like the Powers of Ten. So you have very small things at the molecular or cellular level, and very big things at the stellar or galactic level.”
Wright’s brain, as you would imagine, seems to operate on a slightly higher level than most.
Coming back down to earth, Will also told us of his love for Guitar Hero and his DS. He's clearly a man after our own collective heart: “Guitar Hero is cool. That’s a brilliant game. I’ve been playing with my DS a lot. I’ve got a DS Lite and I just love that machine. The DS is great because it’s Nintendo’s prototype for its big idea about creating new game experiences….When I first saw the DS, I thought: 'What a goofy idea'. Then they came out with the DS Lite, which looks quite nice, and the software was actually pretty cool. People are actually using both screens and the stylus in cool ways, and every game seems kind of different. It feels like unique, interesting gameplay.”
Check out the full, unexpurgated interview in SPOnG’s features right now.