Will Wright is the closest thing to a god the videogame world has. He invented Sim City and all its sequels, The Sims, and all its sequels, and now, Spore.

Spore may be the most ambitious videogame in history. It starts at a molecular level and spirals upwards to a galactic level, offering players the chance to create their own civilizations from the ground up. At this years E3, the console wars are taking center stage, but, at least among the attendees I've talked to, Spore is the title that has captured everyone's imagination. I was honored to havea few minutes to chat with Wil Wright.

What is your favorite game of all time; like videogame, board game, mind game, whatever?

Go.

Why, Go?

It’s probably got the simplest rule set relative to the most elaborate strategy, so in terms of emergence, its got an amazing ratio of simplicity in rules to complexity of strategy.

What inspired you to become a game designer?

Probably modeling. As a kid I built a lot of models, and really enjoyed building these elaborate things with a lot of parts and pieces, and soon I began building more elaborate models, things that had dynamics.

What about E3 do you look forward to most this year?

The end. I always end up losing my voice. Um, it’s kind of fun to see the same people I know in the industry each year. It’s kind like meeting old friends.

What are you least looking forward to at this years E3?

Just losing my voice which always happens.

Are you speaking at a lot places?

I’m doing presentations nonstop at our booths, so I’m doing about three an hour, three days straight, eight hours a day. I’m going to have a voice till the end of the day on Wednesday if I’m lucky.

What’s your favorite videogame character?

I think that in terms of the time I spent playing videogames, I think Zelda.

What technological device could you not live without?

Pocket knife.

Why a pocket knife?

It’s like a tool that you can make other tools out of, and there are so many situations where a pocket knife is the right solution.

What do you want to accomplish here at E3?

Obviously to promote Spore, and I think make people understand what the game is about, which is maybe a little bit different from the games that are here.

What misconceptions do you think that people have about “Spore?”

I’m not so sure it’s so much misconceptions as emphasis, and the emphasis is to inspire creativity. I mean people see this epic game spanning all these different genres and scales, but the emphasis of it is we want something that’s going to be different.

Do you think that SimCity has changed the way that people do urban planning in the real world?

I think that it’s changed the awareness of urban planning with a large number of people. It has changed the way that urban planning is done the sense that urban planning is becoming much more based around G.I.S. (Geographic Information Systems), so in that sense I think that “Sim City” was sort of mirroring the existing trend of information services applied to large planning endeavors.

I was always bummed in Sim City that I couldn’t set up a socialist utopia. It seemed to be based on the idea of capitalism. Is that something that you built in consciously?

Sim City wasn’t meant to be a simulation of different political systems, or different economic systems. It was meant to be a simulation of infrastructure development within an existing market based economy, and as such it was based upon a lot of basic economic theory, central place theory, and things like that. You’d actually have to build a different model if you wanted to explore alternate economic systems.

Thanks, Will Wright!

Inside Look At Spore

Kevin sits down with Sims Chief Designer, Will Wright, to discuss his latest creation, Spore.