BigShinyThing

Writing in Wired, Wright’s take on modern, non-linear games echoes that of Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad is Good For You:

[Gaming is] a rapid cycle of hypothesis, experiment, and analysis. And it’s a fundamentally different take on problem-solving than the linear, read-the-manual-first approach of their parents.

In an era of structured education and standardized testing, this generational difference might not yet be evident. But the gamers’ mindset — the fact that they are learning in a totally new way — means they’ll treat the world as a place for creation, not consumption. This is the true impact videogames will have on our culture.

In other words, gaming is — at its best — science by another name: learning, hypothesis testing, and application of past observations and deduction to future problems.

Well, maybe. Wright and his co-developers are certainly risking the company on his beliefs: their next game, Spore, involves taking a single-celled creature up the evolutionary ladder, through life on land, tribal- and city-based cultures and on to galactic empire, as demonstrated in a strangely compelling walk-through viewable online. After the best part of an hour spent coaxing his beasties out of the pond and up the chain of existence to life amongst the stars, Wright comments [paraphrased] that ‘this is where the game really starts — up to here we’ve just been getting people to learn the controls.’ Lordy. As noted by GameSpy:

The important thing to take away from this is not “Will Wright is making a cool game,” but the way that he is making the game. He’s sidestepped the whole idea of massive teams of content creators in favor of a system of building games based on player-content and emergence.

You can read Spore as simulated Evolution, a creepy gaming take on Intelligent Design, or The Sims with tentatcles, claws and death rays. But whatever, it looks gorgeous, and the attention to the minutae of creature and object design sets a new high for God-games (as they’re known). We’ll have to wait til it hits the streets to see what effect this take on Creation has on our next generation of real-world creators.