Will Wright interview
There’s an excellent interview with Will Wright about game design and game design theory over at The Guardian.
Wright’s discussion of his “abdication of authorship” is particularly interesting:
“My focus started shifting more and more to players, and what they were doing,” he says, “Because I found that fundamentally as interesting, or more interesting, than the actual games [was] parallel play. Sitting and looking at what someone else has done with the same game as you is fundamentally interesting to me.” …
“When people tell me about playing a game and tell me what happened to them, then I hear how different their stories are,” he says. “To me, that’s an indicator of how good the game is.” …
“What I want to do is craft this landscape of experiences where the player has a huge degree of control over what they encounter,” he says. “I think that’s what games have as an advantage over any other form of media; that the player is half the author of the experience if the game is done well – or even more so. I think this is the first form of medium which has really achieved that and it allows us access to emotional regions that are inaccessible to linear narrative.”
Hey that’s funny, that’s exactly what I want you to do, Mr. Wright! How exciting.