Wright: Games Can Connect People to the Real World

Speaking to Popular Science in a typically engaging interview, designer Will Wright elaborated on his upcoming game Spore, reiterating some previously known details and touching on some that have been less discussed. On the last page of the interview, the discussion diverges a bit, and Wright shares some of his thoughts on broader topics related to the game industry. The concept of "serious games"--that is, games with an explicit level of social awareness or games whose primary function is to inform or educate, with entertainment a secondary goal--has been one that is being discussed more and more. Each year, the Serious Games Summit is held in Washington D.C., and a smaller conference is held during San Francisco's annual Game Developers Conference. It seems Wright himself might have aspirations along those lines as well. "I'm very interested in more relevant gaming," Wright said. " Getting people more connected to the real world through gaming. Because I think we all live in our own little bubbles, we have our own little lives and there's this whole world out there of things happening that we're kind of dimly aware of. We might pick up the paper or watch the news." He went on to suggest that games could be not only valid as tools to inform, but also as tools to effect change. "It's a complex world. A lot of very strange twisted dynamics, interesting things, very important things that are going to shape the future that our children live in," he went on. "And that if you could just get everybody to be a little bit more aware of the world around them, and how it works, and have that feedback in to the course the world is taking, gaming could be an incredibly powerful mechanism for steering the system." Wright pointed to areas such as politics, economics, climate, and environmentalism--all things that have factored into some of his games over the past--as topics that could potentially be well communicated to players through games. He also seemed to indicate he may already have some kind of idea related to relevant gaming ("There's one idea, but I don't want to talk about it," he admitted) but did not elaborate further.