Just found this on google video randomly. This is really geeky, but if you skip to the game demonstration, it gets more interesting [i.e. sort of relates to the procedural / algorithmic conversation].
Will Wright Spore Talk
[Also: I came across this video of someone assembling a tensegrity. I like it. There's a wiki entry on tensegrity that claims it wasn't Buckminster Fuller but rather his former student, sculptor Kenneth Snelson who discovered the concept. Does anyone know if that's actually true, or has heard this claim before?]
6 comments:
One thing that really interested me in the Will Wright talk was his take on Content vs. Code, and literally how much memory is devoted to it (ie. space, which translates also into "the money it takes to make all of that content"), when in reality people would much rather have the freedom to create their own content than lots of fancy movies and cut-scenes in video games. And that people take with them the stories that are personal to their own experiences [playing the game]. Like, super smash brothers was always good at that too.
Really though, the fact that this is a video game to me seems secondary to the fact that it shows the universe in a very perspective shifting manor which is pretty cool. I think Will Wright is a genius. Or at least an Artist.
I like that he includes the creations of other players as algorithmic process. The users are creating content through their own "process", which then becomes part of the game.
I saw Will Wright speak a few months ago about Spore. He had a graph showing that the first game he developed was by himself, Sim City had 2 coders and 1 artist, SC2000 was 4 coders and 10 artists, and so on for the games he's made up to the Sims. The graph showed that the number of coders was growing slowly and the number of artists was growing exponentially. He said if the trend continued, in the year 2050 it would take 250 million artists to make a single video game.
But I like that he didn't see that number and think "this has got to stop" - instead he embraces it. 250 million people working on a game sounds ridiculous until you consider a game where players are contributing to the game itself. This is what The Sims and Spore are about.
One thing I thought was interesting about Spore is that while everyone is playing in the same universe, nothing is actually in real time. If you visit a friend's planet, you won't see the same planet that they see on their own screen. When you attack them, they won't see the attack or be able to fight back.
Instead, everything is done through AI that learns how to behave like each player. So when you attack someone's planet, you're fighting against AI that acts like that person. And they won't see an attack from you in real time, but some time in the next few days they will see an attack from "you" but it's really AI that acts like you.
So instead of directly including players' content in the game like in The Sims, Spore is using players as inputs to an algorithm. Every player becomes a cyborg.
The fact that you aren't relating to the other players in realtime changes your relationship to other players to be less competitive in the ESPN way, more like pure abstrated competition. I think it relates to the subject of "voice" that we have made noise on here before. Like the difference in the way you express yourself when you are talking to one person vs. a group.
BTW g-reg - you have to put commas in your tag cloud.
It's interesting how they chose Pixar and Geiger as aesthetic "models" to follow... It allows users to create stuff that's never 'ugly' in the sense that it breaks the immersive experience. At the same time, the entire experience is about how you are free break any rules and break your creature in creative ways, like giving it seven legs attached to its tail or something.
The painting I just posted gave me the idea of using that as the aesthetic model and having a situation where users can build a world of stuff made up of those particular elements instead of Pixar Planets and Galaxies (Although they do look pretty fucking beautiful).
I watched the video, but I never played the game, so I can't really say anything too smart about it. It strikes me as having an overall style. It makes me think - if we encountered life from another planet, and if that life was organized into different species the way life is here, there would be no chance that you could ever confuse any species from that planet with one from ours - that is, the weirdest nematode, creepiest spider, strangest steamvent tubeworm, or inhuman slimemold, they would all seem more familiar and less alien than any species off the alien world. You'd just be able to "call" it instantly.
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