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TVTranscript
00:02He is one of the most influential game creators in the world.
00:05Will Wright is a major inspiration.
00:07And from the very beginning, he had a mission.
00:11He was always very curious, very inventive. He was into everything.
00:16But hardship would strike at an early age.
00:19My father died when I was nine, at which point we moved to Louisiana where my mother grew up and
00:23was raised there.
00:24And his mother became his inspiration.
00:31He is a man who takes chances.
00:33Will is probably one of the most creative and intelligent people in the industry.
00:36He never goes by formula, never follows the crowd.
00:39Who refuses to take no for an answer.
00:42They just didn't want to publish it, so it kind of sat on the shelf.
00:44And they're like, no one's going to buy this. This game's not going to be very popular.
00:47He had his own doubts.
00:48I didn't really think it would be that popular. I was thinking it might be some strategy game people, maybe
00:52some architects.
00:53But never let go of a dream.
00:57It is now officially the biggest selling PC game of all time.
01:01It is a phenomenon of incredible proportions.
01:05This is the story of Will Wright, the man behind The Sims.
01:10It's a license to print money. That's what it is.
01:34In the spring of 2002, Sims creator Will Wright received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Game Developers Association.
01:43And his biggest fan has been beside him every step of the way.
01:47There's one other person, a very special person I want to thank tonight.
01:50Without her, I certainly would not be here. And that's my mother.
01:54Let's go back to the beginning and find out how it all began.
01:59He was into a Montessori school when he was three years old. And the teachers there made it quite clear,
02:05right from the start, that he was very bright.
02:08And the one thing that I could do is feed him information.
02:11Well, I lived in Georgia for ten years. My father died when I was nine, at which point we moved
02:16to Louisiana where my mother grew up.
02:17I was kind of an odd kid growing up, if you can imagine.
02:20He was always very curious, very inventive. He was into everything.
02:26I would jump around from subject to subject and just get totally obsessed with it.
02:28Spend a lot of time just, you know, obsessing and studying, you know, one thing after another.
02:33As you got a loader, you got into building robots and things like that. Never a dull moment.
02:39Oh, she was always very supportive. She was the most wonderful mother I could imagine having because, you know, she
02:44would kind of let me pursue my interests.
02:45And she would encourage it and just kind of, you know, if she could help, she would.
02:49But generally, you know, she was just kind of, what in the world is he doing now, you know, type
02:52of thing.
02:53A simple gift would change everything forever.
02:56She bought my first computer for me as a Christmas present.
02:59And I don't think she understood, you know, what an impact that was going to have on my life. I
03:02certainly didn't.
03:03In the late 1970s, Wright packs up his computer and heads for Louisiana Tech to study computer programming.
03:09But the Bayou would soon be bye-bye.
03:12I left there and went to New York and lived in New York for about a year.
03:16Went to the New School for Social Research near NYU. It's kind of a liberal arts college.
03:20Yet the anxious mind has no plans of settling down.
03:24He was just so into various things that I didn't understand.
03:28So I studied things like, you know, mechanical engineering, architecture, aviation, a palace license.
03:33That's about the time that the personal computer was just coming out.
03:36I was in college and I bought an Apple II to connect to my robots.
03:40At this point, my robots are getting fairly elaborate.
03:41These big things running around making holes in the walls.
03:43And that's kind of when I fell into software.
03:45But he falls out of love with being a student.
03:48After five years of study, Wright leaves without a sheepskin.
03:51How will his biggest fan feel?
03:53I was afraid he wouldn't be able to make a living.
03:56Will's desire for more leads him out west and into the arms of someone special.
04:02Well, I'd actually met my wife in Louisiana who was living in California.
04:05And that was the real reason I moved to California originally.
04:08But at the same time, I was getting into computers.
04:09And that also was kind of like, you know, the center of the universe for the computer industry.
04:12Wright quickly finds work designing computer programs.
04:15But can't seem to keep his feet on the ground when it comes to video games.
04:19The very first games I was buying were, like, the very first flight simulator.
04:22A program from Bruce Artwick, you know, which is all wireframe graphics.
04:25You actually had to write your own assembly language patch to make the thing work.
04:28So, you know, very low tech.
04:29But still at the time, it was this little self-contained world in a box that I could go explore
04:33and had its own little rules of physics that you could program.
04:36And so, you know, to me that was just immensely attractive.
04:39That attraction changes his destiny.
04:41When I decided, you know, I'm going to try and make a commercial game.
04:45And at that point, there had actually been a lot of people with, you know,
04:47a four-year head start on me on the Apple that were producing some really spectacular things.
04:52And I decided that probably my best chance would be to buy one of the newer computers
04:55that was just coming out and learn that as fast as I could.
04:58Will is probably one of the most creative and intelligent people in the industry.
05:01He never goes by the formula, never follows the crowd.
05:03I mean, he's always off on his own.
05:05The Commodore 64 was coming out right around that time.
05:07And I bought one of those, one of the very first units, and just dedicated myself to absorbing the machine,
05:12learning every little thing about it.
05:13And so my first game was actually based upon that machine.
05:15And it was based upon some of the unique technical features within the Commodore that the Apple II couldn't do.
05:20And, well, moms will be moms.
05:23I thought he should go get a job.
05:25I really didn't approve of that because I didn't understand the whole field.
05:30But when there's a will, there's a way.
05:33I had something fairly playable within about, well, maybe five, six months.
05:37And I was living in California then.
05:39And so I, you know, looked around and found that, you know, a lot of the game publishers were right
05:43around me in that area.
05:44And I knew that.
05:45So I drove to like three of them and showed them this game that I was working on.
05:49Actually, I went to Electronic Arts, Creative Software, and Roterbund.
05:53And he gets his first bite when Roterbund snaps up the rights to his very first game.
05:57Well, right on Bungley Bay, basically, you were flying over these islands in this helicopter and bombing these factories.
06:02And there was this whole production thing going on.
06:04And this underlying simulation of this economy that you were trying to disrupt with your bombing.
06:08To create this game, one of the things I had to do is I had to make a little kind
06:12of tool program to scroll around and draw the islands.
06:15I would draw the coastlines and the roads and little buildings.
06:17Toward the end of the project, I was actually having more fun building these islands and designing them than I
06:21was bombing them.
06:22In the real game.
06:24Although sales in the U.S. are disappointing.
06:27It didn't sell very well in the U.S. because piracy was very big in those days.
06:30Raid on Bungley Bay becomes one of the first U.S. titles to be exported to Japan.
06:35In Japan, it was one of the first games released on the first Nintendo system.
06:38And in Japan, it sold almost a million units.
06:40I had a lot of royalties coming in from Bungley Bay.
06:42So I was living off of that comfortably.
06:44And actually, it took about a year off when my daughter was born just to kind of spend raising her.
06:48He is also nurturing something else.
06:50After destroying targets, he sets his hopes on another type of game.
06:54After I finished that game, I kind of kept playing with the editor and thinking, you know, well, it would
06:59be even cooler if I could somehow make these little islands come to life.
07:01And so that's when I started researching, you know, like traffic simulations, land use, urban growth.
07:07I think because he's well-read and he thinks about a lot of things and he plans a lot of
07:11things in the design phase,
07:12takes more time about his concept of game and experiments with programming things.
07:18And Will Wright plants a seed for a simulation game that will add a new dimension to video games and
07:24change his life forever.
07:36By the late 1980s, Will Wright has already created the successful video game Raid on Bungley Bay
07:43and is hard at work on his second title for Broderbund.
07:46It's an unusual type of game that blurs the line between virtual and reality.
07:51And all of a sudden, I had this little guinea pig of a city that I could kind of experiment
07:54and poke and prod.
07:55Wright continues working on the game for the Commodore 64.
07:58At some point, you know, I realized that I had kind of gone, you know, past the point of no
08:03return.
08:03And I was spending so much effort into this thing that, you know,
08:05wow, you know, this could be a product, you know, somehow.
08:08Wright envisions a game in which the players create the world in which the characters live.
08:12That's the entire game. What an original concept.
08:16Unfortunately, those at Broderbund weren't feeling it.
08:19I have the highest respect for the Carlson brothers that started Broderbund and just great guys.
08:23And so, you know, I don't attribute any of it to any lack of insight on their part
08:27because that happens to everybody. It's happened to me so many times.
08:30But Broderbund yearns for something a little more traditional.
08:34They didn't quite evolve in the direction they were expecting it.
08:35They kept expecting there to be something where there was a win-lose at the end.
08:38They just didn't want to publish it. So it kind of sat on the shelf.
08:41One of the most successful franchises in game history almost dies then and there.
08:46But a fateful meeting leads to some divine intervention.
08:49I met Jeff Braun at some computer thing and I showed him the game.
08:56And he was just, you know, astounded by it.
08:58He said, oh, this is great. Oh, man, you know, we should sell this.
09:00And he eventually convinced me to help him start a games company.
09:04And that's when we started Maxis.
09:05And around that time, the new computers were coming out, the new Macintosh and the Amiga.
09:09And so we hired a few programmers and I redesigned the game for those computers.
09:14You know, and if you told the programmer, this is what I want to do and I want this to
09:16happen,
09:16they're going to say, okay, you know, give me a hundred million dollars in a hundred years
09:19and I can make that happen because it's just so unreasonable.
09:22But the way he looks at these things, he goes, no, that's not that unreasonable at all.
09:25We started our company Maxis and we programmed SimCity on the new computers.
09:29SimCity is ready for presentation.
09:31And you won't believe where the brand new company takes the brand new game.
09:35When we finished this in 1989 or so, we actually went back to Burger Bar and showed it to them.
09:39And they said, wow, that's cool. Yes, you know, we want to publish that.
09:42And so in some sense, it's really nice that they had kind of rejected it
09:44because Maxis would have never happened, I think, otherwise.
09:47SimCity is ready for its 1989 debut.
09:50But is the world ready for such an unusual game with no ending?
09:55The Sim games really are the model of some chunk of reality that you're familiar with.
10:00And then allowing you to sit there and interact with it, play with it.
10:03Players of SimCity are actually city planners and have unlimited power over every aspect of a real city,
10:09including natural disasters and attacks by creatures.
10:14The ideas he brings to the game, the different fields he studies,
10:18you'll see him in an interview or if you talk to him,
10:20you'll just be amazed about sort of the breadth of knowledge and understanding of machines,
10:25how people relate to machines, how people relate to programs.
10:27He puts that all together and creates these really amazing revolutionary games.
10:32But is this game a bit too revolutionary?
10:35When I designed SimCity, I didn't really think it would be that popular.
10:37I was thinking it might appeal to some strategy game people, maybe some architects.
10:40But right is wrong.
10:43SimCity is released in 1989.
10:45The game nobody can win is a hit with critics and game fans.
10:49It was so easy to use and it also was in real-time.
10:52Most games previous to them had been more turn-based and had sort of an ugly sort of top-down
10:57perspective
10:58and he brought an isometric look to the game.
11:01The game is a major success with the ladies, who make up 35% of the loyal players.
11:07I was really amazed at the broad appeal it had.
11:10Because again, you know, to me it felt like this kind of techy, strategic thing.
11:15But I think something about the fact that we took a strategy game
11:17and we based around something that everybody knew about.
11:20Like traffic.
11:22Buildings coming up and land values changing.
11:25The game embraces many of the founding partners' beliefs.
11:28Its messages promote protection of the environment.
11:31And the game is pro-mass transit.
11:34You think that building more roads will solve traffic.
11:36But in reality, building more roads tends to breed traffic.
11:39And you have to kind of play a dynamic simulation to understand, you know,
11:43the wares and wife wares of why that happens.
11:45So, I'd kind of say that's the essence of what sim games are to me.
11:48The game becomes the godfather to a brand new category.
11:51I think the first time I heard about the term god games was,
11:54we came out with SimCity and right around the same time,
11:57Peter Molyneux came out with Populous.
11:58When people saw that both of these games, you know,
12:01kind of had this overarching control of these little societies,
12:04there's obviously some commonality between these two things.
12:07Let's call it god games.
12:09Over the next few years,
12:11various Sims titles follow the original game.
12:14Although the disappointing sales of SimEarth,
12:16released in 1990, are attributed to its 220-page manual,
12:20other updates are more successful.
12:22Still, fans remain loyal to the original release
12:25that goes on to sell millions of units.
12:28But for the creator of this virtual world,
12:30there are some very real things in the game that truly hit home.
12:34Well, actually, we lost our home in Oakland Hills fire in 91.
12:40Not too long after that, actually, I started working on SimCity 2000.
12:43And so one of the scenarios I designed for SimCity 2000
12:45was the Oakland Hills scenario.
12:46And, in fact, there's a little map showing where my house is on the map.
12:50And I could replay the scenario and put the whole Oakland fire department around my house.
12:53And, you know, the rest of Oakland would burn down, but my house would be saved.
12:58It's almost kind of a catharsis being able to replay this aspect of my life in the game.
13:03SimCity 2000 is released in late 1993 and has an abundance of new structures.
13:08SimCity players can move their cities into the new game for enhancement.
13:11It's a hit.
13:14The game with no winner consistently ends up a winner.
13:19And so the Sim games, I think, are much more over here in the hobby arena.
13:22I think hobbies are something that a lot of people spend a lot of time and effort on,
13:25but they don't have closure.
13:26They're more about skill.
13:27They're more about creativity.
13:29In the spring of 1996, the Sim franchise sells its three millionth game.
13:34More than 50 websites run by fans of the game are running worldwide.
13:39It's just like a real community.
13:40You go outside and there's a huge diversity of both, you know, form and theme and function.
13:45In July 1997, game giant Electronic Arts announces the purchase of Will Wright's company, Maxis,
13:51for a reported $125 million.
13:54EA persuades Wright to stay on board by promising that he'll get to develop a pet project,
13:58a game that will simulate the behavior of a human family.
14:01That was a little side project he had been working on for several years
14:05after he had sold Maxis to Electronic Arts.
14:08And nobody at EA, like the corporate higher-ups, weren't too keen on the game.
14:12So Wright continues the Sim magic and the money train for new boss EA with SimCopter in 1998.
14:22SimCity 3000 ships more than one million copies in just ten months after its 1999 release.
14:27Wright uses his clout to push for the release of his pet project.
14:31You know, he stuck with it.
14:32And because he was Will Wright, he had had his success with SimCity.
14:35He was able to, look, I really believe in this game.
14:37I want to do this game.
14:37Well, let's publish this game and see what happens.
14:40But not even Will Wright is prepared for what will happen next.
14:54By January 2000, 40-year-old Will Wright's Sim franchise has sold more than eight million games worldwide.
14:59For five years, he has quietly been at work on a pet project,
15:03a simulation game that will bring the game characters in SimCity alive.
15:08It's one of those games that's really difficult to identify, to just say, you know, it fits this genre or
15:14this genre.
15:15It really doesn't.
15:16It's a game all its own.
15:17There are rumors that EA, owner of Wright's company, Maxis, is skeptical of the chances for the game's success.
15:23They saw the design specs.
15:25They saw the write-ups.
15:26And they're like, no one's going to buy this.
15:29This game's not going to be very popular.
15:32But The Sims, released in February 2000, brings new life to The Sims world.
15:38So he's going, I want to design a world in which the game player can have the little people that
15:42they're nurturing.
15:42But I want them to have a jillion choices that are going to change who they become and how people
15:47relate to them.
15:49Little people in your computer.
15:51That's what they are.
15:52Little interactive people.
15:53You can shape their lives, mold them, help them along, let them date.
16:06Let them build relationships, have kids, go scale the career ladder, do whatever they want.
16:18Players can give their Sims a unique appearance or personality, even model characters after family or friends.
16:26Sims communicate in gibberish.
16:28You don't actually hear the words in their conversation.
16:31The sound effects, though, convey emotion.
16:36It's kind of a blah, blah, blah, blah
16:41And they can be excited.
16:56Wee!
16:56among their creations when you've got a sandbox like the sims is to play around
17:01with you'll play around in all kinds of ways although they are a bit self-directed
17:06the real fun is in the directing of their little lives these tiny critters
17:10even exhibit human traits like love and jealousy
17:23their sickness and even death
17:29ea's fears about failure are quickly quelled
17:33just one day after the game is launched websites are already praising the new game's merits
17:38by june it is the top-selling pc game of the year and sells nearly two million copies
17:44fans are addicted some spend up to 30 hours a week playing the game i don't find them to be
17:50any different than those people who are addicted to everquest or addicted to quake or unreal tournament
17:55they have the sims and that's perfectly fine and acceptable it's a great game the sims is the top
18:02grossing computer game of 2000 selling more than 3.3 million copies yet something more real moves
18:09right now the game is becoming kind of almost a tool for autobiographies where people are kind
18:14of chronicling things that happen to them abusive relationships or deaths in the family somebody
18:18did one about 9 11 you know kind of explaining what they were doing that day and how it played
18:23out so it's actually kind of interesting that the game can become a tool of expression like this
18:31when i started the sims i mean the very first thing i wanted you know from step one was to
18:35make
18:35the game very expandable expansion packs arrive in a quick succession it's a license to print money
18:44that's what it is ea should be so happy with him because each and every one comes out and it
18:50just
18:50sells a million of them the expansion pack is just a really sort of good example of how ongoing
18:56the popularity of the sims is there is sims vacation which you can take your sims on vacation
19:06you can actually go out on a date go to a restaurant go to a club afterwards and it's all
19:13about coming
19:14to that moment where all of a sudden the crowd separates and it's just the two of you you share
19:21a romantic kiss sim golf was a project that kind of started as a game about designing a golf course
19:32and grew and grew into a game about people and the way they interact and the comedy of what happens
19:37on a golf course it's more than a game about golf it's almost a game about life and for the
19:42game
19:43about life well that franchise has sold more than 20 million units worldwide and will wright seems to
19:49have created a game that may never end i'm not sure that there is anybody that hasn't heard or played
19:53the sims right now it is now officially the biggest selling pc game of all time it is a phenomenon
19:59of
20:00incredible proportions how will will keep the success coming we're all looking forward to the ps2 version
20:06and the much anticipated online version sims online we'll have to see it is kind of staggering to think
20:12that if you give all these people that are interested in the sims the tools to go create their own
20:17online
20:17world who knows what's going to happen it could be incredibly successful or it could fall flat
20:24out it is going to be a real experiment but the sims phenomenon has legs
20:30his major contribution would be that he is helping to broaden the industry apart from its more narrow
20:36appeal and the more narrow demographic although he has inspired those in the gaming industry will
20:41wright's a major inspiration he really blazed a trail with sim city and his fans around the globe
20:47there is nobody on the planet that is more proud than his very own mother he doesn't brag about
20:53anything i have to twist people's arms to to find out about the different awards he's won
20:59she didn't really care what i did as long as i enjoyed life and you know that was probably the
21:03best
21:04lesson that she ever taught me i think that you know just the fact that i'm happy you know is
21:08her
21:09probably biggest reward
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