WILL WRIGHT

I find it refreshing to unplug from it for a while. You kind of forget how deeply you get embedded in it.

On vacation, I totally unplug. I don't bring a laptop with me.

And so from that, I've always been fascinated with the idea that complexity can come out of such simplicity.

In an online community, there's this kind of social economy between the community members. Some people have status because they make cool skins or that's a good website that's visited a lot, but there's no real gameplay there.

Players like to know that they've discovered things that even the designers didn't know were in the game.

A lot of the interesting issues and dynamics within a city occur over things such as socio-economic issues or ethnic issues. But they require a much more elaborate model of human behavior.

Because now it's the fans out there that are entertaining us, the developers, with their creations!

I'm not saying we purposely introduced bugs or anything, but this is kind of a natural result of any complexities of software... that you can't fully test it.

Everybody has a different definition of the good side.

For me, what's a more important question is how we get at least the option of more diverse experiences in this media.

I typically go overboard when I research new projects.

It used to be that you knew your neighbors and maybe your coworkers - the people in your physical vicinity.

And every now and then people find the bugs, and they interpret those as cool failures in the Sims terms. For them it's like a treasure hunt, you know.

The Sims is kind of an interesting case because we had all these expansion packs. We were able to incrementally add on and explore without invading the core dynamic or the core game play.

Also, after people play these Sim games, it tends to change their perception of the world around them, so they see their city, house or family in a slightly different way after playing.

There are a lot of issues that I hope we deal with at some point that we haven't up to now, for various reasons. Some technical, and some more political.

We have spent quite a bit of time considering a good space game, and I can't really say anything at this point, but we are definitely still interested in that area.

Well, I think the camera freedom is something that we've resisted for a long time and feels like probably the biggest stretch. But it has some huge benefits.

The new generation of consoles has as much power to do the kind of games that we do as the PC does.

Yes... well, I used to have a pilot's license.

The console games, as they come out with this new generation, will have a temporary advantage in price performance, but there are still many things you can do on a PC, more conveniently than you can do on a console machine.

The second thing for me, probably a few clicks down, is the idea that The Sims smoothly age and have different concerns and motivations and needs at different age ranges.

I think the idea of having a game based on reality is compelling right off the bat because everyone has some experience with the subject of the game.

The big thing is that we have five percent or less of the hardcore players actively entertaining the other ninety-five percent.

Television is a very different thing from video games. It's kind of hard for me to compare.