Will Wright departing from the Maxis team

April 10, 12:06 AMBaltimore PC Game ExaminerJace DeVeillan

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Few names in PC Gaming History... or gaming history at all, have the familiarity of the name "Will Wright".  Creator of the utterly countless Sim games, (Sim City, The Sims, Spore, etc.) Wright and his team at Maxis (currently owned by EA) have been responsible for some of the most intricate and best-selling games for nearly two decades.  Even non-fans of the sim genre are aware of his works, and anyone who attended grade school within the last 20 years probably remembers all school computer labs having at least one copy of the earlier versions of Sim City (whereupon we promptly cheated, built up a sprawling metropolis, and leveled it with Godzilla).

Will Wright is leaving the team at Maxis to lead "Stupid Fun Club," an organization that was created in 2001 (with a disappointing lack of a space odyssey) by robotics hobbyists, and has since then evolved into what they call an "Entertainment Think Tank".  IGN describes the group as such:

Stupid Fun Club is the creativity incubation office and team of renown videogame creator Will Wright. Following Wright's departure from Maxis, The Club (originally founded in 2001 by robotics hobbists) transformed itself into "an entertainment think tank developing new intellectual properties to be deployed across multiple fronts including video games, movies, television, the Internet and toys."

The Stupid Fun Club is primarily owned by Will Wright and EA, with other shareholders joining them as an unnamed third party on the board of directors.  Currently, EA will hold the rights to develop any video games that are arise out of Stupid Fun Club.

IGN has posted a very in-depth interview with Maxis VP Lucy Bradshaw, who stressed that this would not be a radical change, but instead, an "evolution of the existing relationship between Will Wright and EA", leaving open the strong possibility that future sims and spore titles will involve collaboration with the parting developer, while he pursues broader horizons of entertainment development.

An interesting side note: the Stupid Fun Club website (aside from being a bit confusing and including a few wingdings-titled buttons that seem to blast the user with colorful shapes and planets) describes the ideas being developed there include not only video games and movies, online environments and storytelling media, but also "fine home care products."  A very different horizon, indeed!

I suggest that anyone with a strong interest in this development read the full interview.  It is very informative.