Will Wright's Plans for Hivemind

Extracted 08MAR2012 from http://venturebeat.com/2011/11/18/interview-will-wright-speaks-his-hivemind/

Will Wright’s games from SimCity to The Sims have sold more than 100 million units. That’s why people are paying attention to his new startup and game idea, HiveMind. The Berkeley, Calif.-based company is focused on “personal gaming,” or a kind of title that can customize itself for the individual player, taking into account aspects of a player’s real-life situation as elements of the game...

This isn’t really a platform-based concept, although a lot of  it will be happening on mobile devices. A big part of it is how can we learn enough about the player to start crafting games about their real life.

It is something that is with you all the time, especially with your real life, almost like you are Sim. Your regular routines, your locations, your friends can all be incorporated into a form of game play. And a big part of this really, I think, is how do we make reality more interesting to you. What we are saying is, how do make a game that gets you more engaged in reality rather than distract you from it? And so we use reality as the basis of the game play and a lot of these opportunities that surround you...

A part of this is really getting a deep relationship with the user, really understanding a lot about them and even designing games to where we are actually specifically trying to learn aspects of the user that are not really captured by anybody else. It may capture issues with their psychology, their interests, their background, their history, their social networks, etc. We can use those to build a number of different gaming applications around you...

We’re looking at how we build much deeper, more involving gaming experiences. But we build them out of the real world rather than the fantasy worlds...

A lot of it is going to be not just this system and you but it’s also going to be getting your friends involved.