There are only a few true geniuses when it comes to creating games, and Will Wright certainly is in that category. He"s the man that made running a city an obsesion for millions with the SimCity series, then later he created The Sims, an even bigger hit that let players control the intimate lives of people in (more or less) ordinary lives. Wright stumbled a bit with his last game Spore: while the creature generating technology behind this life and evolution-themed game was spectacular the actual gameplay experience was shallow for the most part.
Now VentureBeat reports that Wright is back making games again. Specifically, he has come up with a concept called HiveMind, which is also the name of the new startup company that Wright has founded. Details about the game itself are scarce but Wright says that HiveMind is designed to use information from a person"s life as part of the game design.
Wright says that the game will actually learn about a person"s life, including his or her"s likes and dislikes. Wright says, "How can we make a system that understands enough about you and gives you situational awareness? It could take into account what time of day it is, where you are, how much money is in your pocket. Imagine if you could open Google Maps and it shows you things that are interesting to you on the map."
Obviously this kind of information sharing might scare some people, thinking that there could be some privacy issues if a game had to learn about yourself in order to generate its gameplay ideas. But Wright says that people, especially younger citizens who are used to sharing info online, would respond well if offering information about themselves would create entertainment for them.
More details on HiveMind will be revealed later including its platforms. While the game sounds more like a concept than a real game design at this point, we are talking about Will Wright, the man who managed to create a massive game franchise out of controlling virtual people. Anything he comes up with will certainly be interesting, at least.