William Ralph Wright was born on January 20, 1960. He is an American video game designer and helped start the game development company Maxis, which later became part of Electronic Arts. In 2009, he left Electronic Arts to lead Stupid Fun Club Camp, an entertainment group where Wright and Electronic Arts are the main owners.

The first computer game Wright designed was Raid on Bungeling Bay, released in 1984. However, SimCity made him famous. Maxis published SimCity, which Wright co-founded with Jeff Braun. Wright continued to create games based on the idea of simulation, including SimEarth and SimAnt.

Wright has received many awards for his work in game design. He is best known for creating The Sims series. Maxis developed the first The Sims game in 2000. This game led to many follow-up versions, including The Sims 2, The Sims 3, The Sims 4, and their expansion packs. His most recent game, Spore, was released in September 2008. It features gameplay based on the process of evolution and scientific progress. The game sold over 400,000 copies within three weeks of its release.

In 2007, Wright became the first game designer to receive the BAFTA Fellowship. This award had only been given to people in the film and television industries before.

Early life and education

Wright was born on January 20, 1960, in Atlanta, Georgia. His father was a plastics engineer, and his mother was an actress. He attended a Montessori school until he was nine years old. In the same year his father died of leukemia, Wright moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to live with his mother and younger sister. He graduated from Baton Rouge Episcopal High School at the age of 16.

Wright became interested in game design as a child when he played the Chinese strategy board game Go. He once said the game has "a simple set of rules" but "the strategies in it are so complex" and that he was "fascinated with the idea that complexity can come out of such simplicity." As a teenager, he enjoyed playing board wargames like PanzerBlitz.

After high school, Wright studied architecture at Louisiana State University for two years. He then transferred to Louisiana Tech University, where he changed his major to mechanical engineering. He was especially interested in robotics, space exploration, military history, and language arts. In the fall of 1980, he moved to The New School in New York City. During this time, he lived in an apartment in Greenwich Village and spent his free time "searching for spare parts in local electronics surplus stores."

While in New York City, Wright bought an Apple II+ computer and taught himself Applesoft BASIC, Pascal, and assembly language to create Conway's Game of Life. After one year at The New School, Wright completed five years of college without earning a degree and returned to Baton Rouge.

Career

While other game designers, such as Bill Budge and Nasir Gebelli, were creating video games for Apple computers, Wright chose to develop games for the newer Commodore 64. His first game was the helicopter action game Raid on Bungeling Bay (1984). In this game, the player flies over islands and drops bombs to complete missions.

Wright discovered that he enjoyed designing the islands for Raid on Bungeling Bay more than playing the game itself. This experience inspired him to create a new game that would eventually become SimCity. However, he faced challenges in finding a publisher for the game. The structure of SimCity was influenced by the work of two theorists, Christopher Alexander and Jay Forrester, who studied architecture and urban planning.

Wright is interested in the process of design and how systems can be created. Christopher Alexander, in his book A Pattern Language, described how spatial relationships can be organized into a design grammar. Wright wanted to create a similar approach for complex systems, giving people tools to design complicated things.

In an interview with The Times, Wright said that computers help people expand their imagination. He introduced the idea of a "metabrain," explaining that any system that uses the intelligence of many people can be called a metabrain. Technology is reducing the barriers between people in these systems, allowing computers to collect and share ideas from millions of people. He used the example of Spore, where players create content, and computers decide who to share it with. This process shows how computers can help people work together creatively.

In 1986, Wright met Jeff Braun, an investor interested in the computer game industry, at what Wright called "the world's most important pizza party." Together, they founded Maxis in Orinda, California, in 1987. SimCity (1989) became a major success and is considered one of the most influential computer games ever made. Wright was often featured in computer magazines, including PC Gamer, which listed him in its "Game Gods" section alongside other famous game designers.

After the success of SimCity, Wright created SimEarth (1990) and SimAnt (1991). He also co-designed SimCity 2000 (1993) with Fred Haslam. Maxis continued to develop other "Sim" games, such as SimCopter (1996). While these games were not as popular as SimCity, they helped establish Wright as a creator of "software toys"—games that are not won or lost but can be played for long periods. In 1992, Wright moved to Walnut Creek, California.

Wright is known for his interest in complex adaptive systems. Many of his games, such as SimAnt, SimEarth, and SimCity, were inspired by theories from scientists like E.O. Wilson, James Lovelock, and Jay Forrester. Wright's goal is to give players "possibility spaces," which are simple rules that combine with game elements to create complex designs. All games he helped design follow these principles.

Maxis became a public company in 1995, with revenue of $38 million. The company's stock price reached $50 per share before declining due to financial losses. In 1997, Electronic Arts (EA) purchased Maxis.

After losing his home in a fire in 1991, Wright was inspired to create a game about rebuilding his life. He developed the idea for The Sims, a game that focuses on individual lives and homes. The game originally started as an architectural design tool called Home Tactics, but it evolved into a game that rates the quality of life in virtual homes. Themes like building homes and landscaping are central to the game.

At Maxis, some leaders were not interested in The Sims, but EA, impressed by Wright's work on SimCity, agreed to publish the game. The Sims was released in 2000 and became Wright's most successful project. It eventually became the best-selling computer game of all time and led to many expansions and spin-offs. Wright also created a multiplayer version called The Sims Online, which was less popular than the original. By 2006, the Sims franchise had earned EA over a billion dollars.

At the Game Developers Conference in 2005, Wright announced Spore, a game that demonstrates ways to reduce the amount of content developers need to create. He hopes to encourage others to take creative risks in game design.

Wright has shared his views on interactive design, saying that he enjoys creating things. He began by building models as a child and later used computers to make dynamic models and behaviors. His goal in game design is to give players tools to create things within a game world and provide context for their creations. He believes that games can help players feel a strong connection to their work if they know their choices are unique.

Wright has also discussed how games can improve education. He believes that the current education system focuses too much on narrow, traditional learning methods and not enough on exploring complex systems or learning from failure. He argues that games teach children to experiment, think creatively, and learn from mistakes, which are important skills for understanding a complex world.

Personal life

Wright lives in Oakland, California. He is an atheist. In 1984, he married artist Joell Jones, and they had a child named Cassidy in 1986. The family lost their home and most records of Wright's early career during the Oakland firestorm of 1991. Wright and Jones separated in 2008. He has since married Anya Zavarzina.

Wright is on the board of trustees of the X Prize Foundation, a non-profit organization that designs and hosts public competitions to encourage technological development that benefits humanity. During the 2008 United States presidential election, Wright donated to the campaigns of Rudy Giuliani and later John McCain.

In 1980, Wright participated in the U.S. Express, a cross-country race that followed The Cannonball Run. He and co-driver Rick Doherty drove a specially equipped Mazda RX-7 from Brooklyn, New York, to Santa Monica, California, in 33 hours and 39 minutes, winning the illegal race. Wright only competed once in the race, which continued until 1983.

Wright collects items from the Soviet space program, including a 100-pound (45 kg) hatch from a space shuttle, a seat from a Soyuz spacecraft, control panels from the Mir space station, and the control console of the Soyuz 23, as well as dolls, dice, and fossils.

Wright used to build competitive robots for BattleBots with his daughter but no longer does. As of November 2006, leftover metal pieces from his BattleBots projects remained in his garage. After his work in BattleBots, Wright studied how people interact with robots.

Wright was a former Robot Wars champion in the Stupid Fun Club, a robotics workshop in Berkeley. One of his robots, "Kitty Puff Puff," designed with his daughter Cassidy, used a roll of tape to trap opponents and prevent them from moving. The technique, called "cocooning," was later banned.