Will Wright + Brian Eno

At first I went “huh?” but then I realized it was a match made in heaven.

For those unaware, Will Wright recently announced that Brian Eno — former glam-rocker and father of ambient music — will be creating the soundtrack to Spore. This is, of course, brilliant.

To solidify this relationship in the public eye (and possibly just as an excuse to have a good old chat), EA and Maxis recently held an open seminar in San Francisco, where a theater full of open ears listened to the rantings of two men who in very different fields are doing the exact same thing. Both artists (yes, I’m calling them that) use the idea of cellular automata as a basis for their creations. Cellular automata, I’ve recently learned, refers to a simple initial rule-set that is capable of generating very complex and disparate results. Wright can do a better job of describing this than I can:

“Science is all about compressing reality to minimal rule sets, but generative creation goes the opposite direction. You look for a combination of the fewest rules that can generate a whole complex world which will always surprise you, yet within a framework that stays recognizable…..It’s not engineering and design, so much as it is gardening. You plant seeds.”

Thanks, Will. I dig this concept as a root for game design. The implicit message here is that in generative game design, the designer’s task is not to create a world, but create the tools and rules that allow the player to create through their interaction. The fun and interesting challenge in this is to apply it to games outside of the “sandbox” category. Level design can become inconsequential, for instance, if the player can generate his/her own environments through play.

Tetris is an example of this style of design. The play environment is a direct consequence of the player’s interactions, all built out of the blocks delivered into the player’s control. Although it’s still a great big WIP, I’d like for Sqube to follow a similar design principle.