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6 - Nurturing Lateral Leaps in Game Design

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2012

Constance Steinkuehler
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Kurt Squire
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Sasha Barab
Affiliation:
Arizona State University
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Summary

SimCity

In 1984, Will Wright released his first game – a free-roaming shooting game called Raid on Bungeling Bay. As an unsurprising game in an established genre, Raid was an inauspicious start to a career that later included such innovative titles as The Sims and Spore. Yet Raid provided the backdrop for SimCity, the commercially successful and educationally fruitful game that established Wright as one of the most important game designers working today

In a 2009 interview, Wright recounted the design path he took to get from Raid on Bungeling Bay to SimCity:

Raid on Bungeling Bay was a super shoot ‘em up where you bomb these little islands. I had to create an editor where I could scroll around and create these little worlds to bomb. I found in playing with the editor that I was having a lot more fun creating these worlds than I was blowing them up. After I finished that game, I started kind of playing with the editor, and I started to add a little bit more dynamic to it. I wanted to keep traffic moving on the roads. I wanted to see kinds of dynamic systems operating. So I started reading about city planning. At first, I didn’t find the subject that interesting, but as I started developing very simple simulations of the theories I was reading, it became fascinating to me, because I had a little guinea pig city that I could sit there and experiment and play with.

In an additional interview, also taken from a Will Wright fan site, Wright describes how playing with the Raid editing utility evolved into designing it to be a game.

Type
Chapter
Information
Games, Learning, and Society
Learning and Meaning in the Digital Age
, pp. 49 - 74
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

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References

Barab, S. A.Kling, R.Gray, J. H. 2004 Designing for virtual communities in the service of learningCambridge, EnglandCambridge University PressCrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Davidson, D. 2008 Well Played: Interpreting Prince of Persia: Sands of TimeGames and Culture 3 356CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutchins, E. 1995 Cognition in the wildCambridge, MAMIT PressGoogle Scholar
LoPiccolo, G.Squire, K.Chu, S. 2012
National Materials Advisory Board (NMAB) 2004 Accelerating technology transition: Bridging the valley of death for materials and processes in defense systemsWashington, DCNational Academies Presshttp://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11108&page=8Google Scholar
Papert, S. 1980 Mindstorms: Children, computers, and powerful ideasNew YorkBasic BooksGoogle Scholar
Sirlin, D. 2012
Squire, K. 2008 Video Game–Based Learning: An Emerging Paradigm for InstructionPerformance Improvement Quarterly 21 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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