Will Wright is famous for creating The Sims series which mimics reality and now he is working on HiveMind which "incorporates" reality.
Wright is still vague on the details, but conveyed that HiveMind will pioneer "personal gaming," a term he coined to describe games that cater themselves to the player. "Rather than craft a game like FarmVille for players to learn and play," Wright said, "we learn about you and your routines and incorporate that into a form of game play."
The game's idea came to Wright after enjoying dinner with a group with car enthusiasts then finding out that this group holds such meeting every month. Wright realized that there was no good way for him to find about this event, and so he decided to create HiveMind to fill this gap.
"If I knew about these events, my life would be a lot more interesting," he said. "How do we expose you to these events, these things? 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."
Instead of viewing the game as a little distraction from real - boring - life, Wright intends for HiveMind to "make reality more interesting to you."
It seems to us the HiveMind is more likely to end up as a mix of Facebook, Foursquare and Yelp, with a sprinkle of A.I. on top. We can't really see how this would work as a game, but again we are not that fond of The Sims and it has sold more than a 100 million copies. (for the whole franchise)
"How do we get you more engaged in reality rather than distract you from it?" was the question Wright left unanswered, and probably he is still looking for the answer himself. Wright admitted that he didn't iron all the details out yet, and that he revealed the idea only to attract developers who are interested in pursuing it with him.
