So originallySimCitydidn’t have a mouse-based, point-and-click interface?
No, actually it did. The
Lisa had come out while I
was doing it on the Com-
modore, and I actually had
implemented a cursor-
based system with icons.
The interface was on a
Commodore, but it still
had that iconic, paint-pro-
gram kind of feel. It looked
like MacPaint in a way. So,
in fact, it did have a similar
graphic front end but at a
much lower resolution.
Did the design change much from what you had originally done?
It got more elaborate, more layers were added, and there was higher resolution on the
map, but it had the same basic structure for the simulation and the same basic sets of
tools. But, for instance, there were only roads, there weren’t roads and highways. The
map was 80 by 90, instead of 128 by 128. Of course, the graphics were much lower reso-
lution; they were about four pixels square for a tile, instead of the eventual sixteen. But
the core of the model and the tuning of the model didn’t actually change that much. And
it actually didn’t change all that much forSimCity 2000or 3000.
So Maxis finally got it out to the market by self publishing it?
It’s actually kind of interesting. After we had redone it on the Mac and the Amiga, we
knew we could afford to produce it in the boxes and all that, but we had to have a distrib-
utor. And in fact we came back to Broderbund and showed it to them, and when they
saw the Mac and Amiga versions they were much more impressed. Plus it was years
later, at which point the market was getting into much more interesting games. At that
point they offered to become our distributor, and so we had an affiliate publishing rela-
tionship with Broderbund. We were incurring most of the financial risk because we
were the ones paying for the boxes and all that, so they weren’t really risking that much
on it. The people at Broderbund were really nice people and I hold no grudges against
them at all. They helped us a lot in getting Maxis off the ground. And the Carlstons, the
people who started Broderbund, were my role models for business people. They were
just really nice people to deal with.
Did you come up with the term “software toy”?
I think I did, because I was giving a talk at the Game Developers Conference, way back,
and I decided that would be the name of my talk. It was “Software Toys: The Intersec-
tion of Creativity, Empathy, and...”something. Some high-falutin’ sounding talk.
412 Chapter 22: Interview: Will Wright
SimCity