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看Will Wright如何将你的生活变成下一个模拟内容

发布时间:2015-10-21 10:30:30 Tags:,,,,

作者:Brian Crecente

作为《模拟城市》,《Sim Ants》,《模拟人生》和《孢子》的创造者,Will Wright再次回归模拟类型,不过这次的作品不再是游戏。

5月7日发行于美国,加拿大,新西兰和澳大利亚iOS平台的Thred被称作是Facebook与Pinterest的结合,同时这也是一款基于Wright长久游戏开发所拥有的创造性和非凡见解的手机应用。

同样名为Thred的Wright的公司将这款应用描述为能够提供给人们快速且轻松创造并分享多图故事的工具。基于一个较高层面来看,人们可以使用该应用去创造可以使用一系列带有图像,主题或位置的面板的线程。然后他们还可以使用标贴,文本,对话框,过滤器和链接去帮助自己讲故事。用户能在应用中或通过互联网浏览器去分享图像线程,但是他们也只能在自己的设备上进行创造。

这可能听起来不像是Wright会做的事,但当你与他进行交谈时,你便能解开疑惑。

在他看来,自己生活的所有线程都引出了这一特定的Thred。

Wright在最近的访问中告诉我:“Thred是针对普通人的讲故事平台。我真的非常好奇这些设备对我们的了解。”他边讲着边举起了手机。

他继续说道:“从一个更广的层面来看,我对自己在连接你们与现实的游戏事业过程更好奇。我们的大多数游戏都是现实模拟游戏。所以现在我们拥有足够的数据能够将你们的生活变成一个游戏平台。”

Will Wright(from polygon)

Will Wright(from polygon)

图像小说

游戏并非推动Wright去创造Thred的元素,反而漫画才是。

他说道:“我最初的想法是使用我们收集到的有关用户的数据并逐渐将他们的生活转变成一部图像小说。我们该如何获得有关用户的不同数据资源并将其变成一部视觉小说或视觉记录呢?”

Wright表示,这种想法是源自量化指数或量化生活的概念。就像Wired Magazine的编辑在2007年所描述的那样,这是关于人们能够使用智能设备或便携设备所创造的大量数据(游戏邦注:包括手机上的位置追踪,睡眠状态,浏览历史和运动习惯等等)而更好地了解自己。

Wright说道:“这一部分是源于量化生活。即我们如何了解你的生活并以一种有趣的方式将其呈现在你们面前?”

“我们也是由此开始的。然后我们便添加了更多资源和编辑工具。我们选择使用漫画语言让表达更加简单,同时还添加了风格过滤器。”

Thred的总经理Katherine提到他们的另一个灵感是来自YouTube。

她说道:“它们改变了分销模式,而我们的专注点是基于创造性和消耗做到这些。”

Wright认为,他们的理念是去创造一个不只是用于反应用户的身份,同时也是作为其组成部分的手机核心平台。

他说道:“Pinterest就像你的衣橱或房子的装饰。这里有着能够代表我自己的东西。你并不是真正在使用Pinterest讲故事,这就像是一些包裹着你自己的东西,如视觉剪贴簿,但是上面的所有内容都不是特别针对我自己,这都是一些表面内容。”

“Thred成为了你的身份中的一部分。”

线程

我已经使用了Thred一周,这个早前版本还没有完整应用中一些附加内容。这是一种非常有趣的体验,这非常适合没有多少时间或兴趣去挖掘更深层次内容的我们这代人。乍看之下它就像你所关心的生活或世界。但是应用中那些可扫描的纸牌却有可能将你带向更深入的理念或故事探索。

我是从创造开始的。

轻敲图标能够创造一个全新的流。然后我会选择我在Games For Change所获得的图像。我快速调整了图像的大小去匹配长方形纸牌,然后沿着纸牌上方的黑色背景去设置文本“Games For Change”。然后我添加了第二张纸牌,这是关于Prince Fahad Al-Said的介绍纸牌。我添加了他的描述图像,即他讲话的特写,他接受访问的图像,一位荷兰开发者Ramixxxx正在准备讲话以及Prince在准备我们的访问的截图。完成这些后,我在第一张纸牌的评价中创造了一些标签,然后点击图标在社区中分享自己的Thred。

Thred(from polygon)

Thred(from polygon)

在我的第二个创造内容中,我选择了来自之前参加乐高艺术展上的一些图像。然后我创造了一个关于自己的小狗的Thred,并使用了漫画过滤器以及一些预先创造好的标贴(游戏邦注:如“OMG”,“WTF”和“Yaaasssss!”)进行分配。

在过去的一周,我使用Thred选择了几张来自《心灵杀手2》原型视频的图像,并将视频变成幻灯片;我创造了一个有关尼泊尔地震的Thred, 并以捐赠做结尾。而我在昨天晚上创造的最后一个Thred则是对于Polygon每天故事的再现。我选择了每个故事和图像并配上了剪短描述,同时还添加了故事链接。

Wright说道:“在某种意义上,每个人都会因为这些数字服务而抛下这一数字浪潮。对于我来说,真正有趣的部分在于这些数据都是关于我自己想要讲述的故事。例如我的一次旅行,我的生日,以及当某件事发生时我在哪里等等。”

“只要轻敲几次键盘,我便能将这些内容呈现在面板上。”

我并不精通Thred,但是很快地我便能从创造一本精致的相簿转向为玩家创造有用的新闻概要。除此之外还有很多值得体验的内容。

因为一些强大的附加内容,这一应用变得更有趣—-其中最重要的附加内容便是通过书签和链接形式去连接不同的Thred。基于这样的附加内容,我们还迎来了分支故事叙述概念。

超级有趣的俱乐部

2009年的时候我有幸和Wright展开了交谈,也是在这一年他离开了艺电和Maxis。

我们当时谈论了他的童年以及他是如何在蒙特梭利的教育系统影响下(不仅影响了他的世界观,同时还影响了他创造东西的方式)成长起来。

那时候我是这么写的:“Wright的最大成就不是像《孢子》中的玩具,《模拟人生》中的数字模型或《模拟城市》中的规划城镇那样去呈现世界。而是他拥有激发玩家的想象力与灵感的能力。他创造的不只是游戏,还是值得探索的空间。”

基于蒙特梭利方法,Wright的设计方式是集成的。他并不是像为其他人设计能够创造个人体验的工具那样去设计游戏,电视节目或应用。

离开艺电后他的第一次冒险便是创建Stupid Fun Club工作室,他也是在这里实践着自己的各种理念。

他说道:“我运行了Stupid Fun Club大概4年时间。我们尝试着了各种领域的各种项目,包括玩具,电视节目等等。我们与Current TV合作了一个电视节目。而现在我想要再次回到软件上,特别是应用软件。”

“所以我们选择关闭Stupid Fun Club,但它仍会作为一家空壳公司存在着,而大多数来自Stupid Fun Club的员工都成为了Syntertainment的创始成员。”

Will Wright创造了另一款游戏?

在采访中途我问了Wright一个最显著的问题:为什么回到软件中并不是回到游戏创造中?

他再次引用了自己的iPhone,他是这么回答的:“我与这台设备拥有许多可延伸的关系。这比我从看了《星际迷航》后便一直梦想着拥有Tricorder还酷。我真的非常惊叹它竟然无所不能,并且它还非常了解我。”

“即使是在(游戏)软件上,我也越来越好奇用户创造性,并且一直努力为玩家创造一些定制化内容。这也将我带向了”我该如何将你的生活(你所了解的一切,你身边发生的事,你的照片等等有关你的生活的数据)变成一些具有娱乐性的内容呢?”

Wright并不确定自己想要创造什么内容,他只是不希望自己所创造的内容像公共设施一般,而它也将模糊内容创造与消费之间的界线。

他说道:“将我的生活变成一种数据资源是非常有趣的。也许这并不是关于我的一天或个人生活。但这却是关于我的兴趣。”

所以他们想出了线程的概念和Thred,这也是遵循着某个人的一连串想法。

他说道:“在某种意义上,Thred就像一个共享的调色板或者一张共享的画布。比起作为一个大陆的无数岛屿之一,它也将突显自己的作用。我们总是希望能在手机上快速消费并浏览某些内容,这是第一步。而第二步便是提供创造内容的最酷的方式。”

Will Wright创造了另一款,游戏?

Thred真正的秘密武器在于它回答了我关于Wright及其游戏开发的问题。

“你是否认为你将再次创造一款游戏?”

Wright认真地说道:“这是取决于你关于游戏的定义。”

他说道:“我认为自己对于如何将人们的个人生活以及我们所获得的相关信息转变成游戏平台非常感兴趣。我们能够将其变成怎样的娱乐形式呢?很多人都认为这是对于游戏的延伸。但也有很多人认为Facebook是一款游戏不是吗。”

“在某种情况下,我觉得Thred就像是将《模拟人生》带到现实生活中。现在我们能够将生活量化到某个点上。而《模拟人生》便拥有这些功能,即能够量化我有多饿,多累,多无聊,我们也可以在那里模拟玩家的小小生活。在这里你拥有现实的生活,而我们也收集着有关你的生活的数据并记录它们。虽然现在我们只拥有少量的数据,当我们深入可佩带式设备时,我们便能够获得更多有关你每日生活的数据。”

“你将比在任何模拟内容中得到更多量化,这也是我为何会认为这是一个面向游戏的丰富平台。”

最初的游戏体验是来自分支。Wright告诉我,人们已经在Thred上玩了简单版本的选择你自己的冒险游戏,并在阅读程序选择的推动下创造了一些分支故事。

然后Wright开始有点担心他最新的创造了。

Wright说道:“在经过一段时间后,现在的我非常感兴趣的一个方向便是我们正在记录你一天又一天所做的事。我认为一旦我们足够了解玩家和用户,我们便能够开始预测他们下一周或两周可能做的事,并以此去讲述故事,也就是我们所谓的分支故事。”

对此我感到非常困惑:“所以你能告诉我你未来的故事吗?”

Wright回答道:“是的,我们会以一种分支形式呈现出来,这将进一步划分你的生活。在某种意义上,你拥有一棵关于你今天,明天或下周可能会做什么的分支树,然后你将进一步去探索。你可以从这棵树上选择自己想要探索的一片树叶。”

“现在我所描述的流是通过着眼于你的数据,你的行为,我们看到你所做的事,而创造出来的有关你的模拟。这也是我们所认为的你是怎样的人,你对什么感兴趣以及你可能做些什么。现在继续运行该模拟,去看看它们能做什么吧。”

“所以这是真的关于对你的了解,然后将你置于一种假设的状态并找出在一个故事中可能会发生什么。”

Wright表示,Thred有可能通过不同镜头重新诠释你的真实生活,就好像“在这里你将作为一名海盗而生活。”

Will Wright正在创造另一款游戏!

我尝试了第三次,这一次我问了Wright他是否认为自己将再一次创造一款“传统的电子游戏”。

他说道:“对于我的生活我并未作出特定的计划,就像说‘我不会再制作游戏’或‘我会继续这么做’。我会按照自己的兴趣朝不同方向前进。”

他再次应用了自己的手机并说道:“我认为现在最有趣的事(我不知道是否是在全世界范围内还是只在技术领域)是这些内容快速变得如此强大,如此个人化且相互联系。”

现在Wright正享受着自己最喜欢的开发部分:看着人们体验着他帮忙创造的内容。

他说道:“这是我在致力于任何一款游戏时最喜欢的一部分。发行游戏后重新回去看看用户是如何体验这些内容。”

“对于应用市场,我们正处于一个较有利的位置。我认为我们许多主要开发内容都将变成发行后的更新内容。”

Marketing_1_-_Multi_Panel(from polygon)

Marketing_1_-_Multi_Panel(from polygon)

尽管他仍然不得不透过游戏制作人的视角去看待创造,但Wright的主要兴趣还是在于人们透过游戏或应用所讲的故事。

“我认为游戏开始像我们生活中那些普遍存在的故事叙述一样发展着。当你想到游戏时,你可能会去看一部2个小时的电影,或者到星巴克跟朋友讲一个2分钟的故事。这些都是故事叙述形式。”

“我认为游戏正以同样的方式扩展着,即会触及一些非常有深度的内容,如坐在Xbox前好几个小时的体验,或一些无关紧要的内容。”

“任何人都可以讲故事,但有很多人认为他们不可能创造一款游戏。当你到达这一水平时,添加一些超链接到有关你的生活的图像中便有可能将其变成一款游戏,如此任何人便都能够制作一款非常简单的游戏。”

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转发,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

HOW WILL WRIGHT IS TURNING YOUR LIFE INTO HIS NEXT SIMULATION

By Brian Crecente

Will Wright, renowned creator of SimCity, Sim Ants, The Sims and Spore, is back with another simulation of sorts, but this time it’s not a game.

Thred, which launches today on iOS in the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, is best described as Facebook meets Pinterest in a mobile-only app fueled by the creativity and unusual insights of Wright’s long history in game development.

Wright’s company, also named Thred, describes the app as a content platform which gives people the tools needed to quickly and easily create and share multi-image stories. On a very high level, a person uses the app to create a thred using a series of panels with images, themes or locations. They can then apply stickers, text, word balloons, filters and links to help tell a story. The thread of images can be shared within the app or through a web viewer, but creation only happens on your device.

ALL OF THE THREADS OF HIS LIFE HAS BEEN LEADING TO THIS PARTICULAR THRED.

It doesn’t sound like something Wright would be into, let alone a game or simulation in any sense of the word, until you talk to the developer.

To hear him talk, all of the threads of his life has been leading to this particular Thred.

“Thred is really a story-telling platform for regular people,” Wright tells me during a recent interview Polygon’s New York offices. “I was really interested in how these devices know so much about us,” he adds holding up his iPhone.

“In a more broader sense I got much more interested over the course of my career in games that connect you to reality,” he says. “Most of my games are reality simulations. We are at the point now that we have enough data to turn your life into a gaming platform.”

GRAPHIC NOVELS

Gaming wasn’t the initial metaphor that inspired Wright to help create Thred, comics were.

“My initial conception was to take the data we have about you and start turning your life it into a graphic novel,” he says. “How do we take these different sources of data about you and turn it into a visual story or visual record?”

That spark of an idea was born of the concept of quantimetrics or the quantified self, Wright says. The idea, as described by Wired Magazine editors in 2007, is that people could use the vast amounts of data created by smart devices and wearables — from location tracking in phones to sleep patterns and browsing history and exercise habits — to better know themselves.

“Part of this initiated by the quantified self thing,” Wright says. “How do we take your life and reflect it back at you in a cool and interesting way?

“That’s how it started. Then we started adding more sources and editing tools We kind of took the language of comics tried to make it super simple and add style filters.”

Katherine de Leon, general manager at Thred, says another inspiration for the app was YouTube.

“They revolutionizes distribution, our focus is on doing that with creation and consumption,” she says.

The idea, Wright says, was to create a mobile centric platform that wasn’t just a reflection of your identity, but part of it.

“Pinterest is something people curate, like a wardrobe or decorating your house, ” he says. “There things represent me. You don’t really tell stories with Pinterest, it’s like things you wrap around yourself, like visual scrapbooking, but almost nothing on it is specifically about me, it’s all external content.

“Thred becomes a part of your identity.”

THREDDING

I’ve been using Thred for about a week now, an early version missing some of the bells and whistles of the now-live app. It’s an interesting experience, one that seems perfectly suited for a generation with little time or interest to spend digging deep into things. It’s life at a glance, the world at a glance, anything you care about, if you can find it, at a glance. But — and this is what gives it power — if a Thred is well-designed, those scannable cards can lead to much deeper explorations of ideas or stories.

I started by creating.

Tapping on the icon to create a new stream, I selected a picture I took at Games For Change. I quickly resized it to make the horizontal image fit in the rectangular card and then dropped the text “Games For Change” across the black backdrop of the top of the card. Then I added a second card, this one of Prince Fahad Al-Said’s introduction at the conference. I added pictures of his presentation, a close up of him speaking, another of him being interviewed, a shot of Dutch developer Ramixxx preparing his talk and closed with a shot of the Prince preparing for our interview . Once finished, I created a few hashtags in the comment of the first card and then clicked on the icon to share my Thred creation with the community.

In my second creation, I dropped a bunch of images from a Lego art exhibit I attended into a Thred. Then I created a Thred about my dogs, applying a comic book filter to each one and kicking it off with a bunch of pre-created stickers that says “OMG,” WTF?” and “Yaaasssss!”

Over the week or so I used Thred to pull images from the Alan Wake 2 prototype video, turning the video into a slide presentation; I created a Thred about the Nepal earthquake and ended it with ways to donate. My final Thred, created last night, was a recreation of Polygon’s daily story round-up. I took each story, found an image, popped a short description on top of it and added a link to the appropriate story.

“In some sense everyone is leaving this digital wake behind them from these digital services,” Wright says. “To me, the real interesting part is the fact that there is all of this data about me that I want to tell stories about. This is my vacation or this is my birthday or this is where I was when this famous thing happened.

“With a few taps, I’ve turned those things into panels.”

I was no Thred master, but in a short time I went from creating a glorified photo album to producing a useful news round-up for gamers. And there was plenty more to experiment with.

The app went live today with some powerful additions, chief of which is the ability to connect Threds to one another by bookmarking and linking them. And with that addition comes the concept of branching storytelling.

SUPER FUN CLUB

The last time I had a chance to speak with Wright for any meaningful length of time was in 2009, the same year he left Electronic Arts and studio Maxis.

We talked about his childhood and how growing up under a Montessori education system influenced not only his way of viewing the world, but how he created things.

“Wright’s greatest achievement isn’t delivering the universe as toy in Spore, the digital dollhouses of The Sims or even the planned towns of SimCity,” I wrote at the time. “It’s his ability to touch a gamer’s imagination and inspire their intellect. To create not just games, but places and spaces of exploration.”

As with Montessori’s methods, Wright’s approach to design is collaborative. He doesn’t design games or television shows or apps as much as he designs tools in which other people can create their own experiences.

His first venture outside of Electronic Arts was the Stupid Fun Club, a sort of think tank that played around with a variety of ideas and creations.

“I ran Stupid Fun Club for about four years,” he says. “We did a number of experimental projects all over the place: toy stuff, TV stuff, a few other things. We did a TV show with Current TV. But then at that point I wanted to get back into software, particularly app software.

“So we kind of closed down Stupid Fun Club, but it still exists as a shell company, and most of the people from Stupid Fun Club became the founding members of Syntertainment,” also known as Thred.

WILL WRIGHT MAKE ANOTHER GAME?

The most obvious question to ask Wright came about halfway through our interview: Why isn’t his return to software a return to creating video games?

Wright, in his way, sort of circles the question before not really answering it.

“A lot of it had to do with the relationship I ended up having with this device,” he says, again referring to his iPhone. “This ended up being cooler than a Tricorder, which was always my dream device from Star Trek. It’s amazing to me all of the things it can do, but also what it knows about me.

“Even in [game] software, I was getting much more interested in user creativity and making things more customized to the player. That drove me to this idea of, ‘How do I take your life — you know, events, photos, data from your life — and turn it into something entertaining?’”

Wright wasn’t yet sure what he wanted to create, just that he didn’t want it to feel like a utility, and that it would blur the line between content creation and consumption.

“Having my life be extremely available as a data source was really interesting to me,” he says. “Maybe it’s not about my day or personal life. It’s about my interests.”

So they came up with the concept of threads and Thred, a way of, as Wright put it, following along the path of someone’s train of thought.

“In some sense Thred is a shared palette, a shared canvas. Rather than being a million little islands of content, it will become deeply linked within itself,” he says. “We wanted something extremely rapid to consume and browse on mobile, that was step one. Step two was providing the coolest way to create that content.”

WILL WRIGHT MAKE ANOTHER, GAME?

The real secret sauce of Thred, the ability to branch and link them together, is also, it turns out, the answer to my question about Wright and game development. Which I ask again.

“Do you think you are ever going to make a game again?”

“That,” Wright says completely seriously, “depends on what you call a game.”

“I think I’m very interested in how I turn people’s personal life, the data we have about it, into a gaming platform,” he says. “What kind of entertainment could we turn that into? A lot of people would consider that a stretch for a game. But for a lot of people, Facebook is a game.

“In some sense, Thred feels to me like taking The Sims into real life. We are able to quantify your life now to a point that didn’t used to exist. The Sims have these quantities about how hungry I am, tired, bored, etc and we simulate their little lives in there. Here you are living your real life and we are actually collecting data about your life and recording it. Right now we just have a few data feeds, but as we get into wearables and all of these other things, we’re going to have lots and lots of data about your every single day.

“You will be quantified far more than any sim ever was, which is why I think it is really a rich platform for gaming.”

That initial taste of gaming comes from branching. Wright tells me that people are already playing around with simple versions of pick-your-own-adventure games in Thred, creating branching stories driven by reader choice.

And then Wright gets a little scary, a little Minority Report about the potential future of this, his latest creation.

“One of the directions I’m very interested in down the road — and again this is like a platform — is right now we are recording what you do day after day after day,” Wright says. “I think once we learn enough about the players, the users, we’ll be in a place to possibly start predicting what is going to happen to you next week or two weeks from now and telling stories about that, branching stories.”

I’m confused: “So tell your future story?”

“Yeah, well, in a branching format, these are branches your life could take,” Wright says. “In some sense, you have a branching tree of things you might be doing today, tomorrow, next week, and you can turn that into exploration. There can be a leaf in that tree that you can choose to find.

“The stream I’m describing right now is created by looking at your data, your behavior, what we’ve seen you do, and using that to, in some sense, create a sim of you. This is who we think you are, what you’re interested in, what you might do. Now running that sim forward, and seeing what they do.

“So it’s really about understanding you, and then putting you in hypothetical situations and finding out what happens and unfolding it in a story.”

Or, Wright says, Thred could reinterpret your real life through different lenses, like “Here’s your life as a pirate.”

WILL WRIGHT, MAKE ANOTHER GAME!

I try a third time, this time asking Wright if he thinks he’ll ever make a “traditional video game” again.

“I don’t have a master plan for my life in terms of ‘I will not do games’ or ‘I will do this,’” he says. “My interest kind of drives me in different directions.

“I think the most interesting thing I see happening right now — I don’t know if in the world, but just in technology — has been how powerful and personal and networked these things have become so rapidly,” he says, referring to his phone again.

For now, Wright is enjoying his favorite part of development: seeing what people do with the thing he helped create.

“That was always my favorite part of any game I worked on,” he says, “after shipping it, stepping back and seeing what the users do with it.

“With the app market, we are in a much better position to react to that. I think a lot of our primary development is going to be post-launch.”

While he still can’t help but see his creation through the eyes of a game maker (throughout our interview he keeps calling “users,” “players” and then correcting himself), Wright’s chief interest seems to be in the stories people tell, be they through a game or through an app.

“I think gaming is starting to move alongside storytelling as something that is so thoroughly ubiquitous in our lives,” he says. “When you think about it, you might go see a two-hour movie, or stop at Starbucks and tell a friend a two-minute story. Those are both forms of storytelling.

“I think gaming is starting to spread out in the same way, to where we have aspects of gaming that can be super deep, like sitting-in-front-of-the-Xbox-for-hours experiences, or something super light or something that is even tangentially flavoring some other experience.

“Anyone can tell a story, but a lot of people think they can’t make a game. When you get to the level of this, where adding a few hyperlinks to some images about your life can be turned into a game, then anyone can make a game, a very simple game.”(source:polygon)

 


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