Designing a Game with Will Wright

You don’t need to know a lot about games to design them. You just need to know how to play.

Will wright teaches Game Design and Theory, Masterclass

I’ve fallen a bit behind in my Masterclass program because I was writing a mega article about sex tech. It turns out that it’s pretty hard to learn one new thing a week while trying to do other things at the same time — who’d have thought???

In any case, I sped through Will Wright’s Masterclass on Game Design and Theory and had a lot of fun doing so, which was surprising because I actually don’t play computer games. I used to play Tetris, if that counts, and Solitaire on my big old Windows desktop as a teenager. Oh, and Space Invaders on my cousin’s computer during the summer holidays. But that’s about the extent of it. I only did this Masterclass because I knew a bunch of people would be interested in it. However, the fact that I don’t play games turned out to be just fine — and maybe even an advantage.

Generating Ideas

Wright finds ideas for games everywhere; the world around him, books, interdisciplinary fields. He does not conceive of them in relation to other games. His life…