Games savant Will Wright has spoken to VentureBeat about his upcoming game, HiveMind. The SimCity, Sims and Spore creator hasn't gone into a huge amount of detail on the game, but it sounds equally sinister and fascinating.
"[HiveMind will] learn about you and your routines and incorporate that into a form of game play,” Wright said. It seems to be aimed at the Facebook and mobile gaming crowd - although platform details haven't been released yet.
HiveMind sounds a touch Googley in its approach, picking up your routines and locations and building up a profile based on what you do, and where. “It is about how we make reality more interesting to you,” Wright said, but then failed to offer any further information.
The game will also match you to similar players. As inspiration for the game, Wright discussed how he randomly came across a meeting of car owners in a restaurant - something that he could have known about through HiveMind.
Only the HiveMind - which is also the name of the company Wright's set up to produce the game - knows how it's going to work as a game, though. If it's mobile-based, it could function as an ARG-type title, somewhere between FourSquare and an online dating service.
Wright's titles have become increasingly ambitious, focusing first on cities, then human interactions and finally on the origins of life itself. Now he seems to be interested in the way real people's brains work. It could be very, very interesting and a revolution in the way we think about and play games. Or it could be a sign that he's gone mad, and he thinks we're his Sims.
