Topic: Will Wright quits Maxis to start the Stupid Fun Club

[Parkaboy]

Will Wright just posted this in the Sporum: http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/25461.page

Hey everyone.

There's a little press release going out today as we speak (well actually I'm not speaking, I'm typing... (and I guess you're not even listening, you're reading (unless you're having your new Kindle read this to you in which case you are listening) but you're definitely not reading this "as" the press release is going out, and I'm certainly typing this hours before the fact....) anyway. (I suck at writing)

The gist of the story is that I'm leaving EA (well, not really, I'll explain) to start (well, not quite start, it's actually been around for quite a while in a rather different form) ... let's say dive into a new venture, The Stupid Fun Club. The Stupid Fun was actually started many years ago by myself and my friend Mike Winter, we met while competing in Robot Wars and Battlebots. It was apparent to us that one day the robots would take over the world and we decided we wanted to be on the winning side, so our initial charter was to do whatever we could to usher in our new mechanical overlords.

Along the way we ending up building and prototyping a lot of... odd stuff. People would come by our shop and get interested in this stuff for various reasons. Some of this stuff sparked new creative ideas, even (*gasp*) ideas that may have "commercial, entertainment value" (this is how you talk when you've been around lawyers and MBA's too long).

At some point we started showing some of this stuff to the people at EA. They got excited by the prospect of us pursuing these projects commercially (or that's what they said anyway, I think they just want to be on the winning side of the coming robotic revolution as well). So we started talking to them (EA, not the robots, though we do talk to them as well, but the robot responses are cryptic at best) about getting involved and investing in The Stupid Fun Club (we asked the robots first but they're all broke).

So as things worked out I decided to jump into my work at the club more or less full time. But at The Stupid Club we'll be working on new games (along with EA) as well as other kinds of projects with different partners.

I can't talk about specific projects coming out of SFC just yet (alas, the robots won't let me), but as things develop I'll find a way to keep those of you who are interested informed about what we're doing (but not with a blog...I'll never have a blog). A major aspect of the projects I've worked on has always been the player community, that won't change.

-Will Wright

Update: here's the site of the new studio: http://www.thestupidfunclub.com

[gec05]

This is great. As long as WW is able to make something new and great this should be fascinating. I think Maxis will get along fine without WW, he may even stop by every now and then.

http://www.thestupidfunclub.com/home.html

[smjjames]

At least he is going to be out of EA's grasp.

[Snork]

Maybe now we'll get a game that's actually worth the hype.
Go SFC!

[gec05]

Stupid Fun Club will be a menagerie of entertainment, not just games. At this point, SFC will be pitching a TV show and a few experiments with social robotics.

[Inkling]

Here's hoping they can come up with another show like Battlebots.

[Techleo]

   Hopefully he has fun at his new job! The sad part is this means since Maxis retains the rights to Simcity , we wont see a WW Simcity any time soon. Which is fine and good I suppose. I mean we have companies like Monte Cristo trying there best at CitiesXL. Things change.

[helio-G]

So "quits Maxis to start the Stupid Fun Club" is Code for SPORE was a complete failure and he got fired. Makes senses.

[gec05]

I really like how Cities XL looks though. Definitely gonna buy that one for sure.

...

Oh, Will...

[PatMan33]

Doesn't quite have the same ring to it. I don't know though, Mr. Wright hasn't exactly made any games that wow me in quite a long time so I'm not really sure if this is even relevant.

[DarkDragon]

And the good old Maxis is reborn! (with a different name but whatever, I want a robot building/fighting game NAW)

[Petike]

So "quits Maxis to start the Stupid Fun Club" is Code for SPORE was a complete failure and he got fired. Makes senses.

They are giving him even more money, to officially do his hobby, and build ROBOTS!
If that is to be fired, I want to be fired like that too. 


Edit: Also, Spore was still the 6th on the USA PC games best-selling list, even last week. OMG!!!!!! What a failure!!!!444!44!four!four4!!4

[Yannick]

Smells like late aprils fools.

[LadyM]

At least he is going to be out of EA's grasp.

Not quite, EA still owns half of it.

[Beatnuki]

Well, I'll be the father's brother of a primate-like lifeform. I didn't see this coming.

I have a good feeling about it though! It seems like there's more room for maneuvre within this sphere of influence. Best of luck to Will and the rest of the Stupid Fun Clubbers out there, I'm looking forward to what kinds of things come from this endeavour.