Cool Company, Cool Town

Last week we were lucky enough to be invited to visit Maxis headquarters. OK actually we invited ourselves but that's another story. In case the Maxis name isn't as recognizable to you as it should be, Maxis is the company that brought you Sim City (and every other Sim game thereafter), perhaps one of the top ten or twenty computer games ever made. Maxis is located in Walnut Creek, a medium sized suburb in the Bay Area, nestled just over the hills in the East Bay section of northern California. Being a native of Los Angeles, I always love visiting Walnut Creek, because it reminds me so much of LA. Indeed, Walnut Creek is rather unlike the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area. It's clean and upscale, has a nice mall, is a pleasant place to live, has a lot of big chain eateries, and...gasp!...actually has places to park your car!

Yes, everything about Walnut Creek reminds me of what it was like growing up near Los Angeles before I moved up to Berkeley. In short, Walnut Creek (just like Southern California) is exactly how you'd design your town if you were playing Sim City. And how fitting that the company that created the game should locate itself there.

The Sims includes an architecture tool...

...for building your house!

Will Wright

The genius behind Sim City and Maxis' upcoming game, The Sims, is Will Wright. When I arranged this visit with Maxis I didn't think I'd actually meet Will again (I saw him briefly at E3), so it was quite a shock to me that Will conducted the demo for us himself. In our two hour chat I learned a lot about the Sims, but also that Will Wright is a very intelligent, articulate person with a great body of knowledge about a variety of different subjects. Obviously he knows some of the finer aspects about architecture and urban planning but he seemed equally well versed in literature and biology. I'm a genetics major so I was inwardly impressed when Will suddenly made an analogy about proteins on the surfaces of cells and how those interactions are similar to the way relationships work in the Sims.

Note that houses can be VERY detailed

You can sell paintings if you're good

Yes, you clicked on this article to read about the Sims. Normally at Firingsquad we try to get straight to the point, but it's not often you meet a designer who can be placed on that high pedestal right next to the likes of Sid Meier (Civilization, Pirates), Shigeru Miyamoto (just about all Nintendo - Mario, Zelda, etc), and John Carmack (duh!). It's all that much cooler that a guy like Will Wright has his own "play center" in Maxis, complete with Nerf guns, wood blocks, and other cool toys. I would have taken a shot of it, but I didn't have the digital camera with me.