Will Wright: Toys that make worlds (Spore)
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Stumble Thisa friendly, high-speed presentation, Will Wright demos his newest game, Spore, which promises to dazzle users even more than his previous masterpieces. Here Wright encourages users to create not households, as in The Sims, or cities, as in SimCity, but the entire universe, from single-celled life forms to galactic physics. While guiding us through his mesmerizing beta, Wright shares his thoughts on Montessori schools, Darwinian theory and long-term thinking, emphasizing, throughout, that Spore is not so much a game as an opportunity for discovery -- "an imagination amplifier."
Can't wait to try Spore now.
I do have to make a point about Montessori schools though. We looked into having our kids go to one instead of the usual preschool (this is a school for 2 and 4 year olds). While they had some nice activities etc. they were soooo regimented with the kids... X toy had to be played with ONLY on Y mat, and only in Z way. When you had finished with X toy, put it back EXACTLY as you found it before playing with ANY other toys. There were prescribed ways and places of playing with everything, times for playing with certain things... everything was SO very controlled, and seemed to us to be removing any of the childhood wonder from playing.