Will Wright is the rock star of the video game industry.

His games are almost always hits and have generated billions of dollars in sales for Electronic Arts, his employer. SimCity, the early game that let you build cities, was big enough with tens of millions sold. It spawned Sims, which has sold more than 100 million units since its launch in 2000. Wright has been at work on his new game, Spore, for seven years. The game takes players on a journey from life as a single-cell creature to mastery of the entire galaxy – all with creatures and civilizations created by the player. On Monday, stores in North America will begin selling Spore. Already, thanks to the advance launch of the Spore Creature Creator in June, there are more than 4 million creatures on the Sporepedia. While Spore is a single-player game, your own creature will compete against creatures created by others who have entered them into the Sporepedia. Wright is doing something like 80 press interviews a week. We were happy to get in line and ask him how he does serial blockbusters.

VB: How do you feel Spore turned out?

WW: It’s exciting. I lost count of the interviews in Singapore. I just flew in from London. I’m browsing the Sporepedia now. For me, as I was finishing the game and was halfway through development, it was clear that the really interesting thing was going to be how the fans filled in the content with their own creatures and other things. It released in Europe today. There are tools to manage and organize the content now. They can use the Sporecasts. Now the stuff is really starting to get traction. Within a week, we should see some amazing user-generated material. I’m looking forward to playing the game in the next couple of days where I can use that stuff in the game.

VB: What do you notice about the creatures people have created?

WW: Well, we’ve had the creatures coming in for a couple of months now because we released the Spore Creature Creator early. Now we are starting to get the other stuff, like the buildings, the vehicles, spaceships and what not. For the first time, we can see these other things. The creatures are interesting not just because of the quantity but the quality.

VB: How long was it in the making?

WW: I started researching it about seven years ago. I started reading. We did early prototypes. We formed a core team about five years ago. It was a small core team and it ramped up.

VB: That sounds very similar to the time you spent on The Sims.

WW: Yeah. I started prototyping The Sims about seven years before it shipped.

VB: Do you feel you should speed up the process or do you feel good about that and how long it takes to make a great game?

WW: I think it’s more about how long it takes to make a game that is unique. You have to spend a lot of time exploring different branches. They don’t always pan out. We could go down safer branches and not worry whether it is the right branch or not. But if you want to find the landscape or region that is unexplored, you have to plan on doing a lot of back-tracking.
VB: There is this formula for success in the video game industry. You don’t seem to follow it at all, yet you’re successful. So what is your formula?

WW: I didn’t know there was a formula. (laughs) That might be useful.

VB: It seems so hard for the others to get off the track of doing the same old thing. But you’re always off that track.