Last week, I posted a transcription of Will Wright's SXSW keynote and was genuinely surprised by the response from gamesblog readers. Rather than being inspired by what I thought were some exciting statements, readers criticised Wright's backcatalogue, suggesting that it lacked innovation. He's rested on his laurels, suggest commentators, and hasn't made anything new since SimCity. Therefore Wright was un-worthy of making predictions about and suggestions for the future of gaming.
But I would argue that he does what he does as well as Molyneux does god games, Kojima does stealth and EA do action. How many games designers have the opportunity to work on a cross-genre of products? Very few, from what I can tell. Most are siloed early on.
What are commentators comparing him with? The endless opportunities to innovate in other media? Surely Wright does just as well as Spielberg, who's done a whole lot of family drama, Lucas, whose back catalogue reads like the best of hard-boiled renegade fiction, and Hitchcock, whose films all fall into the category "suspense".
So which game designers do gamesblog readers feel have been most consistently innovative? Which have been most successful at creating products that span genres?
