Will Wright's New Game Stymied by Legal Block

SimCity creator Will Wright’s new game venture has been stalled due to a messy legal dispute with a former business partner.

Wright says he can’t proceed with his idea for a “personal gaming” idea. until the legal mess has been sorted out. Last November Wright announced the formation of the start-up Hive Mind, which he said would combine real-world activities with TV and apps to create a whole new way of gaming.

Hive Mind’s  first chief exec, Jawad Ansari is suing Wright, alleging that agreements made between them had been broken. Wright is counter-suing. According to a recent Tweet posted by Ansari, he is also planning an expose video documentary to be released in June. The tweet said, “Looking for PR professionals to build awareness for “THE INCONVENIENT TRUTH ABOUT WILL”, an exposé documentary, releasing on YouTube 6/2012.”

Interviewed by VentureBeat, Wright said, “Hive Mind is still a company. But it has no money. No nothing. It’s just sitting there because of the litigation. It is frozen. It’s so complex and there’s quite a bit of disappointment.”

Talking about his game development plan, back in November Wright said, "Rather than craft a game like FarmVille for players to learn and play, we learn about you and your routines and incorporate that into a form of game play. It is about how we make reality more interesting to you."

The game is part of Wright's vision to combine entertainment, lifestyle and personal tools so that "the world and the opportunities for entertainment within it become more visible to you." He added that the game's goal is to "get you more engaged in reality rather than distract you from it."

"When you look at the arc of the games I have done, starting from SimCity, they are each mining a deeper level of creativity and they are more focused on the individual over time," Wright concluded. "We want to do this in a very big way."

Wright’s games, including SimCity and The Sims, have sold over 100 million units to date. He owns a development think-tank called Stupid Fun Club which is partially funded by his former employer, Electronic Arts.

Source : http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/06/03/will-wrights-new-game-stymied-by-legal-block