Will Wright is a man that needs no introduction - he's the founding father of the sim movement, with titles like the original SimCity, The Sims and Spore under his belt. He recently gave a lecture about the games industry at the University of California, talking a bit about the future of games and where he thinks they're failing. But the more interesting news is that he opened up to Gamesindustry about the SimCity 2013 launch, and some further comments about the state of the industry.

Wright is quite understandably interested in how the industry is going, and is particularly excited by the mobile market, saying that the new consoles hitting shelves in the next 12 months aren't really interesting. He's also happy that games are no longer tied to the big publishers with the growing indie and Kickstarter scenes, saying "I remember ten years ago at every E3 you'd walk around asking your friends 'What's new?...' 'nothing,nothing,nothing...Now, every week somebody tells me about some weird little app that came out. Not big budget, but they're interesting and fun out of the box. It's a much more level playing field, I think."

Moving on to SimCity though, Will said that he felt sorry for the team, and that he'd predicted that there would be a backlash, saying that it was "basically inexcusable, that you charge somebody $60 for a game and they can't play it. I can understand the outrage. If I was a consumer buying the game and that happened to me, I'd feel the same." Still, he was quick to say that he did enjoy the game when he tried it before the launch.

Moving on to talk about always online DRM as a whole, Wright said that "I think people care if it doesn't work. If you can't play it on planes, stuff like that... I think there are some very valid concerns about it. Also there's a perception; I don't expect to play World of Warcraft on the airplane, because my perception is it has to be on the 'Net. Sim City was in this very uncomfortable space, like the uncanny valley, almost; [it was caught] between was it a single player game or was it a multiplayer game?"