Article originally from The Sims Zone

As mentioned last week, the official UK site would be interviewing Will Wright. Users posted questions on the forums, and Will Wright has answered quite a few of them. He tells his aspiration is Knowledge, that he doesn't play the Sims games too much anymore, and how it happens to be that relatively many females work at Maxis, compared to other studios. His inspiration for games come from books, as he says. Even SPORE, mentioned here (on this site) first, is briefly mentioned, but no details are given:

"Where did they find that out? I am working on something, we don't know what the real name is going to be though."

"So that's the game you're working on with the smaller team?"
"Yeah, when Maxis moved I kept a separate group, we pulled out of Maxis and we moved two months ago from Walnut Creek to Emeryville, so we have our own little satellite studio now."

The last bit of that quote is news, as it seems that Maxis has now completely left its place of birth, Walnut Creek. In other answers Wright gives some information about the influence of fans in the development of the Sims and SimCity, and finally, Will explains why the company mascot are Llamas (also see our current poll). You can read the entire interview for more detailed answers from the man behind the Sims.