In that audio interview, Will Wright talks with GameSpy for 22 minutes. The first thing they discuss is the history of the Sim series, which apparantly goes back to 1985 (not 1989 as many think, including the interviewer). That's when the first SimCity game was made (on the good old Commodore64), although the 'second generation' version, published in 1989 became very popular on the Mac. He also mentions the GBA version of the Sims, but then they talk about TSO. Will Wright says the expectations were set way too high, but that with the current 100,000 players they're making a profit. Will also says there's some "way unusual stuff" going on in TSO, which is being studied by Maxis, and they're putting in new stuff every week. Next thing he mentions is that SimAnt is one of his favourite Sim-games. Basically the models for SimAnt and The Sims are somewhat similar (the name SimAntics for the scripting language used in The Sims is probably taken from that). He's of course also happy with what happened with The Sims community, which resulted in sites like these and hundreds of others. A bit later he says Bustin' Out apparantly isn't an expansion pack for the Sims on the console, but a new standalone game. That means you probably don't need the original The Sims to play it.

He also says it's hard to cope with the guilt-trip: everyone praises Will Wright for making The Sims while it were about 40 people making it. Later they also ask questions from a chatroom, and the first question is if there will be a the Sims for the X-Box, which obviously already exists (and a new one is in the make). The second one is about The Sims 2, and Will mentions some of the features. He also says it's more important to how the Sims behave rather than have them looking realistic. Next he says Maxis will expand The Sims further, possibly even after The Sims 2 is out. The Sims 2 will also take much of your system, and it won't run on a low-end system. That means it won't run on any machine, and so it will take maybe 3 years before the mass-market audience will be able to play the game properly. They also talk a bit about the Edith tool, and the decision not to release it (it'd crash user's systems because it's too advanced). After some other things, he also says there will probably be more expansions for SimCity 4 after Rush Hour.

There's a lot more that Will Wright mentions, but I've only mentioned some of the highlights. Also, part of this 22 minute interview's audio is garbled and hard to understand. Nevertheless, it's definately worth it, and if you get the chance to you should download it. You can find it right here at FilePlanet.