The Sims creator blew 10 years and millions of dollars on his new game, laid off his whole team in 2024, and still isn't done: "I'd much rather have a glorious failure than a mild success"

Proxi characters stand on green hexagons of grass.

Will Wright blazed through the early video game industry like a comet – he co-founded Maxis, created the very first SimCity, The Sims in 2000, and released the ultimate life sim Spore in 2008. Much more quietly, Wright has spent the last decade on an AI-enabled, psychoanalytic thing with huge ambitions and zero budget, but he's determined to keep it breathing.

"Kind of like Frankenstein," Wright tells Vulture in a new profile. It's called Proxi: Yesterday’s You Tomorrow, and Wright's studio Gallium Studios revealed it at Game Developers Conference in 2018, though the idea of it has been nagging at Wright since 2016. In the years since, Wright has spent millions of his and investors' dollars, laid off his staff in 2024 when the money ran out, and is now retaining a few unpaid developers to make it happen. One day.