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The creator of ‘The Sims’ wants to put your memories into his next game

Gabe Gurwin
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Will Wright's Proxi Challenge

Game designer Will Wright — developer of games like SimCity and The Sims — will already go down in history as one of the most influential figures in the industry — but his next project looks to be just as groundbreaking. Proxi is a game built on your own memories, and Wright wants you to help his team make it.

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Proxi is a game built in Unity by Wright and the team at Gallium Artists, and it promises to create rendered scenes based on your unique personal memories.

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“This is, in some sense, a game of self-discovery,” Wright said in the announcement video. “[It’s] a game where we actually uncover the hidden ‘you.'”

By visually representing your memories in Proxi, Wright hopes that players will be able to learn from their experiences more thoroughly, and that the game will learn from the player, as well.

The video shows a few of these scenes in action, including a man fishing in a lake during a rainy day and a snow-covered log cabin. These are called “Mems” in the game, and multiple players will even be able to combine their memories to create a shared, more complex experience. Wright and Unity are looking for an artist to help them bring these memories to life as “tangible, visceral gameplay elements,” and it could be you.

To enter the contest, you must take three of your own personal memories and bring them to life with separate environmental scenes. Along with this, you’ll need to get all the scenes running in Unity to create a video, and you’ll need to submit an article detailing your creation projects. The art assets created must all be done by you, and they cannot be something you designed previously.

Judges for the contest include Wright himself, Pixar artist Matt Jones, Disney illustrator Bill Robinson, and Journey game designer Robin Hunicke.

Two winners will receive a grand prize, which includes round-trip flights to San Francisco to meet the development team, a private dinner and interview with the judges, licenses for Allegorithmic and Marmoset, and a bundle featuring shirts, games, and stickers from Wright’s projects.

Proxi is scheduled to release later this year for mobile devices.

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Gabe Gurwin
Gabe Gurwin
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Gabe Gurwin has been playing games since 1997, beginning with the N64 and the Super Nintendo. He began his journalism career…
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