SimCity gets blessing of series creator Will Wright

SimCity may have got off to a rocky start this week, but series creator Will Wright has been playing it, and he's very pleased with the results.

Wright co-founded SimCity developer Maxis in 1987, but left the studio in April 2009 to pursue other projects. Speaking with NowGamer, Wright gave his impressions of the new game.

"I like it a lot," he revealed. "It’s interesting, in some sense it reminds me of the post-economic crash. It’s not about making your city big, it’s about making them not poor", an said of the new Glassbox engine, "I think they did a good job of balancing all the interrelated factors. At first it felt a little claustrophobic, you know with the size of the land, but after playing for a while I think it really makes a lot of sense.

"Visually it’s great. It was my old art director actually that was lead designer, and he had a very definite vision about the way that it would feel. But yeah, I’m enjoying it quite a bit."

Despite some gamers pouring scorn on the size of SimCity's new land-masses, Wright said he wasn't that phased by them, saying that it lent the game increased focus.

"It makes you focus more on interrelations of those factors," he continued. "So you could make a city four times bigger but you’d be dealing with the exact same variables. So by kind of focusing it in it feels more personal, and so I really do want to zoom down and get a sense of what it feels like on the street. I think the visuals are just amazing, I love the tilt-shift focal lens."

This morning I re-capped all of SimCity's server and Origin issues here, and offered some talking points about EA's handling of the situation.

What do you think? Have you managed to get playing SimCity today, despite the server woes? Let us know below.