Spore creator Will Wright is bringing to life a new type of entity: a start-up think tank.

Electronic Arts today announced that Wright is leaving to run a new entertainment think tank called Stupid Fun Club and that EA is making an equity investment in the venture. Wright hopes to develop new intellectual properties that can become games and other types of entertainment including movies, TV shows, Internet programming and toys.

“The entertainment industry is moving rapidly into an era of revolutionary change,” Wright said in a statement. “Stupid Fun Club will explore new possibilities that are emerging from this sublime chaos and create new forms of entertainment on a variety of platforms. In my twelve years at EA, I’ve had the pleasure to work alongside some of the brightest and most talented game developers in the industry and I look forward to working with them again in the near future.”

Wright's last start-up, the game development company Maxis, which he co-founded with Jeff Braun in 1987 resulted in the release of SimCity in 1989. Since then, Wright has added The Sims and Spore to a resume that landed him in the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame and won him a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards in 2001.

"We believe in Will’s vision for Stupid Fun Club and we’re looking forward to partnering with Will and his team long into the future,” said EA CEO John Riccitiello in a statement included in the announcement. “Will is a great designer and he’s been part of a great legacy of globally recognized game franchises like The Sims, SimCity and Spore. The teams that have been leading those franchises in recent years have a lot of exciting content coming.”

Maxis general manager Lucy Bradshaw described the development as "good news both for Will and for Maxis. … I've been working with him for a long time and find him just amazing," says Bradshaw, who moved from EA to Maxis upon its acquisition. "I think the partnership that EA has set up with him and his Stupid Fun Club is actually a pretty exciting endeavor."

As for Maxis, Bradshaw said, "there's a lot of incredible talent here in the studio and they are full of creative ideas. We are working with Spore, which is just a wonderful IP to continue to develop not only from the point of view of the tech we have created for it, but also just the wealth of possibilities in terms of the scope of the original game."

New Spore developments:



-- Spore Galactic Adventures (due in June) is an expansion pack for the original PC game that lets players "beam down from their space ship, they can take a captain and start to play adventures in space that sort of ranks up their captain and their allies, all taking place on the planet level," Bradshaw ways. The game also has an "adventure creator" that will let you share planetary adventures with others.



-- Spore Hero (due this fall for Nintendo Wii) lets players create, control and evolve creatures that ultimately must fight to save their planet. The Wii's motion-sensitive remote and nunchuk let players "take control of their creature," she says. "It has a much more personal feel to it."

-- Spore Hero Arena (fall for Nintendo DS) carries the galactic threat to Nintendo's portable. "You are literally flying from planet to planet in an arena-style battle game," Bradshaw says.



-- Spore Creature Keeper, a standalone PC game aimed at younger players who want to create, develop and nurture their own creatures. "You evolve it to its own sort of household from a wild animal. We had so many players who experienced the Creature Creator and had so much fun with it we wanted to give them more to do with their creatures, to give them more personality and allow them to evolve them," Bradshaw says. "It has a multiplayer mode so you can invite your friends' creatures over. You can continue to evolve them to the extent they get their own pet."

By Mike Snider

