If you ever played any game that had the word “Sim” in it (I know that me and another guy were way into SimCity 2000 back in the day), you may or may not know that those games were all made by the same person. His name is Will Wright, and he has been the mastermind behind Maxis, the developer of everything Sim related, since he founded it in 1989. Wright and Maxis have been known for a long time to put out games that are consistently fun, reach an almost spectacularly wide audience, and are for the most part, family friendly. Their latest venture seems poised to do much of the same thing, but also takes the concept of controlling and managing a virtual world further beyond any territory that the company has touched on before.

is the name of it.

It has been in development since 2004, and while development videos like the one below have been shown a lot over the course of the game’s development, it was not until yesterday that Electronic Arts — which aquired Maxis in 1997 — announced the release date, which is September 7th of this year. Supposedly it was originally called “SimEverything”, and with good reason. The basic premise is that you, the player, go from controlling a single-celled organism in a 2D gene pool, to moving around the evolved creature in the ocean, finding food and whatnot, to bringing him out of the ocean, establishing a tribe, building cities, defending yourself against enemies that you may encounter over time, building an empire, and eventually exploring space, and encountering other civilizations built up by other players of the game. While there’s a lot that is yet unrevealed about the different game mechanics, management of resources and universe overlap, to name a couple examples, it sounds great, not to mention quite innovative for a video game, but I suppose that’s what Will Wright has made his career on.

Here’s a video from GDC (Game Developers’ Conference) 2005 in which Will Wright narrates as he takes the audience through the different stages of the game. It’s 36 minutes long, so don’t watch it if you aren’t interested, but I thought it was really cool.