For a game which ’sim’s life, the universe, and everything in between – every bit the culmination of decades’ worth of those now bite-sized pieces – and which is modestly innovating on a number of fronts from its player-driven generative technologies to its “massively single player” pollinated content, ask Wright what he’s most proud of and you might expect a litany of engineering achievements. But it’s not: it’s the people.

“The team,” he answers, without even thinking, “It’s a hand-picked team of people, where I was cherry-picking the best in the company. Because of that, what seemed like an impossible design at the beginning started to seem probable, and then likely, and now positive, and at every turn the team has exceeded my expectations about what they could deliver both technologically and design-wise.”

I can agree with this.  After visiting the Maxis offices and having the chance to look around, it’s a place full of people.  Each workspace was cluttered with that person’s favorite memoriable, be it lego’s, pictures, posters, you name it.  Even though many of the workers were off taking a well-needed break, I was surprised to see that they were more pleasant to be around than I was expecting….just wished I had more time to be able to get to know some of them better!

Article here