After IndyStar and many others, GameSpy has now also interviewed Will Wright. He talks a lot about the past 5 years the Sims has existed now, and the time before that. How Will started the initial development, how the team grew, and how he had to make Maxis, his own company, enthousiastic about the game (contrary to EA as earlier stories tell):

"Fargo: Now I understand it took you a long time to find a publisher at first? ...no?

"Wright: For SimCity it did. For The Sims, I'd started Maxis and I was basically trying to get people inside of Maxis enthused about the idea and that's where the battle was. Those people wanted to keep doing SimCity, and they didn't think The Sims made sense. So I was fighting just the internal structure of Maxis... which is the company I'd started!"

Besides that, the creation of the community, pushed by Luc Barthelet, General Manager of Maxis at the time, and a lot of other things about the development for the first game are being discussed. This is only part 1 of the interview, the second part will be posted on Monday. For now, read the first four pages for details.