Will Wright might not be a name you’re immediately familiar with but odds are, you may have played one of his games. As the co-founder of Maxis, he played an instrumental role in the development of SimCity, The Sims franchise and most recently, Spore.
Much of Wright’s time as of late has been spent not on the PC or with a game console, but on his smartphone. This, along with his interest in giving people tools to make and share content, inspired the game designer’s latest project, a social sharing / storytelling app called Thred.
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Describing Thred in a single sentence is a bit tough. The app allows users to grab images from the Internet or from their camera roll, add them to a storyboard of sorts and outfit it with all sorts of widgets / text / filters / links to help tell a story.
But it’s much more than that as it isn’t limited to photos; users can create or share memes, build top 10 lists, curate the day’s gaming news or virtually anything else they can come up with. Linking and tagging is a key aspect of the app that’ll be crucial in building communities.
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It’s way too early to know if Thred will achieve success akin to The Sims or if it’ll turn out as more of a flop like Spore. Either way, Wright has plenty of investor backing. As Forbes points out, Andreessen Horowitz, Mayfield Fund, Betaworks, HVF, former EA CEO John Riccitiello, Affirm CEO Max Levchin and Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley have all invested in the venture.
Thred is available as of writing free of charge for iOS
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