In Will Wright’s mind, video games shouldn’t always be about winning or losing.

That was the trouble when he pitched an idea some two decades ago for a new game centered on building cities. A software maker that had published Wright’s first hit game was skeptical, insisting that without clear winners and losers, the idea would be a commercial flop.

Oops.

Since then, Wright’s pet project, later known as SimCity, has become one of the most recognizable computer games of all time, with more than 20 million copies sold.

Wright’s bigger hit came much later, in 2000, with the Sims, which made living itself a game. Players in the game get to control the lives of characters, from eating and using the toilet to getting a job, finding a spouse and having a baby.

The Sims has become the best-selling PC game ever, with about 28 million copies and related expansion packs sold. The sequel – the Sims 2 – is due out early next year.

Wright’s insatiable curiosity about the world around him, along with some key serendipitous moments when he met the right people at the right time, have propelled his career.

Indeed, the blockbuster Sims games have established him as an icon in the burgeoning video game industry.

Although Wright, who lives in Orinda, Calif., with his wife, Joell Jones, and their 17-year-old daughter, Cassidy, won’t disclose his fortunes, his fame cannot be denied. He has inked deals with television networks for potential shows, has been featured in magazines and even had MTV knocking on his door for a segment on video games.

“That’s always been my biggest aspiration, having MTV come over to my house,” said Wright, 43, laughing .

“It’s interesting. Life goes where it goes,” he said.

Curiosity has always driven him. “I was obsessive as a kid,” Wright said. “I would usually get very obsessed with some subject or area of interest for six months or a year, and just totally learn everything I (could) about it.”

One summer when he was home from college, Wright met Joell Jones, the sister of a friend. She was living in the San Francisco area, but had decided to spend the summer with her family. “We’d fallen madly in love,” she said.

Later that year, Wright followed her to California. While she pursued her career as an artist, Wright decided to make video games for PCs.

His first title, “Raid on Bungling Bay,” was a war game in which the player flies a helicopter to blow up everything in sight. While it didn’t gain traction in the United States it sold well in Japan.

“As part of making that game, I had to create this landscape with islands, little roads and buildings for you to bomb,” he said. “I found out that I was having a lot more fun with that part of it than flying around and bombing it.”

That interest in the intricacies of the landscape and all of its contents would lead him to create SimCity.

Without an interested game publisher, though, SimCity sat on his shelf until 1986, when he met entrepreneur Jeff Braun. “He showed me SimCity, and I died. … This was what I was looking for,” Braun said.

The two formed Maxis Studios, and the first SimCity hit the stores in 1989 – an instant success. The company’s revenue steadily grew, but by 1996 Wright, Braun and the rest of the board members were looking for an exit strategy.

That’s when other game publishers started making acquisition offers. Electronic Arts won the bidding war, with a stock deal worth $125 million.

The move gave Wright a chance to pursue his new game, which at the time he called a “doll house.” The idea behind the game is to control how the characters live their lives, down to the way they decorate their homes.

The doll house became The Sims, which EA published in 2000.

While EA is getting ready to release The Sims 2, Wright says he’s already focusing on a new, undisclosed project for the game publisher.