pentadact wrote:

Ben Schroeder from Edge was there, and as we sipped something pink and free, he pointed out to me that one of the guys at the table over there with Will Wright was Robin Williams. Will Wright I knew would be there, since there was a Spore presentation later, and his celebrity factor was slightly diminished by the fact that I’d already interviewed him twice that day alone, but Mork himself made it kind of a tough table to go up to and say “Hi, is this seat taken?” Tougher still, all the seats were taken.

Happily I didn’t have to. I was able to accost him on his way to the bar (a few weeks after meeting me he was re-admitted to rehab for alcohol addiction, but I feel like I tried my best) and exercise the most basic human right of all: the right to talk to a celebrity without needing any pretext, association with them or even anything particularly to say. They’re public domain, we can use them as we please. I’m going to be sending a link to this post to pretty much everyone who bullied me in primary school, and it’s especially for their benefit that I’m about to recount what Robin Williams said to me when I introduced myself. “Hi, I’m Tom, I’m from PC Gamer,” I said.

“Oh, great!” he said.

See it? Because I can paste it again if necessary. It was “Oh, great!” I can use a bigger font if you like. I have that power.

It was just a little undermined by the fact that my next words were “Oh come on, don’t pretend you’ve heard of us.” He explained that really he was just glad to meet a fellow gamer, evidently considering me a more kindred spirit than the many generic tech guys, multi-platform journalists and CEOs around us. He’s a big Battlefield 2 fan, and plays as a sniper. Had he seen the then-unreleased sequel? He had, and thought it was great. What did he think of Spore? He thought it was the logical conclusion of the lineage of God games started with Populous, and extremely exciting for that.

For some reason I decided to steer the conversation toward the broader social impact of games, and possibly kids, because more or less the only thing I knew about Robin Williams was that the reason he started doing horror films after all that family comedy was because his kids were finally old enough to watch them, and he just wanted to make movies his kids could watch. This was a mistake. He started his answer with enthusiastic agreement to my hypothesis that Spore would make a great learning tool for kids, combining as it did science, silliness and a sense of wonderment at the universe, but then he wouldn’t shut up.

That sounds rude, but I don’t know if you’ve ever heard him free-associate: it’s a hard thread to follow. I tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but once he veered off topic he didn’t stick to his new topic long enough for me to work out what it was, he just kept on veering. At some point I found myself thinking “This is ridiculous, I’m interviewing Robin Williams and I’m honestly not listening to a word he’s saying.” The man is mad, and possibly quite drunk. Luckily he also doesn’t stop talking long enough to discover that you have nothing to say because you can’t remember anything he was talking about, so when he did wind down I think I just said “Excellent, well, thanks.” and left it at that.