Peter Molyneux parts with Microsoft and Lionhead Peter Molyneux has called time on his position at Microsoft and Lionhead Studios, after 15 years involvement. The man behind titles such as Fable, Populous, Black & White and Syndicate dropped the bombshell on Twitter. "I have left the lovely amazing Microsoft and Lionhead," said Molyneux. "Now for something really amazing, …
Populous, I'll give you.
Syndicate, I'll give you.
Hell, even Theme Park, Magic Carpet and Dungeon Keeper were good.
Since then? All downhill. And little that's "famous" outside of the Fable franchise. Black & White was the tipping point. After that, it's all just junk.
Some games designers were brilliant in the 90's, less so nowadays. He's one. And the franchises he did create, were sold off to junk and poor remakes (Syndicate! Gah!).
But still - Bullfrog got you a lot of credit, but I'll never forget what you did to me with Black & White, where the second level in basically took my creature (the whole POINT of the new game and I'd barely learned how to control it) away from me. It never lived up to the hype, and nothing since has been able to.
I liked the movies.
But the Problem with Peter is he's too much of a dreamer. He talks up his new projects when he's still in his "dreaming" phase, only for them to be hit with cold hard reality later; so we're left with a product that overpromised, and underdelivered....
Absolutely agree. To be fair to him, I think Peter has acknowledged this in the past to a degree (there was a report about apologising on a forum for gilding the lily, but if that was true, I can't say) but it does lead to disappointment.
IIRC in Black & White, the player's role was going to be a mad scientist and I seem to remember that it was claimed that you coulde play music via the computer whilst interacting with the monster you were creating, so it would react when it heard it again (e.g. if you had abused it, it would go beserk).
I miss Bullfrog. So many great games.
Black and White demonstrated quite neatly the problem with Peter's brain.
The building settlements, enouraging believers and hurling deific magic around was great fun. Having a creature that you could train and develop was also fun. Using gestures to cast magic - again, great fun.
Trying to stop your creature from eating your village while at the same time trying to cast a spell to protect your villagers was an exercise in mouse-devouring frustration. And don't even get me started on the Fable series. -.-
Although that said, I do actually have a copy of Fable 3 signed by Peter Molyneaux for some reason.
...wasn't that the game where you had to pick up creature poop? Man do I remember the hype around this game, followed by the massive wailing and gnashing of teeth about a week later.
Dungeon Keeper was the only one of his games I enjoyed, and even that got to be an awful slog. Although I must say I enjoyed smacking my minions.
The guy can come up with a good concept, but ultimately most of his work has been ruined by bad implementation and over hyping.
Also, the 90s was a golden age because the new technology of the time was allowing genuinely NEW things to be done. I'm not sure what technological advancements will be needed for the next spurt of innovation but it sure hasn't happened yet.
The whole concept of Populous was built up from the initial work of Glen Corpes, who came up with the concept of the 'world' and map, while mucking about on his computer at home. Without these there would have been no game at all.
Peter only came into the project once something viable was there, and helped to mould the concept of the game. The initial and largest credit though definitely goes to Glen Corpes.
Hype: The user will play a part in an epic game where the player must develop a relationship with 22 different cans. Every can will have its own AI and personality, and react to the user's emotions and voice through a compelling, intimate story telling experience. The game will even be able to detect voice nuances and facial expressions all through the power of Kinect. It will be so immersive that the player will involuntarily reach out to the screen, so real and strong will their bond become with each can.
Reality: Kick the can game where user performs exaggerated flailing kick motions that map onto 10 predetermined outcomes.
Was an awesome game. Problems? Certainly, single player story pretty useless? Yep. Training a creature was an amazing experience, and amazingly well programmed. You could train your creature to respond to your personal villages needs first, then if that's fine go off to the neutrals and impress them with the best impressing spells, all done? Wander into enemy lands to burn down the enemy buildings.
The best bit though? The peculiarities that developed in their characters. You thought you were teaching your creature to burn enemy villages, he thought you were teaching him to burn pig, and subsequently hunted every porcine on the map down and burnt them to a cinder. Or use the weakest attacking spell on the town centre, then spot a single villager fleeing? Time to use the massive beam spell which demolished everything it touches.
People played the game an d disliked it, they never came to appreciate the creature.
Bullfrog now there's some good games right there.
Back in high school the network admin used to allow everyone to stay back and play games on the network. Hi Octane got a lot of usage (a bullfrog title).
Dungeon keeper 1 & 2 were awesome and I cannot forget that one! Beating up imps, having fun with the torture room (dark mistresses optional!), best of all was the evil voice overs that made me laugh, especially when playing late at night: "Keeper: Your nocturnal persistence has earned you a free gaming tip, GO TO BED!"
Black and white was but flawed in that you could not keep the minions happy late in the game so had to finish the game as an evil god. The sequal however was poor imo.
Way back when, just after the fall of the USSR, he was one of the very few games makers who were willing to take a chance on Russian programmers. Spent quite a bit of dev money on having a look around at skills and ideas.
Nothing made it into any of his games (the only "successful" projects I was involved in were the animations for Claymation and the Windows port of Another World, for other people obviously) but he was willing to have a go, look around and see what here was.
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