Developer Profile: Peter Molyneux

Most developers are well known for their ability to make great games. Ironically, Peter Molyneux is better known for his inability to make great games. Peter Molyneux's most known game to date is probably Fable, the moderately successful game for the Xbox released in 2004. It went by the name "Project Ego" in development, a name that I find deliciously ironic due to it's biggest fault: Molyneux's big fucking mouth.

Before I get into all of this, I'll give you some background on this guy. Pete's one of the oldtimers of game development, with the beginnings of his career dating back into the 80s. Back in the late 80s and 90s, Peter Molyneux worked at a game company called Bullfrog. Molyneux's first big game was Populous, a strategy game made in 1989. The game casts the player as a powerful diety who controls a civilization using godly powers. People call Molyneux the creator of the "god game" genre, which I contest simply because "god game" really doesn't seem to be a genre to me. Basically, a "god game" is a strategy or sim game where you have super powers. If it's just a sim game where you play God instead of general or mayor, than it's not really a wholly different genre. Perhaps a subgenre.

Populous was a great success, and Pete went on to make more games for Bullfrog. His next game was Syndicate, a tactical strategy game, which neither rewarded nor penalized you if you ruthlessly murdered innocent bystanders. This is in fact one of the reasons I remember this game. Afterwards came Theme Park, a business sim for building amusement parks. Molyneux's last game with Bullfrog was Dungeon Keeper. In this game, instead of valiantly storming evil dungeons defeating enemies, you build evil dungeons and defend them from valiant heroes.Dungeon Keeper had an interesting take on morality. Instead of forcing you to be good, it forced you to be evil. Even Syndicate had moral ambiguity, allowing you to kill civilians. However, this fresh perspective on morality became a reaccuring and almost nausiating theme in all of Molyneux's games.

In 1997, Molyneux ended his career as a simple game developer and decided to strike it out on his own. He founded his own gaming studio called Lionhead Studios, and decided he would single handedly change gaming forever with his powerful influence. The game he envisioned was Black and White.Black and White had been ambitious from the beginning. Since you played as a god, your goal was to get people to believe in you. It's big selling point was that you could play as good or evil, and your realm would reflect the way you ruled. If you impressed your people with fireballs from the sky smashing into orphanages, you would see your temple turn into a twisted pillar of evil. Rule kindly and you'll see bright happy forests and twinkling sunlight. Another big feature was the creature, a massive pet that could be trained to help you in administering your land.

Sounds like a great game, right? Peter Molyneux ruthlessly hyped this game. This was a strategy game which would fulfill every control freak's dream. It was going to be a deep, fulfilling game, filled with excitement, wonder, and many more great things. I remember how excited I was when I heard of this game. It was like a game I had always wanted to play, and have been waiting for someone to make. And what did we get? A boring game. A really fucking boring game. I can't really fault Molyneux for lying, since I suppose he never really did. You could certainly play as a good or evil god, you had a big creature to boss around, so all the promised elements were there. However, the game had some serious issues.

First off, it was pretty shallow as a game. In terms of actual strategy, there wasn't much going on. In the game's attempt to be a true freeform game, it sacrificed the fun aspect of strategy games, letting it devolve into a total mess. A standard game of Black and White starts with you helping your village grow. They constantly demand food, something you have to provide them. The more food they get, the more babies they have, which requires you to harvest food for them, then build homes for them. But by then, they've reproduced even more, requiring you to make them more food. The villagers are supposed to be fairly autonomous, but for the most part, you see them sitting around doing nothing, even though the village desperately needs food. After playing for a half-hour, the game starts feeling like you're more of a babysitter than a game player.

Furthering the babysitting problem was your creature. While the creature had pretty advanced AI for the time, it was still practically useless. No matter how much you tried to train it, it would ALWAYS eat your villagers. Getting it to do or learn anything was an absolute chore. Playing this game actually started feeling like work, where you constantly are doing something, but getting nothing done. You spend hours feeding your people, but they always need more, and constantly try to teach your creature something but it never remembers.

There were some good parts of Black and White. It had amazing graphics for the time, and its interface and control was perfect, and has been emulated in many future games. The game does give you the sensation that you are a god of a simulated world. The problem is that there isn't all that much to do. There are only a few levels, there's little to no strategic depth, and the game is just boring.

Despite all of these problems, Black and White received very high scores, a majority of them in the 9 out of 10 range. Everyone seemed to be blinded by the graphics, interface, the choice of being good or evil, and freeform gameplay to ignore how boring the game was. Even I was blinded in the same way. I remember spending hours at a time trying to feed my people and getting pissed off over how friggin stupid the creature was, and for some reason I thought I loved doing it. Until it clicked into my head how boring this game really was. After the novelty of throwing children into cliffsides and forcing your creature to eat its own poo wears off, you realize all that's left is a shallow boring game. Some critics realized this too, and Computer Gaming World even issued an apology to its readers for giving it such a high rating.

Black and White certainly isn't a bad game, it's just boring and didn't live up to the insane promises Molyneux made. Unfortunately, all of that great press went straight to Pete's head, causing him to go off to make yet another overly hyped game: Fable.

Fable was supposed to be the greatest Role Playing Game in the world. I'm pretty sure Molyneux actually said that at some point. That's how hyped this game was. In this game, instead of playing as a God, you played as a hero. As a hero, you could develop your skills however you wanted. You could use swords, axes, spells, and bows in any combination you wanted. The whole good or evil choice was still there, which would effect how you looked and how people acted around you. If you act evil, you spout horns and people run from you.

The major points of this game was that it would feature a sprawling world which would actually change due to your actions. You could purchase property, marry local villagers, or ruthlessly kill your neighbors. Villages would rise and fall, politics and world economy would change, and your actions would have serious consequences in the future. It was even stated if you planted a tree, you could come back to it in five game years and see how it grew.

Time progression was supposed to be a big deal in the game. The game would start you off as a child, and watch as the child grew into an adult. You could then get married, have kids, and go off adventuring while your spouse watches after your estate.

This game was made out to look like the ultimate game. It would be like a whole simulated fantasy world, where you could do whatever you wanted. Like I said, most people, myself included, expected this game to be the best RPG ever made. What did we get? A fiercely mediocre game.

First off, forget that whole sprawling simulated world. What we got were tiny interconnected zones with massive loading times. You never feel like you're inside a real world of any kind. On top of that, the promise of watching your hero grow wasn't featured as promised. The game starts you off as a child, but then in a horrible transition, you suddenly become an 18 year old. After that, growth basically comes down to getting taller and more wrinkly. Other than this cosmetic difference, growing old changes nothing in your character.

Most of the amazing examples of the game Molyneux mentioned were not in the game. You couldn't plant trees, you couldn't have kids, the story was cliched to the point that it was nausiating, and the combat system wasn't fun at all. Specializing in any type of combat other than swordplay was boring and useless, so the game encourages you to play as a jack of all trades. The difficulty was incredibly easy, since you had so many potions at any time that it's almost impossible to die.

Fable was a mediocre game. In an industry that's filled with sequels, remakes, and boring cliches, mediocrity is a bad thing, but forgivable. However, it isn't forgivable when you hype up your customer base with promises of what could be the most original and exciting premise ever, only to deliver an incredibly inferior product. By themselves, Black and White and Fable could have easily been considered good games with a little more work. But what they all really needed was for Peter Molyneux to keep his fucking mouth shut.

After Fable, Ol' Pete noticed what he was doing, and made a public apology for not delivering on Fable's promises. Since then, Lionhead Studios have been somewhat conservative in their games. The Movies, a movie business simulation game, came out in 2005. While it was hyped up quite a bit, the hype machine almost shut down after Fable came out. It's most notable feature was that it managed to deliver what Molyneux promised, which was a movie business simulation where you could actually write and watch your own movies. While a fun game, the business simulation had some issues, and there was a real disconnect between the business and movie-making aspect of the game. All in all, it was a good game, and arguably Lionhead's best so far.

Molyneux's next game was Black and White 2, sequel to the phenomenally boring Black and White. Molyneux clearly learned his lesson, because Black and White 2 had one of the quietest launches in game history for a big name developer. While the game had it's issues with pacing and its AI, the game was significantly better than the original. Instead of spending all your time watering fields like in Black and White, you get to build massive cities, raise armies, and fight for control over a huge continent. This was a game that actually allowed you to have fun. While some people complained about the structure of the game, which denied people who wanted a more freeform experience, I would much rather have a deep structured experience than a shallow freeform one.

All of this might make you think Pete learned his lesson on hype. It may seem this way, but the impending release of Fable 2 has shown the same hype from before. Not only is Molyneux promising the same features he promised in the original Fable, but he's also saying it will have even more features, including a dog that follows you around. This all reeks of bullshit. He couldn't make Fable the first time, and as far as I can tell, he can't make it this time either. He's also talked on and on about a "one button combat" system, which involves fighting with one button. I don't get why this is attractive at all. At least when you're mashing multiple buttons, you get an illusion of control, but with one button?

I got my eye on you, Molyneux. You were doing so well before, but Fable 2 could fuck it all up. If you ACTUALLY deliver a game as great as you promise in Fable 2, then MAYBE you'll be alright. However, I'm positive this won't happen, so play it safe, and just keep your fucking mouth shut.