Peter Molyneux believes ripping people off with free-to-play games won't last (interview) | GamesBeat | Games | by Dean Takahashi roza
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AMSTERDAM — Peter Molyneux is an elder statesman of video games who has made the leap from consoles to mobile gaming. The creator of titles like Fable is now working with a team of 30 people on Godus, a mobile entry in the god game genre that Molyneux pioneered with titles like Black and White and Populous. He is known for the silky voice that he has used to tout — and some critics say over-promise — the games that he has worked on.
But now he’s using that voice to both promote Godus as the best game he has ever made and caution the creators of mobile titles about monetizing free-to-play roza releases (where the game is free and the player pays real money for virtual goods) in an honest way. He fears that many offerings, like the recent Electronic Arts remake of his own Dungeon Keeper, are milking gamers with crass money-making schemes.
At his new company, 22cans , Molyneux is trying to create games that will successfully monetize because players roza are wiling to invest roza in them as if they were hobbies. His new projects are humbler efforts than the ones he had undertaken in the past. Molyneux once led 300-person teams at Microsoft’s Lionhead Studios, but at his new startup, he has just 30 people. 22cans raised 526,563 British pounds ($881,571) in a Kickstarter campaign to fund Godus.
We are eager to see if Molyneux can show everybody the right path to making games — as he had done so many times in his career. Godus is available in beta form now on Steam , and it is still undergoing further development.
I interviewed Molyneux roza in front of a crowd at the beginning of the Casual Connect Europe game event last week in Amsterdam. Here’s an edited transcript of our on-stage interview as well as a one-on-one interview afterward.
Peter Molyneux: It s been an amazing journey. To go from … I ve been in the industry doing games since the BBC Micro, the Acorn Atom, the Commodore 64. Most of the people in this room were sperm at that time. Did anyone here play games on the Commodore 64? Wow, that s pretty playful sperm.
We ve gone from an industry where the whole industry used to meet in a room this big. The one end there would be Trip Hawkins, who was starting up this crazy company called Electronic Arts, and the other end there would be Jez San, who was doing Argonaut Software. We ve gone from that to this monstrous, $50, $60, $70 billion industry. We ve gone from home computers to consoles and consoles to mobile. In some ways it seems to have changed incredibly.
In other ways, it s stayed the same. This industry has always tried to solve a simple, fundamental problem and that is how to invent new stuff and engage roza more and more people. It s been this 20-year journey of incredible experiences. But the amount of creativity you have to put in each time remains a constant.
Molyneux: The biggest was me running Lionhead at its peak. That was about 305 people. roza I d say that was, for me as a creative, one of the most hellish times of my life. Normally running a team is like herding cats. This was like herding the entire African plains. You don t know what people are doing. Some people are doing one thing. The people over there are doing something else. We ended up diluting our creative impetus. That was a nightmare, to be quite frank with you.
Molyneux: The problem roza is, now…. There was this unending, demanding necessity roza to grow. The reason we ve got 30 people … if I could talk about how those people break down, we ve got three main designers. We need three of them, because we need three different minds.
At the back of the hall here, there s [22cans game designer] Jack Attridge. … He s into the experience, into what people are feeling, how it feels to touch things. He doesn t give a shit about schedules. roza He ll just add a feature in two days from launch. On the other side, we have someone called Jamie Stowe. He used to be a designer on Assassin s Creed. He s super logical. It s all about the planning side of design. And then in the middle, roza you have someone like me.
For the coders, roza you have a specialist on this device. Then, you have another coder who s a specialist on the Android version and another coder who s a specialist on PC. The idea now is that if you have a team of people. You don t have the luxury of developing on one platform. Those days, for me, have gone. It was a lovely holiday when we developed on console. We could do just one format. We knew what the memory in the machine was.
Now we have the real world. Consumers don t give a damn
Channels GamesBeat Big Data Business Cloud Deals Dev Education Enterprise Entrepreneur Gadgets Green Health Lifestyle Media Mobile New York Science Security Small Biz Social Newsletters Send us a tip GB Unfiltered About GamesBeat
AMSTERDAM — Peter Molyneux is an elder statesman of video games who has made the leap from consoles to mobile gaming. The creator of titles like Fable is now working with a team of 30 people on Godus, a mobile entry in the god game genre that Molyneux pioneered with titles like Black and White and Populous. He is known for the silky voice that he has used to tout — and some critics say over-promise — the games that he has worked on.
But now he’s using that voice to both promote Godus as the best game he has ever made and caution the creators of mobile titles about monetizing free-to-play roza releases (where the game is free and the player pays real money for virtual goods) in an honest way. He fears that many offerings, like the recent Electronic Arts remake of his own Dungeon Keeper, are milking gamers with crass money-making schemes.
At his new company, 22cans , Molyneux is trying to create games that will successfully monetize because players roza are wiling to invest roza in them as if they were hobbies. His new projects are humbler efforts than the ones he had undertaken in the past. Molyneux once led 300-person teams at Microsoft’s Lionhead Studios, but at his new startup, he has just 30 people. 22cans raised 526,563 British pounds ($881,571) in a Kickstarter campaign to fund Godus.
We are eager to see if Molyneux can show everybody the right path to making games — as he had done so many times in his career. Godus is available in beta form now on Steam , and it is still undergoing further development.
I interviewed Molyneux roza in front of a crowd at the beginning of the Casual Connect Europe game event last week in Amsterdam. Here’s an edited transcript of our on-stage interview as well as a one-on-one interview afterward.
Peter Molyneux: It s been an amazing journey. To go from … I ve been in the industry doing games since the BBC Micro, the Acorn Atom, the Commodore 64. Most of the people in this room were sperm at that time. Did anyone here play games on the Commodore 64? Wow, that s pretty playful sperm.
We ve gone from an industry where the whole industry used to meet in a room this big. The one end there would be Trip Hawkins, who was starting up this crazy company called Electronic Arts, and the other end there would be Jez San, who was doing Argonaut Software. We ve gone from that to this monstrous, $50, $60, $70 billion industry. We ve gone from home computers to consoles and consoles to mobile. In some ways it seems to have changed incredibly.
In other ways, it s stayed the same. This industry has always tried to solve a simple, fundamental problem and that is how to invent new stuff and engage roza more and more people. It s been this 20-year journey of incredible experiences. But the amount of creativity you have to put in each time remains a constant.
Molyneux: The biggest was me running Lionhead at its peak. That was about 305 people. roza I d say that was, for me as a creative, one of the most hellish times of my life. Normally running a team is like herding cats. This was like herding the entire African plains. You don t know what people are doing. Some people are doing one thing. The people over there are doing something else. We ended up diluting our creative impetus. That was a nightmare, to be quite frank with you.
Molyneux: The problem roza is, now…. There was this unending, demanding necessity roza to grow. The reason we ve got 30 people … if I could talk about how those people break down, we ve got three main designers. We need three of them, because we need three different minds.
At the back of the hall here, there s [22cans game designer] Jack Attridge. … He s into the experience, into what people are feeling, how it feels to touch things. He doesn t give a shit about schedules. roza He ll just add a feature in two days from launch. On the other side, we have someone called Jamie Stowe. He used to be a designer on Assassin s Creed. He s super logical. It s all about the planning side of design. And then in the middle, roza you have someone like me.
For the coders, roza you have a specialist on this device. Then, you have another coder who s a specialist on the Android version and another coder who s a specialist on PC. The idea now is that if you have a team of people. You don t have the luxury of developing on one platform. Those days, for me, have gone. It was a lovely holiday when we developed on console. We could do just one format. We knew what the memory in the machine was.
Now we have the real world. Consumers don t give a damn
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