Peter Molyneux – Petering out?

Peter Molyneux has announced Fable III but there’s still no sign of a PC release for the series’ sequels. Has his love affair with the PC ended?

If this article was being written by Peter Molyneux, then odds are it would have been much hyped. “This is set to break newground in journalism,” the publicity would scream.“It will contain lots of excitingly fresh grammatical structures and will set out a standard for other hacks to follow for years to come.” And readers would be jumping up and down, awaiting this spankingly sparky text to wash over their eyes and make them view everything before it, from Shakespeare to Katie Price, as utterly banal. And then you’d see the result and a pang of disappointment would seep in. It would most likely contain cliches, more’s the pity, and there would be slight sentence flaws that would baffle you. And so there would be an apology: “I’m sorry if I offended anybody. I didn’t mean to do that.” Next time around, though, it happens all over again.

Peter Molyneux is nothing if not enthusiastic. He loves creating games. Wikipedia states he’s “one of the world’s most brilliant and inventive game developers” so it must be true, and in many ways the hype surrounding his games is due to their sheer brilliance and an expectation heaped on to his shoulders that each subsequent release will be better than the last. Molyneux often gets carried away with this, hence his 2004 post-Fable apology on the BBC website in which he told the world: “I just get very excited about developing games and it is hard to restrain myself. If people feel upset by the fact that some features don’t make it into the final game, I have to be more responsible.”

And yet disappointment sometimes manifests itself in different ways. Fable 2, for instance, was expected to come to the PC and yet while Microsoft told us at the start of the year that the game was “Xbox 360 only at the moment”, the final three words gave us hope. False hope it seems, for now Molyneux has announced Fable III and again it’s all about the Xbox 360. Has he abandoned the PC, the platform on which, from his days at Bullfrog, he blessed with top titles such as Dungeon Keeper, Populous and Theme Park, and which, at Lionhead Studios, he gave Black & White and The Movies? It was upon such greats that plain Peter Molyneux became Peter Molyneux OBE, so it’s all something of a shame. “There is nothing to announce on the topic [of Fable II on the PC],” he says, rather inevitably. The likelihood of the game on our favourite platform becomes slimmer by the month and Molyneux is unlikely to want to detract from the third game by confusing the market with an announcement about the second. Has he fallen out of love with the PC? “It’s still a remarkable platform,” he says. “I wish there were more titles on the PC because it was the foundation of our industry.”

Much of this leaning for the consoles – and the lack of answers for why, if he loves the PC so much, he isn’t announcing games for it – may now be due to the 20-year design veteran’s recent promotion as creative director for the Microsoft Game Studio’s European division. But it also may be due to a sentiment, expressed last year, that the PC market is not quite what it was. “Games like Crysis are wonderful but two games do seem to dominate, World Of Warcraft and The Sims,” he says. It doesn’t help that there is too much piracy. “I don’t like copy protection but I understand why it exists. You need publishers to make a return on their investments and if they feel piracy is generating poorer returns then ultimately they won’t invest as much time and effort. Gamers feel insulted when they’re asked to type in codes, but there are pirates out there. ”

The gaming emphasis for Microsoft is more heavily geared towards the Xbox 360. One of the major plans, however, is Project Natal – which could well be heading for the PC. Certainly, aspects of Natal are built upon Microsoft’s new operating system. “Windows 7 technology has formed a basis for some of the stuff you see in Project Natal,” he says.“Microsoft has specialists in many areas, for example voice and facial recognition. What we did was take small elements like that and bring them together. On their own they don’t always have a reason for existing, but within Natal something special emerges.”

Molyneux is infectiously excited about Natal, to the point where his promise not to over-hype products is cast aside. “There are a lot of questions being asked right now about Project Natal and a lot of scepticism about how it is going work,” he says. “And they’re right to question because Natal changes so much about the way you interface with games. What it does, though, is allow us to do things that we had never thought about doing before – there’s a real personal engagement with games using Natal and even the most banal parts of previous games are lifted by this.”

Already Natal has been getting people talking rather a lot. The character Milo, which has been produced by Lionhead, recognises facial and vocal emotions and can pick up on particular words which allows a level of conversation. Whether or not you will be fooled that Milo (some sort of anagram of Moli, as in Molyneux, perhaps?) is a real person remains to be seen, but it’s getting closer to that stage. Molyneux began working on Natal last December following work on emotional artificial intelligence. He is cagey about whether or not it will work with Fable III on the Xbox 360 (or indeed PC should Lionhead decide to miss a step). “I cannot comment on that,” was the response, but he does say he will continue to guide games projects while overseeing Natal so it would be shrewd to suggest the two will marry up. It does, however, seem a very busy period for him. “But you won’t be seeing ten games all made by me at once,” he says. “My job is to work with developers and get the best out of them, by sharing knowledge and discussing problems. Being busy is great and I do enjoy having more than one project on the go at any one time.”

Having work to do on Project Natal and Fable III is enough for any man, though, and it’s fascinating that he spoke about power during the GamesCon conference, in which Fable III was not so much unveiled as confirmed (Jonathan Ross having spilled the beans on Twitter back in March). “The whole point [with Fable III] is I want you to feel powerful. There’s that saying ‘power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ And that is accomplished with very, very simple game mechanics.”

It’s a cliché for sure, but one which fits well – for Molyneux is one of gaming’s most powerful people and in 2010 he may well become the most powerful of all. Whether or not that will corrupt him remains to be seen. Our only hope is that we don’t walk away disappointed over unfulfilled hype.

David Crookes