INTERVIEW: PETER MOLYNEUX, MICROSOFT Molyneux’s Fable
Like Aesop, Peter Molyneux likes to tell tales, both in the games he creates and the way he promotes them. His latest story sees him try and create his first ‘true triple-A’ classic with Fable III. Christopher Dring reports
THE STAFF at GAME in Guildford will serve a rather surprising customer on Friday, October 29th. They may not know who he is, but you will. It’s development legend Peter Molyneux, and he is there to buy his own video game, Fable III. Molyneux performs this ritual every time one of his games is released. The idea is to experience his latest title through the eyes of the consumer. “I always do the same thing,” he says. “I always go into a shop, buy my retail copy and go back and play the game. Really it is the first time I play it without writing a long list of things. And it is the first time I think about the design going forward.”
THE TRIPLE-A CLUB
Molyneux is a surprisingly critical man. Fable IIis a great game, it has sold over 3.5 million units at retail and has a Metacritic score of 89. But during our interview, Molyneux highlights elements of it as ‘crap’, ‘gimmicky,’ and ‘a terrible crime’. And he invites criticism from his fans, too. He goes on gaming forums under a pseudonym, he tells us, to criticise his own games and spark debate. Why be so humble? “It’s not humility,” he insists. “It’s the reality and the truth. “I am a designer and I shouldn’t stand up and say everything is wonderful and shiny and great and we made the greatest game ever, because we didn’t. Being inspired by your mistakes is one way of breaking
MOLYNEUX’S DIGITAL DREAM
ALMOST A YEAR after Fable II, Microsoft and Lionhead re-released the game in episodic chunks over Xbox Live. And the game’s creative director Peter Molyneux feels digital is the way to reach an even broader audience. “Retail will get you to 70 or 80 per cent of the people who were going to buy the game,” he says. “For Fable II that was about 3.5m people. But guess what? At the time it
42 October 22nd 2010
came out there were 30-odd million Xboxes out there. We only hit ten per cent of the market. That’s pretty poor. Successful, but not runaway successful. “So how can I get to the other 30 million? I could ask my marketing friends to spend loads more on TV advertising. But you know, price is a big barrier. So what I think would be interesting is if I say, ‘have the first episode for free.’
“I hate demos. It is like me saying to you: ‘Okay, do you want to watch this film?’ and then me showing you 15 minutes of it. That’s just rubbish. I’d much prefer the idea that our demo is the first episode.
“The first episode is free, and then you can ask the gamer to buy all the episodes or if they are still not entirely sure, you make the next episode reasonably priced.”
www.mcvuk.com
into that triple-A club. It will always be my consistent dream to break into that club. I’ve made a lot of good games, but never a great game.” Never made a great game? What
“
about Black & White? Populous? Dungeon Keeper?
It has always been my dream to break into the triple-A club. I’ve made a lot of good games –but never a great game.
Peter Molyneux, Microsoft
The Metacritic score for Fable II
89
“I’ve never made a game that people will put in their Top Five list of all-time greats,” he says. “You might consider one of mine, but I don’t think you’d put it in.” Molyneux won’t rest until he breaks into that Top Five. He keeps referencing this ‘triple-A club’ – an elite group of games that includes the likes of Haloand Call of Duty, and he wants Fableto be a part of it. To do that the game needs to sell, a lot. “That club is five million units,” he
says. “Once you can sell that many, you can get into that elite group.”
CREATIVE MARKETING It’s unusual to hear a game designer, even a Microsoft exec, be so commercially aggressive. But Molyneux doesn’t necessarily see a disconnect between selling a game and creating one. In fact, he has used his design skills to help drive pre-orders.
“I think I always have a marketing hat on,” he says. “These marketing guys come to us and say ‘What are you creating for the pre-order campaign’. Just creating a big weapon isn’t exciting. Everybody does that. The idea of being able to put a character you design into the game, that’s something new. “In a way it is a marketing thing,
but it’s also a design thing. What will make me pre-order? A sword that is five metres long, six metres wide and can kill everything? Or is it something which I’ve never seen before?” Fable IIIis shaping up to be another cracker. Molyneux hopes he’s fixed all the things he hated about Fable II, with a clearer story and new levelling-up, menu and weapons systems.
So does that mean when he buys his retail copy of Fable III, he’ll feel he’s done enough to get into the ‘triple-
The unit sales target for Fable III
5m
A club’? Is Fable IIIhis best game yet? “While I’m doing the PR, absolutely it is,” he jokes. “But I’ll probably still be slagging it off in a year’s time.” Indeed, even if Fable IIIis his first
‘great’ game, it will almost certainly be the worst ‘great’ game ever made. That’s just Peter Molyneux’s way.
WHAT'S OUT NEXT WEEK? Release dates and key upcoming titles are listed on p98
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120