Some free advice to Peter Molyneux...

[Salka]

I think people in this thread are getting a few things mixed up.

I don't think anybody is personally attacking Molyneux's games or his aims/contributions with/to games... people are suggesting that he should shushhhh a little when it comes to hype and/or talking rubbish.

Just because he's involved with great games doesn't mean there are other things about him that are less awesome.

Innit? It is mateeee

[Redwall]

there's some part in the game where you find a man cheating on his wife, and he bribes you into not telling his wife. You can take the money and not tell his wife, or tell his wife and not take the money, or something like that. But you can't take his money and then tell his wife anyway, which is TRULY EVIL (tell me if I have recalled this story wrong plz ¬¬)

You have recalled it correctly, except that you can do the "truly evil" option? Maybe it's because I have the PC version (The Lost Chapters), which has extra stuff. In fact I remember most quests having such a "truly evil" option; for example, in one quest a guard hires you to kill an assassin, but the assassin will offer you money to kill the guard instead. You can take the assassin's money, then kill the assassin and go back and get your money from the guard (and kill the guard too, though somewhat pointless).

[SiN]

people are suggesting that he should shushhhh a little when it comes to hype and/or talking rubbish.

Project Dmitri has been in development since the original Black & White was released ... that's 6 years. We've heard a sentence or two about it.

Fable 2 has been in development since the first one came out, probably earlier. We hadn't really heard anything solid until now, AND we haven't heard stuff that he hasn't demoed.

So basically, he's promoting his games like all other developers do ... he isn't telling us about features that aren't in, he isn't telling us what they're thinking about doing, he's telling us, "these are the features in the game."

Why are people still complaining?

SiN

ps: It's so sad that Molyneux isn't allowed to "speak his mind" anymore ... even when shit like "real-time tree growth" didn't make it into Fable, it was fascinating hearing him talk about his game design ideas.

[Rado]

Project Dmitri has been in development since the original Black & White was released ... that's 6 years. We've heard a sentence or two about it.

You're right. We've heard that it's going to redefine adult relationships in games and let the player relive his whole life. The second sentence, I believe, was that the project is dead.

Don't get me wrong, though, I'm Molyneux' captive fan. The same way Herod was a captive fan of Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar, and, you know, the Bible.

It sure is hard not to be: http://www.loinhead.net/2007/03/08/secret-feature-videos/. It's like he's this New Age love counsellor.

[vimes]

As much as I like listening to Molyneux, I understand how he can be infuriating for some people. I understand it because I'm not sure I would stand the same kind of attitude from a filmmaker.

Let's take as example Francis Ford Coppola, a cinematographer that more or less matches Molyneux' profile in the current movie industry : the guy made genius movies 30 years ago, changed the way blockbusters were made, put the directors in power at the studios, made Kurozawa known in the western world ... but has delivered so-so movies ever since.

All these years, he has been talking about a special project called Megalopolis, a very big movie that he wishes to create under the perfect condition, working on it alone in the meantime. Now, let's imagine that Coppola - over these last two decades - had been talking extensively about Megalopolis, saying it would be the best movie ever made, a movie that would revolutionize the art form in terms of visuals but also in terms of acting and storytelling ...

Let's continue up the path of conjectures and say he'd shown the audience some rehearsal tapes, some temporary SFX shots, some important bits of the story, some artworks and excerpts from the movie that would prove him right. Then let's imagine the movie takes years to get made and, in the process, part of the cast grows tired and leave the project. Same for the sfx team. Same for the screenwriters crew.

Now, finally, the movie is released and most of the cast has been replaced by so-so actors, the special sfx are good but not striking and the story turn out to be less compelling as it was. It's not a bad film per se, but it's very far from what the guy was promising. I would hold quite a grudge toward the man for screwing such a good idea and lying about a movie that never existed in the first place. And then, the guy would come up, criticize the rest of the industry , start a new project while pledging that this time, it'd turn out perfect... but it never does. Not fully, at least.

Well, that is what some people following Molyneux' inteventions might have felt about his 4 most recent projects.

[Ginger]

Brilliant analogy

Captured exactly how Pete makes me feel.

[ThunderPeel2001]

I'm perplexed. The bloak wants to push emotions into video games other than adrenaline rush of violence and half the people are flamming him.

Believe me, half of this thread has not been spent "flaming" Peter Molyneux! I think there's only one person who's annoyed by him and that's Yufster, and I even she appreciates that he's trying to something new.

[Ginger]

Believe me, half of this thread has not been spent "flaming" Peter Molyneux! I think there's only one person who's annoyed by him and that's Yufster, and I even she appreciates that he's trying to something new.

That's bollocks, she just said that she thinks he should learn to not spout so much shit about his new games, and that the good he does within the industry doesn't negate this fact. Yeah she calls him a twat, but he is. I think Vimes’ analogy captures the way a lot of people feel and they'd be able to enjoy his games much more if he learnt to shut his trap a bit.

I don't think anybody is personally attacking Molyneux's games or his aims/contributions with/to games... people are suggesting that he should shushhhh a little when it comes to hype and/or talking rubbish.

Just because he's involved with great games doesn't mean there are other things about him that are less awesome.

[nckrlf]

Returning to Fable 2, Molyneux markets these concepts so well, and entices us to believe that the dog will have this incredible new emergent behaviour, when all we've seen is a 5 minute demo. The dog behaviour we've seen looked very realistic for the most part, but I suspect that Molyneux is subtly leading us to believe that the dog's actions in the demo are just a fraction of what it will do in full game. But the jaded, cynical gamer in me worries that we've actually seen all there is to see with the dog, and the fact that it is just a simple state machine will be painfully obvious to any player after playing the game for more than 15 minutes.

I would gladly be proved wrong.

Also, as a technical sort of person, I have a tendency to dis-believe the sorts of woolly statements about the AI that get thrown out to the masses. I'm vaguely aware of the sort of problems which are inherent in creating an AI, so I suspect that the dog AI won't be much different from AI in other games, there will just be more rules controlling the behaviour.

I have a similar scepticism towards the hyperbolic promises made about Assassin's Creed.

[Nick]

Returning to Fable 2, Molyneux markets these concepts so well, and entices us to believe that the dog will have this incredible new emergent behaviour, when all we've seen is a 5 minute demo. The dog behaviour we've seen looked very realistic for the most part, but I suspect that Molyneux is subtly leading us to believe that the dog's actions in the demo are just a fraction of what it will do in full game. But the jaded, cynical gamer in me worries that we've actually seen all there is to see with the dog, and the fact that it is just a simple state machine will be painfully obvious to any player after playing the game for more than 15 minutes.

I think most of us feel that way. There's so many let downs when it comes to games with a lot of hype, I usually just expect the worst and feel nicely surprised when something turns out good.

[BlueSpawn]

Yes, I remember Bethesda saying how Radiant AI was going to be revolutionary.

It was nice, yes, but not very impressive. And there's a good reason for it. Creating an artificial intelligence that's highly believable and reacts appropriately to a number of events and permutation of those events, is going to take a huge group of people to code for many, many years. A good example is Facade, which took 2 years to program, and still had a lot of issues with the AI.

For the time being, the process of coding AI is not very revolutionary to begin with. It's all about events and scripting a response to the events. That's how Oblivion was. All the NPC action/reactions were pre-scripted. Seems like a logical way to go about coding the AI, doesn't it? And yet, we'll need something more revolutionary to create believable NPCs.

That, or billions and billions of dollars.

Having that said, I think Fable's doggy has potential. Even if the final version performs no more than what we've seen of the 5 minute demo, it's already a lot. I simply like the gameplay that the dog provides for the player.

Never did like the fact that I had to go about on a lot of the Fable missions alone. Which is why I always picked up as many random NPCs to come with me Even if all they could do is punch, it's just a nice feeling to have someone there, especially when they cheer for me

[elmuerte]

For the time being, the process of coding AI is not very revolutionary to begin with. It's all about events and scripting a response to the events. That's how Oblivion was. All the NPC action/reactions were pre-scripted. Seems like a logical way to go about coding the AI, doesn't it? And yet, we'll need something more revolutionary to create believable NPCs.

That's not true. It's just that gamedevelopers often choose to implement a simple action-response AI. For the main reason that this is easy to implement and easier to test. You will always have a set of scripted responses but it's in the power of combining the scripted responses to the final response. Just like animation blending is performed on skeletal animations.

Anyway,... gamedevs now have a new possibility, instead of roling their own AI implementation they can license AI middleware. So I think in future games AI will really be better.

[Savage Cabbage]

I miss Ken Kutaragi.

[SiN]

That's cool, we can forget about how awesome the AI in Black & White was, and pretend that Lionhead will forget to use it for the dog AI.

SiN

[ThunderPeel2001]

Believe me, half of this thread has not been spent "flaming" Peter Molyneux! I think there's only one person who's annoyed by him and that's Yufster, and I even she appreciates that he's trying to something new.

That's bollocks, she just said that she thinks he should learn to not spout so much shit about his new games, and that the good he does within the industry doesn't negate this fact.

Uhhh...? So you might say... She is annoyed by Peter Molyneux, but she still appreciates that he's trying to do something new [in the industry, and so has good points]... ?

I hate Peter Molyneux, I think he's a twat. I thought that's how everybody felt about him.

I don't get why people like Peter Molyneux. He just talks bullshit all the time and throws random ideas out there for his lead designers to sort out. His designers are the clever ones, he's just... kind of an ass. He never fully achieves what he wants to, but maybe if he spent less time yapp yapp yapping about how great it's going to be, and more time getting some actual design work done, he would.

He's kind of a twat really...

I went to a panel where he was talking about how he wants to make people feel like the game loves them or something. Ughghgrgh. STFU, Molyneux you nobhead.

I hate that people all worship Molyneux when really he is just an arrogant twatty bastard who likes to talk... And he's also boring... and not a genius... I don't get what all the fuss is about...

I think he gets way more recognition and fame and knighthoods than he deserves.

Molyneux is fine, whatever (I have played and enjoyed some of the games he's worked on), I don't like him but he's fine... I just agree with the original post which is that he needs to shut the hell up.

Back on topic a bit, I agree with everything Thunderpeel just said, pretty much.

I don't think anybody is personally attacking Molyneux's games or his aims/contributions with/to games... people are suggesting that he should shushhhh a little when it comes to hype and/or talking rubbish.

Just because he's involved with great games doesn't mean there are other things about him that are less awesome.

I wasn't having a go at Yufster, I just think she's the only one who has been really vocal about their annoyance of Molyneux throughout this thread. Also, Vimes' comparison doesn't really account for people's annoyance... because people don't go around calling Coppola a twat because he's not done decent film recently.

the only person I noticed behaving remotely out of control was Yufster

[vimes]

Also, Vimes' comparison doesn't really account for people's annoyance... because people don't go around calling Coppola a twat because he's not done decent film recently.

That's because he's not pretending that Jack and The Rainmaker are revolutionary flicks, and while saying that Megalopolis is a very important project to him, he's not affirming it's going to turn your brain and your emotion inside out.

[miffy495]

If you'd like though, I have no objections to calling him a twat. I may do it now in fact.

*ahem*

FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA IS A TWAT.

That is all.

[ThunderPeel2001]

That's because he's not pretending that Jack and The Rainmaker are revolutionary flicks, and while saying that Megalopolis is a very important project to him, he's not affirming it's going to turn your brain and your emotion inside out.

I thought that the "reason" that people were calling Molyneux a TWAT was because people who had worked with him called him so...?

I also thought that this discussion had reached the conclusion that his passion for gaming, even if his recent games haven't been as good as his hype (hence this thread in the first place), was still a Good Thing, and, it's probably better that at least he's trying to "turn our brains and emotions inside out", unlike other "big name" developers I could mention (John Romero, American McGee...).

To recap; maybe I missed something, but why is Peter Molyneux a twat?