Roderick

All aboard the Molyneux crazy train! TOOT TOOT!

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Is he announcing something completely new, or is it more Milo stuff?

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LOL! WTF?

Has someone at Lionhead been visiting Idle Thumbs? :molyneuxsmall:

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It's changed to Robespierre now, and counted down from 6 to 5 (there are faint numbers in the backgrounds, I didn't notice them until tilting a laptop screen).

Only 5 days to disappointment!

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Wow, that quote highlights what a thoroughly evil bastard that guy was.

edit: also I am overly irritated by the laziness of the graphic artist who simply mirror-flipped the "Being Peter Molyneux" poster in order to extend it.

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edit: also I am overly irritated by the laziness of the graphic artist who simply mirror-flipped the "Being Peter Molyneux" poster in order to extend it.

Indeed! (THUMBS DOWN ICON)

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Yes, he should have used Photoshop CS4's fancy image resizer!

molyneux_scale.jpg

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Personally I am always awestruck by confusingly shoddy photoshop work such as this... It is so blatant! They surely noticed the crappy, mirrored half-people going right down the middle—and chose to go along with it anyway! That takes cojones.

headerGraphicXmazCellphoneCollection.jpg

This is something I did along this vein for HD Radio. I was surprised they accepted this utter madness of a design option. I very much didn't expect them to. I am actually quite fond of this one. :shifty: :shifty: :shifty:

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peterfaces.jpg

This disturbs me far more than it should.

Fun Fact: a modified Being John Malkovich poster featuring Richard Garriott heads hung on the wall at NCsoft Europe somewhere. I believe it was temporarily taken down once when he visited the company.

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http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/do-whatever-it-takes-to-de-risk-projects-molyneux

This is such garbage. Molyneux has descended into total lameness at this point as far as I'm concerned.

I'm curious to hear why you think that. To me it sounds perfectly reasonable. He's not saying the industry should avoid risk, in the sense of not attempting to do anything fresh or interesting. He's saying that you can have a risky concept which you can then 'de-risk' by doing a lot of pre-production stuff. I think maybe he's saying it in an awkward way that leaves a lot of room for misinterpretation, and he might be overemphasizing market research over prototyping or brainstorming, but the intent behind what he's saying seems like the opposite of garbage to me.

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He's talking "sound business sense" rather than "visionary artiste", and that is kindof tiresome. There is a difference between "pitch your shit so it doesn't scare the suits" and "don't do shit that will scare the suits", and he seems to be in the second camp, vague as his words may be.

It just makes me think that he's lost the sight of the big picture in a way. He is dwelling within the prevalent culture of the developer-publisher world, and forgetting to step outside and look at the creative product he ought to be thinking about.

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I'm curious to hear why you think that. To me it sounds perfectly reasonable. He's not saying the industry should avoid risk, in the sense of not attempting to do anything fresh or interesting. He's saying that you can have a risky concept which you can then 'de-risk' by doing a lot of pre-production stuff. I think maybe he's saying it in an awkward way that leaves a lot of room for misinterpretation, and he might be overemphasizing market research over prototyping or brainstorming, but the intent behind what he's saying seems like the opposite of garbage to me.

It's full of shit when you look at how some of the best TV shows--which are his primary example, for some bizarre reason, despite sharing little in common with the way games are developed and marketed--have been produced.

Consistently, some of the most interesting, respected, and even successful TV shows have NOT been the ones that were focus tested to hell or determined to be the things most fitting to the current market demands. They are the ones that have to be shopped around to many networks based on the conviction of their creator, usually despite serious doubts by the majority of the networks.

Mad Men is a great current example of that. The Wire is another groundbreaking show that would clearly not have been repeatedly renewed if all HBO was looking for was market acceptance. He also admits he has no idea about Dexter. Which do you think is more likely, that somebody had an idea for the show and pushed hard to get it through, or that somebody determined that serial killer heroes were a fitting choice for today's market?

I mean, hell, BioShock? Anyone ever read about the path that game took? You think it would have been halfway as interesting had Ken Levine been following the Molyneux line on this one?

What about any Tim Schafer game? Would this industry be any better off if his games had been more market-tested and a bit more successful, rather than only modestly successful yet fantastically interesting?

The whole attitude is just disgusting to me. I fully realize that that mentality must exist when you're the person who is actually signing the checks, but to instruct the whole chain to think like that is fucking ridiculous and depressing. I'm not saying creators should just be up in the clouds and make things that they know nobody is going to like, but that is not at all how Molyneux's statement reads to me.

It's the responsibility of the creator to push for something creative and unique (obviously without becoming an impossible to work with asshole), and it's the responsibility of those holding the purse strings to keep things marketable and practical. One person can't reasonably be both, and shouldn't. The tension between the two has produced greatness. The lack of tension between the two has produced Michael Bay.

edit: I don't mean to suggest studios shouldn't actively playtest. But there's a big difference between that and the kind of concept focus testing that Molyneux is talking about.

Edited by Chris

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The whole attitude is just disgusting to me. I fully realize that that mentality must exist when you're the person who is actually signing the checks, but to instruct the whole chain to think like that is fucking ridiculous and depressing.

This is the scariest thing. Telling your entire creative workforce to "consider the limitations" or anything in that general thematic area, is the road to a middling product. Since there is no defined "safe" or "risk-free" area, and there are no clear and hard boundaries for where "the limits" actually are, people or teams will make them up for themselves. Even if a roadmap is formalized, if an overarching goal is to "de-risk" or "limit," people are going to internalize that and work around their own mental image of those goals.

Realistically cutbacks have to be made because your game is being made in reality, and problems have to (and should) be solved creatively to achieve your goals in a producible space... but if you hang a banner over your team which says "de-risk," you're not motivating them creatively.

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Mad Men is a great current example of that. The Wire is another groundbreaking show that would clearly not have been repeatedly renewed if all HBO was looking for was market acceptance. He also admits he has no idea about Dexter. Which do you think is more likely, that somebody had an idea for the show and pushed hard to get it through, or that somebody determined that serial killer heroes were a fitting choice for today's market?

Erm, you can't really bring in shows that were created under a subscription system, especially if you're going to complain about Molyneux comparing TV and games -- those channels have the LEAST to do with gaming market. Also, Mad Men and The Wire have/had cruddy ratings, regardless of how great they are.

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Couldn't Flash games, iPhone, XBLA, etc. be considered low-risk arenas for trying out the more crazy concepts? Obviously not all huge AAA etc. games can be reduced to bite-size, but for games with unproven concepts, mechanics or themes, wouldn't it be an option to make sort of a "Lite" version on one of these platforms? Has this maybe been done already in some way?

There's been a lot of crazier indie games like Braid, World of Goo, etc. but already (my impression id) you're talking about a scope and budget where you have to be more averse of risk than one would like.

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Erm, you can't really bring in shows that were created under a subscription system, especially if you're going to complain about Molyneux comparing TV and games -- those channels have the LEAST to do with gaming market. Also, Mad Men and The Wire have/had cruddy ratings, regardless of how great they are.

Are you serious? Molyneux was the one who brought up Dexter, which is on a cable channel. He can bring it up, but I can't?

And Mad Men is on its third season and The Wire ran for five. My point is that those networks clearly have an attitude that is different to Molyneux's. I'm making the opposite point of Molyneux. They were successful enough to keep running on those networks. What are you saying, exactly? That we'd be better off without those shows?

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Molyneux has funny ideas about what market research can deliver, that's for sure. The implied scenario of the creators of Dexter showing a presentation slide or spreadsheet proving the appeal of a murderer protagonist is completely ludicrous. I guess I expect at least some amount of bullshit to always come out of Molyneux' mouth, so I just read over that stuff and latched onto the parts that do make sense to me.

When I read de-risking it doesn't initially translate in my head as excessive focus testing or avoiding creative risks. My interpretation of de-risking is basically "doing your homework", which I think the brainstorming or flavor videos are a part of. Before you start on a project you really want to make sure you actually have a compelling case for it. I think some developers actually don't do their homework properly in advance, making it more difficult to sell games to publishers/investors and, I would argue, making it more difficult to execute the concept well.

In my (admittedly not super broad) experience projects are sometimes started before there is a solid understanding of the core of the product. I've seen pitches and vision documents that don't offer a fully compelling case for those products to be made, which basically translates into risk. A while ago I heard that a certain triple-A developer (not a rock star developer, but with a regular level of fame/reputation) doesn't even really present or pitch the game they want to make to publishers, they send in a 2-pager. Apparently that's fairly common.

I think when e.g. Mad Men got pitched it wasn't an easy pitch, but I'm assuming they could justify it well... e.g. they already knew the characters, what kind of stories they wanted to tell, and maybe even had something for the visual style of the show. They at least needed enough for AMC to be convinced that they could make it work, and that it was a show they wanted to fund. In TV and film it seems that projects do simmer in concept development for a lot longer, and when they do get picked up there seems to be already a cohesive vision in place.

Mind you, I recognize that making a game is a creative journey, and I am super supportive of things like agile development methodology that allow more flexibility to respond to things during development, but I also think that by doing the groundwork a lot better, there'll be more good games, and developers will be better at presenting compelling cases for doing games that are more creatively risky overall.

It's interesting that you mention Brutal Legend because while that's a game with a lot of creative risks I also got the impression that Double Fine pretty consciously 'de-risked' it. I read something about them creating prototypes of the multiplayer gameplay (the highest risk area for them) before anything else, and once that was proven, they used it as a template for the singleplayer gameplay mechanics. I don't know if this was before or after the game got picked up, but in any case, as an investor that kind of de-risking would make me feel a lot more comfortable funding a game that is risky.

If what Molyneux meant was "devs should lay the groundwork better, ultimately allowing them to be more creative" then I'm totally in agreement. If what he meant was "we should justify everything through focus testing or market data" or "developers shouldn't attempt to do the coolest thing they can but should already start thinking within limitations" then I'm totally against it.

Anyway, thanks for elaborating. I can totally see it from your perspective and, if I read it on its own, I pretty much agree 100% with what you wrote. I think I purposely ignored parts of what Molyneux said and was excited that somewhere in what Molyneux said I could find a vague mental common ground with him, which made me arrive at a completely different conclusion.

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Just to quickly clarify something, I didn't mention Brutal Legend. I was much more heavily referring to Schafer's previous games, which are probably a lot less safe overall but I think are incredibly valuable and important works for this industry to have produced.

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