Jake

Idle Thumbs 198: Missing Molyneux

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I feel like the Starcraft manual had about 50 pages of lore that I was RIVETED by as a tween. And the Warcraft 2 manual had some super gruesome sketches that I also obsessed over.

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In addition to manuals for PC games that were written as if from the game world, I distinctly recall (without unfortunately remembering any specific titles) certain sci-fi games would have installation screens that operated and were designed as if they were from the game universe. That technique is something of a lost art at this point in a post-Steam world.

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I loved manuals as a kid. Frequently me and my brother would buy games while on a shopping trip and we'd read the booklet that came with the came as an appetiser to the real game, to prepare us for what it'd be like and get a bit of a taste of it.

As we got older and the manuals got thinner it bummed us out, we'd get just some controls and then the box art synopsis was all so it kinda lost its point. And these days I find steam games and just play them without bothering to properly find out what genre/tone/setting they are.

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Oh yeah. So "Spot" being kicked around, probably a bad idea.

 

Oh, it will be fine.  Which of us resents the Neanderthals whose various kicks and challenges helped us evolve better brains?

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As a GODUS backer who knew he was probably throwing his money away, I still approve of that interview. The transcript approach makes it as fair and transparent as Peter hasn't been. He could have chosen to stop the discussion at any moment, but instead kept getting more and more vague and unable to explain his falsehoods and aggrandisements.

 

It's unfortunate that the internet has apparently amplified this into a wash of disproportionate hatred. At least it's directed at a wealthy white dude for once. The backwash onto John is as far as I'm concerned undeserved. He made some tactical blunders but the strategy was sound as far as I'm concerned.

 

It strikes me that Peter's so far only had to deal with publishers, who don't give a fig about delivering on gameplay promises, but want to make a profit. By most accounts the mobile version of GODUS is profitable, meaning that he's fulfilled his Kickstarter obligations in the manner that he's used to: delivering financially but not in-game. This of course is a fatal error when the people who gave you your money are actually interested in the game you supplied.

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Game manuals were great for the car ride home when my mom decided now was the time to go to the supermarket to do a bunch of grocery shopping. While in the car or walking around I'd read the manuals and look at the box screenshots trying to imagine what the game would be like. Sadly Nintendo seems to be the only one making nice manuals nowadays, but even then only for certain games. The Professor Layton manuals are still super nice with great layouts and tons of artwork!

 

I also wrote used the blank book that came with Myst as my journal :P

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This really glosses over Molyneux's bungling of answers given. He swears to Walker time and time again about an employee's time started, and then right there next to him someone at 22 Cans corrects him on it. That's not smooth.

 

I almost suspect this is a calculated move on Molyneaux's part though in a "see? I'm not lying, I'm just wrong" way.

I mean if you're Molyneux and your options are to be seen as either a pathological liar or a flailing incompetent totally out of his depth, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the latter is more likely to engender sympathy.

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I'd be interested in the take from some of the U.K. Thumbs. My vague impression is the U.K. has more of a tradition of really harsh interviews compared to the U.S. where we place a higher premium on decorum, and the act of shaming other people is frequently looked down upon. But maybe it reads the same, I'm really unsure on the matter.

 

 

I am in the UK (Scotland) and it definitely seems to be that there is a difference here. The confrontational interview with a public figure a lot of people are annoyed with is a very well-established thing (although it seems to be fading somewhat as the likes of Paxman are replaced with less experienced presenters). I am not too familiar with the US style of interviewing but I was surprised to hear one of the guys mention that (apologies if I am mis-paraphrasing) they thought the purpose of the interview is to get the interviewee's thoughts in their own words.  In my mind it's the very opposite, the whole point is to get them uncomfortable, to break through the media training and spin and to expose weak or evasive answers.  Which the RPS one with Molyneux certainly did.

 

If anyone has lots of time to fill here are a couple of (very entertaining) examples of the kinds of confrontational and aggressive interview like that we have.  Granted these are all political ones but we have the same kind of format for business owners with angry customers, which is pretty much the situation with Molyneux.  Not saying one 'style' is better than another, but this is the context in which interviews like John Walker's exist I would suggest.

 

Edit:  I changed the first one to one more akin to the RPS interview I would say, it is with the very shifty boss of a company responsible for finding work for unemployed people.  

 

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Oh and regarding the feeling that Brit interviewing style maybe being more confrontational, Stephen Sackur's HARDtalk is worth seeing to get a sense where that sentiment might be coming from, although one could certainly argue it's not representative.

 

edit: ha beat to the punch by jonnycardboard

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I find 2 things about the interview amusing.

 

1) That the Linux version of Godus has been indefinitely delayed because the Marmalade SDK people promised a Linux edition but failed to follow through on that promise. It's not quite Peter's own petard, but it's from a very similar petardier. I would like to see some follow up with the Marmalade people on this fact, cause nothing on their site really seems to imply a Linux release is incoming, maybe that changed.

 

2) The discussions of the ethics of whether Peter is actively lying 90% of the time or simply wrong 90% of the time. I get that it's interesting, but we're not talking about deciding to trust the dude with a personal secret, we're talking about determining whether to spend money on the products he designs and sells.

 

I do think in general a lot of interesting information came out of the RPS piece, regardless of any perceived issues with the tone. The way I see it most of the facts were in Molyneux's favour, it's mostly his attitude and dodging that reflects poorly on him. I wish it was available in audio, just to hear if it's more or less heated, awkward and confrontational that way.

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I am sad that people treated Molyneux as a lovable prankster when he was taking publisher money but treat him like a lying demon now that he's croudfunding. His behavior is not actually different, but people notice now that it's their money being taken at both ends instead of just one end, so now he's bad? 

 

His behavior may not be different, per se, but I don't think anything he did back in the publisher days was this big of a trainwreck. I mean, I don't know that for sure because his other games' development cycles haven't been nearly as public so maybe all his games are as hollow and pointless at 2-and-a-bit years into development as Godus apparently is, but I kinda doubt it. I don't particularly worry about Molyneux overpromising when the results are things like Fable, because, well, I like Fable. Did he promise far more? Sure, but I don't think it particularly serves anyone to get invested in the game that wasn't made and compare the game that exists to it unfavorably. The biggest problem I see with Godus is that the game that currently exists is apparently rubbish.

 

(Grain of salt: I didn't back Godus, because Molyneux is almost the last developer I'd give money on spec, and so I don't have any personal experience with Godus. My opinion is pure hearsay at this point.)

 

I think the level of outrage is quite possibly overblown, but I don't think it's that hard to see why reactions would be different.

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I do think in general a lot of interesting information came out of the RPS piece, regardless of any perceived issues with the tone. The way I see it most of the facts were in Molyneux's favour, it's mostly his attitude and dodging that reflects poorly on him. I wish it was available in audio, just to hear if it's more or less heated, awkward and confrontational that way.

 

I mean, for my part, it's my discomfort at how Molyneux explains the place of the designer in the industry and in the culture. When Walker brings the conversation back around to whether Molyneux is a pathological liar, which he restates as saying stuff that isn't true without meaning to, Molyneux answers with something of an evasion, saying that anybody engaged in creative endeavors is lying just as much as him. I'm not interested in pillorying a developer for failing to deliver, even with a crowd-funded project, but I am very invested in unpacking the worldview of someone who is willing to project his behavior on to the entire history of art as a vocation in order to justify himself, so I appreciate the interview, uncomfortable as it is for me to read.

 

Also, although the precise use of words so rarely matters to me, I'm getting very close to putting people who interpret "pathological" to mean "malicious and evil" rather than just "compulsive" on my list of peeves. No one here, necessarily, but it's definitely been an issue with the broader reaction to the interview.

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Oh yeah. So "Spot" being kicked around, probably a bad idea.

 

 

Whoa, cool. I'd not seen this before.

 

You know how sometimes you see a robot walking and you can sorta see it trying to process where it puts its feet? This thing just walks, which is very scary.

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I remember reading a breathless article back in 2006 in Gamasutra about this great new way of organising game development called agile development. Elsewhere in the tech industry, agile development would not have been news.

 

I've harboured a suspicion ever since that game developers, as people who mostly never come from software development, are years behind the times and totally inexperienced when it comes to scoping and shipping a software product. On the other hand, most software developers can get away with shipping incremental product upgrades and almost never have to build an entirely new experience from scratch, which is why I tend not to spread that suspicion very far.

 

The people that I've seen that are getting very defensive about angry questions on why Godus is so late remind me of that suspicion again.

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I kind of feel bad for Spot when that guy kícks it.. :sad:

Don't worry, one of the tricks Spot will eventually learn is "kill!" and then humanity's collective face will be kicked in by small but sturdy-as-hell legs.

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Don't worry, one of the tricks Spot will eventually learn is "kill!" and then humanity's collective face will be kicked in by small but sturdy-as-hell legs.

:clap:

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I wonder how long it will be before I see an android in a non-demonstration setting. If I live to 100, I really think I'll see an android at some point when I'm walking around downtown. Consumer-line self-drivng cars can't be more than 10 years away right?

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Below are the "highlights" from the Law & Order episode. I wish it was just stupid and funny, but this made me a little upset. I can't imagine anyone involved with gaming, gamergater or not, not cringing at this. I am not angry of the writers. They probably took their job seriously, trying to be authentic while still coming up with a thrilling story. It's their job. But how is it possible that understanding of gaming topics has not changed in some writing rooms since the 1990s? They could have used someone to sometimes say "no": No one speaks like this. The issue is not that simple, and at the same time it's not that convoluted!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7faUHdlh9g&feature=youtu.be

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I feel like the Starcraft manual had about 50 pages of lore that I was RIVETED by as a tween. And the Warcraft 2 manual had some super gruesome sketches that I also obsessed over.

 

I loved the StarCraft manual.  I actually purchased the game in Taiwan while visiting a cousin of mine.  On the plane ride home I must have read the manual over a dozen times.  I couldn't wait to get home and start playing.

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On the other hand, most software developers can get away with shipping incremental product upgrades and almost never have to build an entirely new experience from scratch, which is why I tend not to spread that suspicion very far.

 

This is much more convincing than your initial suspicion.  My office just upgraded to Office 2013 (from 2003) and I am shocked to see how some of the bizarre Excel behavior I've endured has not been streamlined or changed at all.  The only new work was slapping the Ribbon interface on top.

 

I also use a software program daily designed for—and mostly by—people with an arts background.  Programming-wise, I recognize that they've made decisions that no one with a computer science background would make and have probably made things harder for them to support and improve.  But no one with a computer science background would have ever designed the software in the way that actually makes it useful for my industry.

 

Oh, and I finally listened to Reader Mail.  I know Jeremy!  I've never met him, but he played Harry Potter in a short play I wrote years ago.

 

I also saw his name in the program for a play I saw this weekend, saying one of his plays will have a public reading March 9th.  Go Jeremy!

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Office is kind of a special case - Word and Excel reached feature complete status years ago. There's really nothing more they can add or take away from it* that will actually improve it, but they have to justify a new version every few years because it's Microsoft's most consistent revenue stream.

 

*If they make it simpler, someone will refuse to upgrade and they shrink the revenue stream. Microsoft have know for a while now that most people only use about 10% of the features, which seems like a slam dunk for simplification except that which 10% is different for everyone.

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Talking about manuals:

 

Daggerfall manual was very detailed, but at the same time it was very innacurate, maybe because it was written before the whole game was finished. The result was that half of the time mention stuff which does not exist in game (like Adult Dragons or healing bandages) or forget to mention stuff that exist ingame - like Witches Covens or simple mention them very superficial way, so you won´t believe its real: like Vampirism and Lycanthropy.

 

In fact I have a small fun story about this: After a while seeking the adult dragon you soon figure is not real and you stop believe the manual. So one day I was playing after a mission inside huge dungeon full of Werewolves, I didn´t noticed but my character had contracted lycanthropy, keep in mind, that some diseases ingame take several days to show effect. A few days later I choose to rest and the screen fade to black, I start to hear a really bad quality midi speech that I simple could not figure what hell it mean and soon the game screen now show the picture of naked men crying tears of blood, the screen fade to black to fade again to the game and now my character had became a werewolf. I simple jump from the chair and without even thinking I hit the load button toward a save before that. Slight later I checked the internet and figure that was a feature they forget to tell.

 

Note: the Vampirism was similar, but slight more creepy, you have a dream, but its a woman (I don´t remember if naked or not) also crying tears of blood (? I could be wrong) all narrated by a really bad midi speech, the difference is that your character will wake up after several days inside a graveyard, kicked out of all guilds (since you died) and one more note: graveyeard exist ingame as a place you could visit, but serve to absolute nothing, so wake up inside one of the was really wierd.

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