Peter Molyneux is the kind of guy who makes a game that he would love and play for a very long time, but doesn’t necessarily appeal to many gamers. The creator of Populous, Black and White, and Fable, Molyneux recently told the BBC:
"It’s a failure borne out of myself as a games designer and creator and indeed the wider games industry.
For making games that only appeal to a small part of world. The number of people playing games is going up, but it’s going up slowly. The number of people who could potentially be playing games is huge. For a long time I made games I mistook adding complexity for being a good thing, in actual fact I kept adding new features to a game when I should have been fixing something deep down in the guts of the game that was slightly wrong.
What I feel more and more as I get more and more experienced is that if I can make something really simple, give gamers a highly-polished experience, then I have succeeded."
What Mr. Molyneux is saying here is not that that simpler games appeal to more of the gaming audience as it exists now, but to a larger portion of all potential gamers, including those who don’t yet play videogames.
He also mentions a bit about his upcoming Fable 2 and it’s co-op mode. "I want people to sit down and play the game with a friend, now sometimes your friend could be a gamer. But probably more likely your friend is going to be someone who has never played the game before." I don’t see my mom or non-gaming friend of mine caring much about building a house and a family while occasionally slicing some people to tell you the truth. Co-op seems a bit uneccesary in this game, and just an extra option to extend the life of the game. I’d go with just making one hell of a single-player experience.
I don’t hold a grudge against Molyneux, but he is the guy who doesn’t listen to anyone else but himself. Then tries to sell his game by telling us all of these unique real life situations that you can do in game, only to produce in the end an above average experience lasting no more than 10 hours. Here is a tip Peter, use your obsessive complexity-building and create yourself an MMO. Don’t worry, we won’t be mad if it takes you 10 years to make, we understand.
via [cvg]
