Gaming Peter Molyneux: Fable 3 and Emotional Games

Gaming legend Peter Molyneux speaks about his upcoming title, Fable 3, including Project Natal integration, episodic content and a world inspired by Charles Dickens. He also shares his thoughts on why games need to be more emotional to evolve and involve players.

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/xbox-360/2010/03/23/peter-molyneux-fable-3-and-emotional-games/1

 

This is the guy calling FB games cutting edge?

 

I prefer Will Wright's view, that everyone is focusing on Facebook at the moment because they think it's growth will be a constant increase, when in actual fact it's going to be an S-curve like we've seen with many other similar fads. There are lessons to be learned about game development from Facebook, but they are along the lines of lowering input requirements and building reward structures that encourage players to feed more time into the game - they are not just 'Let's make the next Farmville and use microtransactions'.

 

I actually quite like Peter Molyneux and this was an interesting read. Yes he does like to sometimes over-promise and under-deliver (a lot of that is because he talks about game development much more than other devs are comfortable with) and some of his comments make die-hard gaming sycophants reel with disgust ("OMG Facebook isn't gaming!!!11").

But in the gaming industry where so many critics and pundits are frequently wrong about the direction future innovation will take (how many prominent outlets laughed at both the Nintendo Wii and DS?), I think this requires us to sometimes listen to the more outspoken people. After all, Microsoft did make him a Creative Director for a reason...

About Natal, my biggest fear is that Microsoft won't capitalise on it's true potential and instead cycle through novelty game concepts. I truly believe that Natal's 'killer app' will be something social and abstracted from traditional gaming concepts. However I look at all the recent social innovations - Facebook, Twitter, accessible smartphones - and note that Microsoft is behind none of it. Hopefully a third party will really step up to the plate and deliver something totally different to what we've seen so far.

 

I quite like this article/whatever it is. Molyneux seems to be on the ball with this one and I like the ideas and future he's talking about. Whether any of that will actually come to be is something else entirely, but I like where it's all heading.

BTW, all the picture links give a 404.

 

I loved the first game, never played the second, shame. I will be definitely be trying this one out.

 

I would like to ask for less 404 action when I click on the pictures in the article.

I wanted high res, what I got was akin to a 'laugh-you-lose' thread on /b/

404 ftl

 

Don't care what anyone says, this guy is a pompous, arrogant ass.

 

yea.. i'm quite surprised.. usually Molyneux says the dumbest sh** but this .... well, it actually sounds rational and a Good Idea!

 

Hello Peter, fan of "Bullfrog" games here. Thanks for dropping a huge turd on PC gamers.

 

shut up and make dk3 already!

 

The whole 'touch mechanic' thing has a whiff of PM hyperbole about it, but for once, yes, he actually comes across as being fairly controlled and rational.

Where Molyneux is concerned I generally work on the basis of "I'll believe it when I play it", but Fable 3 looks pretty damned good - I loved the first two games, and still dip into Fable II when I want a slightly more laid-back RPG fix (compared with the likes of Oblivion or Dragon Age)

And yeah, another Dungeon Keeper game would be nice

 

Less pompous crap spewing from the man's mouth than usual - must be an off day for him?

I gotta say though, when he talked about making promises to help people in order to gain followers and then deciding which of those promises to follow through with later, it just made me chuckle...