Peter Molyneux Interview June 2006

Possibly the best interviewee in the games industry talks to Kikizo once more to get all loose-lipped about Fable 2 and being part of Microsoft's gaming empire. Plus: Is Project 'Dimitri' actually... Fable 2?!

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Kikizo: With you working so closely with Microsoft and the coming of Live Anywhere, would you ever consider bringing Fable to a massively multiplayer online environment?

Molyneux: I think, um... well, one, doing a massively multiplayer game is a very different proposition to doing something like Fable, and whilst I think the world COULD be conceived as Massively Multiplayer, you're talking about a very, very, very different game. And I - sure enough - I definitely want, in my career, the experience of doing a massively multiplayer game. Whether that's going to be in the next two years or the next twenty years... if I'm still ALIVE by then... maybe time will tell.

I know, I'm skirting around it... I can't really answer the question in detail, but you know, personally, I'm more fascinated in what Live means to you and your friends. I think that's a really exciting thing. I think of MMO games as being a way to make new friends, and what fascinates me as a designer, at what I found when I was playing on the 360 with the friends list, I really found that there was a very interesting bond that happened when you played the same game together, and I found that fascinating. So it's a bit of a mysterious answer, but, you know... I can't really give any examples.

Kikizo: About the Microsoft/Lionhead deal, what will your future be at Microsoft?

Molyneux: Well, to start off with, the reason that this was done, was so that we could create truly creative, innovational, fantastic games. That's the reason why Microsoft and Lionhead came together. Because we had a fantastic experience with Fable, it was definitely a join effort in creating Fable. You know - Microsoft didn't just demand it, they actually helped us in designing the game. And it was that sort of relationship that we started, that really has blossomed. So I think you're going to see a lot more fantastic games from Lionhead because of that relationship.

And especially when you think - and this is, this is being very honest - that being an independent developer now is very, very difficult. And I found, a lot of my time, a lot of the decisions that Lionhead were taking, we were FORCED to take because we were an independent developer, and it was starting to affect the quality of our games. That's not the reason I started Lionhead. I started Lionhead to make truly unique, fantastic, original games. And at that point, Lionhead and Microsoft joined together. And that is the absolute truth, that is not a pre-prepared answer, it's a really... you know, we sat down as a company - almost all of us at the company - and said, "Look, we're not able to develop the games that we really want to develop. We aren't able to have the freedom that we had." We felt too constrained by that.

Kikizo: So you'll just be concentrating on Lionhead?

Molyneux: Yes, that's right. I am at Lionhead for the rest of my forseeable future. Unless I'm abducted by aliens. Which could happen. [laughs]

Kikizo: Can you tell us something about the difference between the situation now and the time Bullfrog was acquired by EA?

Molyneux: Yeah, absolutely. It was a very, very different world then. I think... bizzarely, what happened... and a lot of the fault of what happened then was down to me, but... when Bullfrog was acquired by EA, at the time, I was clearly engaged in making games. Totally engaged in making games. And then I did this STUPID, DUMB THING. I came to EA because I really was ambitional, immature then... I thought, "right, this enormous corporation... I'll just... help run the corporation!" And I actually didn't design any games, really, for about a year. And that I found amazingly frustrating. Now, the difference here is, the great thing about doing this deal is, I get to sit down and design games and work on games for most of time.

Kikizo: And not worry about business...?

Molyneux: And not to worry... and, you know, the opposite is true [this time], so I think, there's all the reasons in the world you can see what exactly happened. I just want to focus on designing games for the rest of my life. I have a fantastic, amazing job, because I get to have a dream, and I get to see that dream in reality. There is - when I go far away from that, and I get all upset and emotional. So the closer I am to the game, the better I feel.

Kikizo: So do you feel that it's impossible to be an independent developer right now, or do you think that you are not the kind of person who wants to be an independent developer?

Molyneux: I think independent developers are really finding it tough at the moment. And there's less and less of them around, and the reason it's tough is because... to make a great game, you can have all the game features in the world, you can have, you know, everything on your side, but it's just not enough. It is a HUGE, MASSIVE effort to make games, any game, and release any game. And that means, as an independent developer, you're not really independent anyway. You've always got some publishing deal, which kind of means there's control over the product. So I think those are the real reasons why independent developers out there have changed so much.

Kikizo: So like, do you think that, within Microsoft, you can be more independent than you were independently?

Molyneux: You know, funny enough, I'm going to say yes, that's true. Especially, we had this crazy thing at Lionhead, and that was... we were doing three games, with three different publishers, and they all came out at the same time. Now that is... that's madness! You know, we were just running around doing anything BUT being creative. And what I think we are doing now, at the end of those three games - you know, Black and White 2, The Movies, and Fable: Lost Chapters, we all said, "Look, this is RIDICULOUS. We're not being the creative company that we should be. We're not making the right decisions for the games at the moment... we should just FOCUS all of our time to the people at Lionhead and focus passion down to two games."

Kikizo: So you're going to be a two-game team now?

Molyneux: It's going to be two games, that... I think one game is just, it's just too small. With two games, you've got feeding off of each other, you can swap technology, you've got, you know, all the operational stuff... we kind of are going back to the Bullfrog days. Even when we were doing Black and White and Fable, so we've always had a two-game deal.

Kikizo: When you think of a console RPG, you tend to think of the Japanese-style games, where it's very linear... character development, story are very linear, whereas Fable is very open-ended. What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of each approach to storytelling, and why do you prefer the more open-ended approach?

Molyneux: Yes, a very good question... for me, it is... I kind of get a little bit sick - and this is purely personal - of being told to be a certain person, in a certain world... and you know, I'm not this truly noble good guy. And if I really was a hero, and were in a world that was, you know, a world of heroes... I don't think I would be like Robin Hood. I think I want to keep a bit of the money. I'd give SOME away, but I wouldn't give it ALL away. I just think that's crazy. And I wouldn't want to be... I wouldn't want to be Mordred, or you know, some evil knight, either. I'm not really friendly, but I'm not really violent. I just want to be myself. And I think that's what I think about of this... freedom, freedom to be who I am, freedom not to choose a path in the way you choose to go through door A or door B and C, but choose, to flow down... I think of it more as a river.

And, sure enough, in Fable, the rivers all sort of flow towards the conclusion of the story. You could choose to be on one bank, or the other bank, but you chose how you weaved down that river. Whereas a lot of RPGs, it's like a narrow path. You need to stay on the path, there's no way off that path. And I think of Fable 2... as a much wider river. And.. you know, how are you going to get down that river? There's a story, and you and I can talk about that story, and I can say, "OK, what did you do when..." ... oh, I was almost about to say something there. That was almost DISASTROUS, but... "What did you do when (such-and-such thing) happened?" That's a very important thing. So... it's having a certain amount of freedom, it's having consequences to my actions, that is really important. Did that answer your question?

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