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Peter Molyneux Apologizes for Fable
A message from Peter Molyneux.
There is something I have to say. And I have to say it because I love making games. When a game is in development, myself and the development teams I work with constantly encourage each other to think of the best features and the most ground-breaking design possible.
However, what happens is that we strive to include absolutely everything we've ever dreamt of and, in my enthusiasm, I talk about it to anyone who'll listen, mainly in press interviews. When I tell people about what we're planning, I'm telling the truth, and people, of course, expect to see all the features I've mentioned. And when some of the most ambitious ideas get altered, redesigned or even dropped, people rightly want to know what happened to them.
If I have mentioned any feature in the past which, for whatever reason, didn't make it as I described into Fable, I apologise. Every feature I have ever talked about WAS in development, but not all made it. Often the reason is that the feature did not make sense. For example, three years ago I talked about trees growing as time past. The team did code this but it took so much processor time (15%) that the feature was not worth leaving in. That 15 % was much better spent on effects and combat. So nothing I said was groundless hype, but people expecting specific features which couldn't be included were of course disappointed. If that's you, I apologise. All I can say is that Fable is the best game we could possibly make, and that people really seem to love it.
I have come to realise that I should not talk about features too early so I am considering not talking about games as early as I do. This will mean that the Lionhead games will not be known about as early as they are, but I think this is the more industry standard.
Our job as the Lionhead family of studios is to be as ambitious as we possibly can. But although we jump up and down in glee about the fabulous concepts and features we're working on, I will not mention them to the outside world until we've implemented and tested them, and they are a reality.
Thank you for reading.
Peter.
Where's the apology for Black & White? :-P
It's Gutsy for him to come out and say it. His statement:
However, what happens is that we strive to include absolutely everything we've ever dreamt of and, in my enthusiasm, I talk about it to anyone who'll listen, mainly in press interviews. When I tell people about what we're planning, I'm telling the truth, and people, of course, expect to see all the features I've mentioned. And when some of the most ambitious ideas get altered, redesigned or even dropped, people rightly want to know what happened to them.
Anyone who has ever developed software for a living knows this is the truth. Early on you spec out cool features, come up with great ideas, etc, etc. Your game/app is going to be the "BEST EVER!"...then somewhere along the way in the development process reality kicks you in the face. Bad features sometimes get added, good ones need to be dropped for technical reasons or time constraints.
The crappy part about it is, usually you only talk to people in your company about an app early on. Or maybe if you are in a small shitty company you talk to the press and no one cares. But the "big name" programmers are expected to deliever on everything they say and then some. It takes a lot of guts for Molyneux to step up and say sorry I couldn't give you everything I said.
I dunno, but as long as he makes it clear that whatever features are what he wants to have in the game, if adding them in is reasonable, then he should talk.
I don't know about you guys, but personally, I love talking with friends about theory, however practical or impractical that might be. What would be cool in a game, how you could implement it, races, ships, whatever. I think Mr. Molyneux should talk with the enthusiasm that he has for his games, as long as he's not promising that those features will be there.
Let's be realistic: trees growing doesn't matter. I mean, really, it's immersive, but also irrelevant. I'm not going to notice if it's not there (well I might, but I won't care). That being said though, just talking about the possibility opens up dozens of possibilities in my mind, ideas and theories that I can discuss with my friends, and we can say 'wouldn't it be cool if we made a game that could do this or that or the other thing?'
As long as he's not influencing sales by guaranteeing anything, I'm fine with him saying 'we're working on realtime tree growth and you can watch the textures change as paint dries, and the shorelines will gradually recede or encroach depending on the phase of the moon and the changing climate and passing meteors'. If they really are working on it, then A+, and if it doesn't make it in, then hey, that's the way she goes.
--Dan
Usually the creator of a title should stand firm behind the final product. It doesn't happen often enough with apologies that I honestly don't know what to think either way. The Nintendo side of me feels confidence in all my MS-hating ways to see hype fail, but at the same time, he made a game to the best of his potential and realizes he's human. I make games, I can understand his enthusiasm to add lots of cool features and see them get removed at the last minute.
What I'd really like to see is an apology from Warren Spector for DX:IW, but all we got is that post-mortem on IGN on how he prefers console games and that it was a wonder the first Deus Ex didn't completely bomb.
... is that I beat it in about 9 hours of gameplay. I guess I really expected it to take a lot longer than it did (and yes, I did side quests, maxed fame / karma, got up to 17 silver keys, etc, and opened all but 2 demon doors) While the character development was pretty kewl, I was disappointed at the end. I was left feeling like, 'Thats it???' Dont get me wrong, I enjoyed myself a ton while playing the game, and there are a ton of cool features scattered around, but overall I was disappointed.
Anyone know of a nice long RPG in the works? I remember playing Wizardry 7 for months before I was able to get all the way through it.
No I didnt spell check this post...
I must say, it's nice to see someone with as big a name as Molyneux apologize to the community for this. Most people that are in the "industry pioneer" category tend to be just a bit arrogant. He made some claims about features, gamers were pissed they weren't there, and he took the blame. Admirable.
Maybe next time, he won't blab every wild feature he plans.
Lex orandi, lex credendi.
At least he doesn't act like Derrick Smart. We need more developers like him, willing to admit things are perfect. Never played any of his games, but like his style.
A feature in a game like this doesn't mean much unless it adds to the gameplay.
Is it possible for real-time tree growth to improve gameplay? In fact, yes. Remember, Nintendo was planning something a little like that in the (vaporware) N64 sequel to Earthbound/Mother, where the player could plant a seed in a location and come back later, when the passage of time detected from the machine's real-time clock would tell the game when it had grown to a point where it could be harvested for useful fruit. Not quite the same thing that Molyneux's talking about perhaps, but indicative of the kinds of ways tree growth can improve a game. However, if the tree growth is merely decorative it doesn't influence the game *that* much.
I was actually fairly jazzed up about Fable until recently. The more I read about it the more I'm thinking maybe I shouldn't be so excited after all. I was hearing things before about a world that evolves around the player and dynamic gameplay, but now I'm hearing things that sound more like a 3D Zelda with Harvest Moon elements mixed in. Perhaps an interesting game still (HM isn't *that* bad, and if you're gonna copy, copy the best -- it's still better than almost anything else I'm aware of for X-Box), but it no longer is making me consider buying an X-Box again to check it out.
Sure it was a little short, no doubt but it was unique, which is typical of Peter.
Black and white sure copped him some flack, but the man is always coming up with wacky new idea's, look at Syndicate, Magic Carpet, Black and white - Populous - the man does things differently and he's not frightened to experiment.
Too many 13 y/o fanboys are whining their butts off (and I beleive it's school holidays giving them too much time to boot) because the game doesn't alsorts of outlandish things.
I do admit I've been on a few fable forums and heard discussions of "super secrets" and distant islands you can get to only by unlocking some really crazy stuff but unfortunately I beleive it's all rumours - it would be cool though if something "uber" hard to find was in there.
None the less,...... the game is good, I'm an RPG newbie but it had great graphics, brilliant audio, a fairly good storyline AND lady grey has nice boobies boot!
Someone should be cheering these kinds developers on, it's no wonder we get shit shovelled at us time and time again with kiddies whining at the good guys.
(much like hollywood)
I respect him for coming out and making a statement like that, but the game is still pretty disappointing. It's a decent enough RPG. You can see tiny glimmers of greatness as you play the game, which makes the game's flaws stand out even more.
I am not just referring to missing features. Those were disappointing enough, particularly given how much this game was hyped. For years this game was presented as the second coming of RPG's. The results were so far from the boasts one can't help but be disappointed. If you promise to feed people steak, you can expect to hear some grumbling when you serve them a ham sandwich no matter how good the sandwich is.
But more than that are the obvious game flaws:
- awkward controls (WHY DOES AUTOLOCK KEEP POINTING ME TOWARDS THE FREAKIN BARREL WHEN I AM FIGHTING 5 BALVERINES!)
- clichéd story elements... honestly, aren't we passed the forced failure being acceptable in a game, particularly one that claims as it selling point the concept of player choice?
- the fact that temple donations make the game's alignment system seem pointless
- and for a game that was supposed to be an genre changing epic RPG, isn't the game kind of short?
I am just going to go into a corner and quietly whimper until Jade Empire comes out.
There has to be more to it than that. 15% just means that you create an to turn it off. Or put it in a patch. No big deal unless it impacts the gameplay.
That's one thing Doom 3 did differently than most games: They kept in all the CPU intensive stuff, and made it possible to turn it off. The knew that in a year, people would rather have it in there than not.
I'm no game programmer, but this seems a bit ridiculous... what kind of code were they using for this? Is time passing so fast in this game that you need to be constantly updating the trees?
IMHO, the biggest missing "feature" of this game was the fact you could not play as a female. My wife was somewhat interested in this game (which is quite unusual), but when she found out she couldn't play as a female she completely and utterly lost interest.
In fact, I consider the ability to play as either gender not a "feature", but a requisite when playing an RPG.
Yup. I remember the painfully pretentious National Public Radio bit on Black and White. And it sounded like you'd get a Ph.D in philosophy by playing the game.
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
I didn't follow Fable during production, so I don't have any real problems with features that are missing
*Try to get your combat multiplier even HIGHER!*
from the game, but it is extremely clear that the game was released unfinished. While enjoyable, it suffers from a number of
*Try to get your combat multiplier even HIGHER!*
annoyances, to the point where the two missions you want more than anything in the game are to beat the crap out of the guy holding the camera, and kill
*Try to get your combat multiplier even HIGHER!*
the guy that made the controls 'default', but not customizable.
-Z
Fable: its the best steak ever realy come out to my house and ill give it to. Customer: /Walks to houes
Fable: Heres that apple i promised isnt it the best apple you ever tasted.
Customer: it is a very good apple but wheres that steak.
Well thats what the game feels like to me anyway the game was hyped as being this large game with things you did early in the game affecting the outcome of the game later.
In actuality the game is a small game that is fairly tightly scripted and things you do seem to have very little to do with the outcome later in the game.
SPOILER WARNING! for example at one point you get to choose wether or not to kill the bandit king. If you do kill him his friends send assassins to kill you to avenge his death. If you don't kill him he sends assassins to kill you for showing him up. and my favorite: At one point in time you get to fight and presumanbly kill a certain character to win the heart of a lady. In the end the character apears from no where and helps you out no matter if you optionaly "killed" him. Ok its possible he didnt die he was just defeated but you have his helmet in your inventory and he is still wearing it!
he sounds sincere. and i believe what he is saying. it's kind of like when you are doing a show (theatre) and you have all these ideas you talk about and you know you can do them. but money runs short or the stage can't support the kind of thing you want or people who were involved drop out, etc.
i am glad the game is out and won't let this effect my enjoyment of it.
i do wish the save system was good. i hate the way the saves work. it forces you to take a long time playing to get to one point and sometimes forces you past that point just to save it. people are losing out with this save sysem and it would be nice if they created a way for us to download a real save system.
all in all i am enjoying the game, but am not overly impressed.
Visit the Mother Site !
It's interesting to compare this situation with that experienced by the developers of City of Heroes. There, the developers blabbed about their pie in the sky ideas to the press years before the game came out. As the launch came closer and massive revisions of the original concept were done, disillusioned fans rose up in arms. A good subsequent design and a successful launch has since made CoH a fan favorite, but even today Jack Emmert (the lead designer) states that that was the biggest mistake the team made in the design phase. Given Mr. Molyneaux's experience in the industry, my tendency is to think that the marketing department may have had something to do with the high expectations for the game. All that said, I think it's very honorable for him to fall on his sword this way for the game. A man with principles, there.
As if it's not enough work to get proper aging/muscle growth/facial features in
Somewhere in there there is a joke about nerds and horny teenage boys having lesbian wives constantly sleeping together. I just can't think of one.
No sig for you!!
I'm no game programmer either, but the list of things they said would be included seemed a tad optomistic even to me considering this was developed strictly for the Xbox. If they had done it on PC it may have been more surprising.
However I did enjoy what was there of the game. I only wish it were longer. That's my only complaint.
More items and a less button mashing fighting style would be all else I'd ask for.
No sig for you!!
Do the boys complain when their pecks don't grow bigger/smaller?
Your sexism is disgusting.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Yeah... That's marketing's job.
/. is a bunch of nerds at a million typewriters. It's not a political conspiracy determined to undermine your beliefs.
my subject line speaks for itself. I wonder if more game designers would be more accountable to their loyal fans in order to keep them? This sort of choice in apologizing for the missing features really only makes me like the guy more!
me too..People should be glad he was honest with them. Not everything makes it into the final product, but its cool to know what he considered.