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Sir Peter Molyneux?
KBV writes "It seems that for the first time in history a games developer has been granted an OBE (Order Of the British Empire) by the Queen of England. When Peter Molyneux - the creator of Black & White, Fable, Populous and many other games - was asked by BBC News about the honor he simply said "It's come completely out of the blue, I never would have guessed that I'd have that kind of honour." For the games industry as a whole, this is very much a good thing. It's great that developers are being recognized for their hard work and cultural impact on the world."
I mean, have you seen some of the people who have been Knighted? Charleton Heston, Peter Falk, Bob Hope, etc. I can only think of a handful of people who truly deserve this, such as Tim Berners Lee, etc. It's as overrated and unfair (in the subjective sort of way) as the Nobel Prize, where politics, incredible bias, and so forth determine nominees and laureates, not pure merit.
A blog like any other.
Since arthurs, actors, movie directors and musicians ,all of whom contribute to video games these days, are awarded this title, it is fitting and may I add over due that someone who wrote the backbone for the above artists talents should also be recognized.
Thank you Peter Molyneux and congratulations.
-Teiresias
OBE is a joke these days, to the point where people turn them down. Once they ment something but now they get handed out for next to nothing. Everyone in the country knows this and it gets 10 minutes on the news once a year at most.
I like muppets.
Do we care what the queenie says? Do we care who the queenie likes? Does it strike anyone else as completely ridiculous that certain crackers and marmalades get the queenies stamp of "me likey"? Does it strike anyone else as ridiculous that if you make a billion dollars you also get to be called sir? (She can really pick a winner that lady). Personally I'd prefer "Billionaire" as a prefix, but it strikes me as particularly ridiculous that this family has produced generations of failures, losers and scandals and still has the gumption to assign titles to success.
...Not to mention we fought a war against the entire concept of royalty in order to (as Ben Franklin said) "make their king a little man".
Can we all just agree that the entire concept of a royal family is irrelevant, archaic, out of touch and well... just plain silly? (And let's be honest, her social grace is extraordinarily questionable. Have you ever heard her speak an unscripted word? She can barely talk she's so affected and out of touch.)
Anarchy in the UK...
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Denegrate the Queen all you want, but at least she's not a Head of State that's culturally-, intellectually- and geographically-challenged, unlike those of some other countries that I can mention.
By the way, you have no idea how the British honours system works. The Queen has about much say so in who does and doesn't get recognised as you do over who does and doesn't get to be struck by lightning.
Fool.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
True, but at least we had a chance to vote for our chimp.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
There was a period a bit back where that many of these seemed to be given out that I suspected that the Queen's primary motivation in bestowing them was actually to make sure that there were still *some* people around who had them. I didn't think Gates really deserved his, in all honesty...and I'm not sure what Elton John did to receive one, either...Presumably it was his cover of Candle in the Wind.
I do get the feeling though that despite long periods of inactivity, the Queen periodically experiences bouts of sheer terror over the idea of becoming irrelevant. I'm going to be accused of being an anti-monarchist here, but I'm actually not. I occasionally hear stirrings about the idea of the Queen being terrified about the monarchy's continuation, when if it dies, I believe that she as an individual should take full responsibility.
As an example of another religious leader, although the Pope has no real relevance whatsoever in the mind of me as an individual, he has gained a huge amount of respect and political influence from his involvement in the collapse of Soviet Russia. My point is, that because as an *institution* these figures (the Queen, the Pope, probably the Dalai Llama) have very little contemporary relevance, the only relevance/influence/power they can gain comes directly from their action as individuals.
To me, virtually nobody in the contemporary English royal family really does much at all. Elizabeth II has been almost entirely a caretaker monarch to my mind. Diana tried to be a lot more active, and the Queen's inner circle responded to that by ostracising her while she was alive.
So to the Queen I say...if you're worried about the monarchy dissolving, get out of the palace occasionally and actually *do* something. The world is currently going through a period in which Darwin's theory is acting ruthlessly upon institutions which do not remain in some way useful. If the monarchy dies, it will be directly your fault as an individual, not public apathy or anything else. We only need to look at the monarchy's (even comparitively recent) history to know that if the monarchy is in any way currently at risk, it only is primarily because of the current monarch.