Bioware and Molyneux at GDC 2005

Alice's Wonderland blog has more coverage of the Game Developer's Conference this week. "Storytelling Across Genres: Bioware's Perspective" covers the way in which Bioware concocts the RPG magic they're so well known for. Next Generation Game Design details a talk by Peter Molyneux about where Lionhead and he are going to be taking games in the future. From the post: "Possibly a right proper experiment this, and kudos to Peter and Ron for having the guts to try it: at this stage it looks like it could go either way, and creating a whole new genre (Real Time Strategic Gods and Morals Sim?) is always going to be risky. I very much look forward to the result. "

Comments

340.000 words????

[Anonymous Coward]

340.000 words in Jade Empire? That's getting close of the Lord of the Rings books. Wow.

Considering Lionhead's record

[FirienFirien]

When Black and White came out, it wasn't an entirely new genre - we're all used to god games from games like populous, but it did a lot of cool things. The graphics handling at the time was "Wow!" stuff, being able to zoom from overview of the world to looking at the face of one of your minions in seconds of smooth rolling. It presented a good duality of storyline quests and side-quests; it was girlfriend-friendly, and it introduced gestures. Ok, gestures didn't get very far, but they were an interesting idea at least. But lionhead also took part in worms 3d - oh so playable! More black and white stuff came out. Fable was also massively commended (yes, if you rush through it you can complete it fast. But it's a good game nonetheless.) So, with the stuff they've produced so far, I'm looking forward to seeing and playing whatever they come up with next.

Hurrrar i can be.... BILL GATES

[djsmiley]

and destory the world....

It's time to stop revering Peter Molyneux

[Xner]

He might be the king of innovative game concepts, but i can't think of a single game he produced in the last 10 years that was fun, and you wanted to play more than a few hours.

Dungeon Keeper was good for a few laughs. Until you realized all the missions were slightly modified carbon copies.
Black & White had you go "wow" for half an hour or so, until you were overcome by sheer boredom.
Fable takes the cake at potentially the worst CRPG ever. The whole good/bad thing is neat, but hardly factors into the mechanics of the game. Idem for the whole buy-a-house-get-a-spouse thing. That annoying voice that's always telling you to get your multiplier even higher and whatnot completely demolishes any immersion you might have by pounding the fourth wall with all its might. And last but not least, it's not fun to play.

Peter Molyneux might excel at coming up with innovative ideas to base a game on, but his execution is extremely flawed.
He is dead good at spinning the hype machine though.

Re:It's time to stop revering Peter Molyneux

[DavidLeblond]

Agreed. The only thing fun about Black and White was picking up rocks and tossing them across the island to see if you could destroy your opponent's village without having to deal with the damn ape/tiger thing. Or picking up your creature's feces and aiming for the other guy's food supply (I won several games that way.)

Actually that little bit was pretty fun. Actually the game would have been pretty fun in all if the villagers would have just shut up for one second. "We want food! We want food! Deeeeeeeeeeath.... deeeeeeeeath..." I ended up playing most of the game with the sound off.

Re:It's time to stop revering Peter Molyneux

[91degrees]

But he does come up with innovative concepts. Something highly undervalued by developers. Perhaps we shouldn't revere hm. We should instead look down on everyone else for their lack of innovation.

Actually it's not that there are no good ideas. Just that the publishers don't trust those with original ideas and no track record.

Re:It's time to stop revering Peter Molyneux

[Allison Geode]

ok, i hated black and white, but i have to be honest:
i liked fable. it wasn't what the game we were promised, but it turned out to be a simplistic hack and slash action-rpg... which is fine. what it did end up doing, it did damn well.

i was as disapointed as anyone that it wasn't the game we were promised, but if you take it at face value its actually a quick, fun romp through a fairy-tale world. the setting was much different from most of the stuff out there since it wasn't just tolkein rip-off number 397, but instead inspired by fairy-tales and fables. the narration, and the fact that the none of the main characters had complex names: the hero was just "the hero". his wife/wives were nameless, but he either loved them or beat them till they left him... the villain was simply named "jack". its classic fairy-tale stuff. and that made it stand out.

Re:It's time to stop revering Peter Molyneux

[chromaphobic]

I don't think he even comes up with particularly innovative concepts any more, just variations on an existing idea.

All due respect to the guy, Populous is one of the greats. I shudder to think of how many hours I spent playing the original on my Atari ST back in the day. A truly original concept and a very fun game.

But since then? Not so much, really. Just looking at the three games you mentioned:
Dungeon Keeper? Isn't this really just another D&D style game, just played from the DungeonMaster's perspective? Could have been fun, but hardly innovative.
Black & White? Should have been called Populous 3. It was really just the evolution of the original Populous concept.
Fable? An RPG with moral decisions affecting the character? How different was this from the drak side/light side concept of KOTOR?

His place in history is cemented, he created one of the greates and most original games of all time (in my opinion) but a look down his resume since then doesn't wow me.

Re:It's time to stop revering Peter Molyneux

[moonbender]

Dungeon Keeper? Isn't this really just another D&D style game, just played from the DungeonMaster's perspective? Could have been fun, but hardly innovative.

Erm, no. It's nothing even close to that. It's an RTS, if you've played Evil Genius, well that's basically Dungeon Keeper 3. You characterised the other two games better, but still in a way that makes me wonder whether you played them for more than an hour. He also produced Theme Park and Syndicate, BTW - Bullfrog was just an amazing company.

Also, and you might already know this, there actually was a Populous 3. IIRC Molyneux wasn't involved, but it was a fun game.

Re:It's time to stop revering Peter Molyneux

[chromaphobic]

I haven't played Dungeon Keeper or Fable at all, thus the questions. I put a few hours into Black & White before I got bored and moved on.

Theme Park was just another sim game, an elaboration on the SimCity concept rather than a new idea altogether. Good game, but nothing terribly innovative, IMO. Syndicate was also good, but was variations on RPG & RTS ideas, IMO. Good games & innovative games are two different things, were talking concepts, not gameplay.

The only other of his games that had the potential to be as truly ground-breaking as Populous was Powermonger, which could have been the first RTS-style game, ahead of Herzog Zwei or Civilization. But EA cut him off at the knees and released it unfinished. :-(

And, no, I didn't know there was a Populous 3! Must have been a big hit, LOL. AFAIK, Molyneux only worked on the first two, as you said.

Re:It's time to stop revering Peter Molyneux

[Anonymous Coward]

Black and White was time-consuming, I agree, but there were some aspects I did like. For one, after continuous training, I was able to have my creature defecate on defeated opponents, as well as fling his excrement (and often, villagers) off into the horizon. All in all, pretty gratifying.

The future of games

[OAB_X]

Its pretty clear: hyper realistic graphics, physics based gameplay, and AI thats actually inteligent.

Everything else is just going to be variations on that formula. RTS Morality Games are no different.

New genre?

[kaellinn18]

...and creating a whole new genre (Real Time Strategic Gods and Morals Sim?)... Peter Molyneux is great and all, but is "Real Time Strategic Gods and Morals Sim" really an entirely new genre? I mean come off it. It's just an RTS with a different take on your goals and how you accomplish them. A more accurate term might be "sub-genre."

if only

[Harlockjds]

> I very much look forward to the result. "

i would look forward to it too if Mo didn't have an amazing track record of promising and hyping new concepts and ideas but completely and utterly failing on delivering on them.

Fable, Blank and White, Flying fricking carpet etc show that Molyneux can talk a lot of cool ideas but none of them are developable.

Re:if only

[XenoChron]

I have to agree. Peter is nothing more than a good sales and marketing person and that's it. He markets the crap out of everything, gets big article write ups, and then releases games not worth playing. He's very good too at it too. Anyone remember the big Computer Gaming World Black & White review fiasco? He even had them going.

The result...

[Momoru]

I very much look forward to the result.

It will be the most realistic game ever. All of your actions will have a consequence with everything you encounter...story arcs will be so vast you can't even fathom them. The amount of detail will be rediculous.

5 years later

Game comes out. You play for 3 hours. Your character looks evil. You put the game away and never play again.

hub and pinch points

[Creepy]

The first article has a "hub and pinch points" that the author notes "I have no idea what that means". Assuming that this wasn't sarcasm, a hub is a recurring place you return to often. In an RPG, you may get quest A, B, and C and need to return to the hub after completing each one for the reward. A pinch point is a place you need to go to in order to progress with the main quest. A recent and extreme "pinch point" I've experienced is in the last Guild Wars beta. You start in the city of Old Ascalon before the Charr attack. At some point, you enter the acadamy and the Charr attack, devastating the kingdom and moving you into the Ruins of Ascalon. It is a pinch point - it progresses the story but limits or removes the amount of backtracking you can do. Fallout 2 is probably the classic example of pinch points - you have several places you have to go (Navarre base, dock platform, ship), and ultimately, the game could probably be completed in a few hours (I've seen a walkthrough that shows how to complete the game in 4 hours or less by going to Navarre in the first 5 minutes of the game rather than about 20 hours in), but there's a lot of stuff you'll miss in-between and you'd miss out on many allies and chances to advance your character along the way.

Re:hub and pinch points

[NinjaFarmer]

Speaking of GW, did they fix the brokenness that was that Healing Hands spell? In the open preview event my F/Mo soloed 100 undead mobs (casters, melee, dragons...) all at once to save a wipe, and I was able to run into a group of 8 players solo and kill at least 2 every time.

Re:hub and pinch points

[Creepy]

I never played that combo, but I don't think it's as powerful as it was. I do know it's an elite skill (only can have one elite), works over 10 seconds, and has a 25 second recharge time. I saw a Ranger/Mesmer beat a couple of Warrior/Monks using hit and run tactics (fast run and slow arrows, then mesmer health burns of some kind), but I don't know exactly what the Wa/Mo's were doing or all the skills they had. Since the Wa/Mo's were on my side, that was a bad thing (I was a Mo/Me and was taken out early and never res'd), so I spent a good 1/2 hour watching. The latest tactic I've heard of is using speed on Rangers to skip combat altogther in PvP (I think I saw that in photics).

I saw a lot more Warrior/Necromancers last time around, as there was some tactic with that combo that worked well (barbs and something, I think).