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Peter Molyneux On Developmental Experimentation
Gamasutra reports on a talk given at GDC by Peter Molyneux, founder of Lionhead Studios and designer of games such as Black & White and Fable. Molyneux discussed some of the experimentation that went into the development of their various games. Quoting:
"After his overview of the process, Molyneux demonstrated a number of actual experiments. He began by showing an early version of Fable II's dog, which he himself designed and which ended up factoring heavily into the full game. 'This is probably one of the most valuable experiments we ever did,' he said. Using the original Fable engine, the team asked itself, 'Why don't we think how the dog can actually move and be a companion to the player?' They decided to focus on exploring what a dog would do, rather than try to slot a canine into existing typical video game companion tasks. This led to the mechanic of the dog running out in front of the player, rather than beside or behind the player as most game AI companions are positioned, which had a huge impact on the dog's role."
I disagree. Molyneux does experiment far more than any other major developer, for the most part. Of course, these days video gaming is pretty well established and there isn't quite the room to invent whole new genres like there was back in the 80s and 90s. But even so, he always seems to me to be trying to find new twists on existing genres, or to mesh genres together in a new way. Fable and Black & White are good examples of this.
The problem is that, despite what people like to think, experimentation and innovation don't often make for very good games. These days, making a good game is, like it or not, generally about polish, attention to detail, technical prowess and the shameless lifting of other people's innovations. Molyneux will put out something interesting and different, which fails to provide any kind of fun. Then a year later, somebody else lifts all of the good ideas and puts them into a package that actually works as a game. Look at how Black & White, which was undoubtedly one of the most broken experiences ever to be marketed as a leisure activity, laid down much of the groundwork for the modern virtual pet genre, which is seriously big money now.
I don't like the guy's games, but I think the industry is better for his involvement.
I've always enjoyed Molyneux games for the new ideas he tries to pack in. Black & White for example; a great game in that it provided some genuinely different game-play to anything else ever. A few of us played that game for an entire weekend once; it's slow enough to leave running while eating/drinking/sleeping, but involving enough to play when and if you want.
It was quite funny to wake up to find your creature had randomly taught itself to fling faeces at non-friendly villages and promptly eat all the villagers once this bizarre spectacle had converted the hearts and minds of an opposition village to your cause.
Anyway, the point is, the guy's trying to inject some originality into gameplay at least; some times it works, other times not.
throw new NoSignatureException();
Yes, they like the dog because it's probably the cruelest twist in the game. They think hey we'll hype the dog up so everyone wants to see what the dog does and play around with it THEN WE'LL FUCKING KILL IT.
At the end you get the choice between saving your dog who gets shot dead, everyone else in the world who died or getting 1 million gold.
So what they did was made the dog pretty fucking integral into the game, but made you feel like a selfish dick for reviving him rather than all the other innocents that died.
Molyneux is a dog killing bastard and he uses it against you and that's what he meant when he talks about bringing emotion to games! Me being a good guy thought hey, I'll choose sacrifice and sacrifice the god damn dog for everyone else and all I got was a letter of thanks from everyone. If I'd known that I'd have got my dog back or taken the £1million and let the damn peasants stay dead.
Seriously though, the dog was quite fun to play around with. The game itself was far, far too short though but that seems to be par for the course with these sorts of games now, Fallout 3 was the same - the main storyline last about 5 seconds and the rest of the gameplay time is filled with boring side quests that are as repetitive as the crap in MMOs. Ironically I got bored of MMOs because the content in single player or coop games was much more rich and interesting, but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Frankly I'd quite happily say goodbye to the side quests altogether and have them work on the main storyline more for these sorts of games. Games like Deadspace show how awesome games can be if you just focus on the storyline.