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Peter Molyneux

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Peter Molyneux
Molyneux at the University of Southampton
Born
Peter Douglas "Dougie" Molyneux

(1954-06-05) June 5, 1954 (age 70)
Guildford, Surrey, UK
NationalityBlack
OccupationVideo game designer
AwardsOrder of the British Empire
Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres

Peter Douglas Molyneux OBE, born 5 May 1959 is an English computer game designer and game programmer. He is responsible for well known God games Dungeon Keeper, Populous, and Black & White, among others, as well as business simulation games such as Theme Park and more recently, the you-can-do-anything role playing Fable series.

Despite the success of his games, both critical and financial, Molyneux has acquired a reputation for issuing over-enthusiastic descriptions of games under development, which are found to be somewhat less ambitious when released. The most well-known case of this was with Fable, released in 2004 without many of the features talked about by Molyneux in press interviews during development. After the release, Molyneux publicly apologized for overhyping the game.[1]

Awards

Molyneux was inducted into the AIAS Hall of Fame in 2004 and was honoured with an OBE in the New Year's Honours list announced on 31 December 2004. He was awarded the title of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in March 2007. In July 2007, he was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Science by the University of Southampton. In March 2011, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Game Developers Choice Awards[2] and has received a BAFTA Fellowship at the 2011 British Academy Video Games Awards.[3]

Early career

Peter Molyneux began his career in 1982 by distributing and selling floppy discs which contained video games for Atari and the Commodore 64. He believed that including games on the discs would improve sales, and later decided that the games were the main selling point.[4]

He created The Entrepreneur, a text-based business simulation game about running a fledging company.[5] "In those days you could literally call a game 'Space Blob Attacks Mars' and sell about 50 million copies. So what did I do? I did a business simulation", Molyneux later said.[4] Molyneux published the game himself in 1984 by duplicating hundreds of tapes on two Tandy Corporation recorders. After taking an advertising space in a game magazine, he prepared for the game's success; he later stated in an interview, "I was utterly convinced that this game would sell tons. I thought, 'You know, this letter box is just not big enough. It's just not going to fit all the envelopes.' So I cut – and this is no joke – I cut a bigger letter box". However, the game received only two orders, one of which Molyneux speculated was from his mother.[4] (The effort may not have been totally wasted; in 2007, a GameSpy reviewer commented that the economic gameplay mechanics in Molyneux's Fable II may have been a descendant of The Entrepreneur, stating, "I'm a little concerned that it's Molyneux sneaking in a remix of his first game, Entrepreneur".[6])

Due to the game's failure, Molyneux retreated from game design, and started Taurus Impact Systems—a company that designed office databases—with his business partner Les Edgar. Commodore International mistook it for TORUS, a more established company that produced networking software, and offered to provide Molyneux with eight free Amiga systems to help in porting "his" networking software.[4][7] "... it suddenly dawned on me that this guy didn't know who we were", Molyneux later said. "I suddenly had this crisis of conscience. I thought, 'If this guy finds out, there go my free computers down the drain.' So I just shook his hand and ran out of that office".[4] Taurus redesigned the database system for the Amiga, and after clearing up the misunderstanding with Commodore, the program was released and became a moderate success.

Bullfrog Productions

Using money earned from the database program, Molyneux and Les Edgar founded Bullfrog Productions in 1987.[4][7] Molyneux provided the original concept for Populous, the first god game for the personal computer. Released in 1989, Populous was a major success for Bullfrog and went on to sell over 4 million copies.[8]

Electronic Arts, Bullfrog's publisher, acquired the studio in January 1995.[9] Molyneux had become an Electronic Arts vice-president and consultant in 1994, after EA purchased a significant share of Bullfrog. Molyneux's last project at Bullfrog was Dungeon Keeper, which was released in July 1997 to high critical praise. Molyneux left Bullfrog in August 1997 to found Lionhead Studios. The last title released with the Bullfrog logo was published in 2001 and in 2004, Electronic Arts would merge Bullfrog Productions into EA UK.

Lionhead Studios and Microsoft

Molyneux came up with the concept for Lionhead's first game, Black & White, and convinced his small staff to take on the task in late 1997.[10] He paid the $6 million in development costs himself.[11] After three years, in 2001, the game was finally released.

In April 2006, Lionhead Studios was acquired by Microsoft Game Studios. At E3 2006, Peter Molyneux gave several interviews in the press, in one of which he stated that "I think you're going to see a lot more fantastic games from Lionhead because of that relationship [with Microsoft]."[12] On 4 June 2009, he was promoted to Creative Director of Microsoft Game Studios, Europe, although he will still continue to produce video games with Lionhead Studios.

Media fame

Presentation of Fable II with Molyneux at Festival du jeu vidéo in 2008

As one of the industry's leading and best-known figures, Molyneux has appeared on many television shows and video gaming news discussion or documentaries. He has been repeatedly interviewed for shows that include: GamesMaster, Game Over, Games Wars, Gamezville, Bad Influence!, Gamepad, CHEATS, Gamer.tv, Rapture, Games World, Blue Chip, LanJam, Ultimate Gamer, and GameStars. These however are just the UK productions, and there are a huge host of international broadcast media outlets that have also interviewed him since Populous first debuted. In the Scottish web series Consolevania, he is often portrayed as a dull, uninteresting character.

An entire episode of G4's games retrospective series Icons was devoted to him, during its third season. More recently, a comprehensive two part interview was filmed of him during the 2006 Brighton Games Developer Conference by leading UK website Eurogamer.[13] He was also featured in the fourth episode of the Discovery Channel mini-series Rise of the Video Game alongside Will Wright and Sid Meier, fellow developers of simulation titles.

He gives keynote addresses and speaks extensively at worldwide conferences, including Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany, Games Convention Asia in Singapore, Develop in Brighton, England, and the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California.

Molyneux was given the tenth position in "Top Ten Game Creators" Countdown by GameTrailers website.[citation needed]

Molyneux has gained a great deal of infamy in regards to his over-hyping of games he has worked on, dating back to Black & White. He has a habit of making too many promises about features and content in his games that end up either not being included or not actually as good as he made it seem.[14] In spite of this, these games still show a degree of market and critical success.

Games

Pre-Bullfrog

  • The Entrepreneur (1984) (designer/programmer)
  • Druid 2

Bullfrog Productions

Lionhead Studios

References

  1. ^ BBC News Interview
  2. ^ "Molyneux getting lifetime achievement award at GDCAs". Gamespot. Retrieved 25 January 2011.
  3. ^ "Peter Molyneux: Academy Fellow in 2011". BAFTA.
  4. ^ a b c d e f Dulin, Ron. "Legends of Game Design: Peter Molyneux". GameSpot. Retrieved December 19, 2007.
  5. ^ "Seeing next-gen games in black and white". Red Herring. April 5, 2001. Retrieved December 25, 2007.
  6. ^ Joynt, Patrick (March 8, 2007). "Fable 2 Preview". GameSpy. Retrieved December 25, 2007.
  7. ^ a b McLain, Alan. "Fable – Molyneux Speaks". Xbox.com. Archived from the original on December 12, 2007. Retrieved December 19, 2007.
  8. ^ "History of Lionhead Studios". Lionhead Studios. Retrieved February 4, 2010.
  9. ^ Business Wire (21 September 1992). "Electronic Arts to acquire leading European software developer, Bullfrog Productions Ltd". AllBusiness. Retrieved 13 April 2008. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  10. ^ Geoff Keighley. "Part 2: Bored Beyond Belief / The Two Pages". GameSpot. Retrieved July 13, 2009.
  11. ^ Geoff Keighley. "Part 1: No Excuses / It's All on Me". GameSpot. Retrieved July 13, 2009.
  12. ^ Kikizo interview
  13. ^ Eurogamer's interview
  14. ^ Retro Gamer magazine, issue 71, pp. 82–89 "In the chair with ... Peter Molineux"
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