How should you live your life? Should you obey all the rules, or break those that hold you back? What decisions would you make differently given the chance? Peter Molyneux took that chance and now he is giving us all the opportunity to do the same……..
We all have a devil and angel sitting on our shoulders, helping us make the right decisions. Sometimes we listen to them, others not. But one man has spent his life giving us the choices we could never dream of making, in the real world. His domain is that of the virtual and making us believe that the impossible is possible.
Peter Molyneux makes videogames. He is one of the leading game developers based in the UK and his life has involved working with some of the most forward thinking and profitable games ever to be released, in 2004 his game Fable made three million. It’s safe to say he is the Steven Spielberg of the game world.
Molyneux’s company Lion Head Studios is nestled quietly on the out skirts of Guildford. A small lake situated in front of the studios has a couple of ducks happily bobbing around and there is an air of tranquillity. This tranquillity extends into the studios, where Molyneux and his team are working on his up and coming project Fable 2, a game that represents the culmination of Moyneux’s decisions throughout his life, recreated in game form. For Molyneux’s games have often been directly influenced by the events in his life, a method for making games that seems to be working extremely well.
Meeting Molyneux in his studio is to see a man completely enthralled in what he does. His desk is sat at the end of long table of computers with a number of people busying themselves. He doesn’t have an office and views the separation one would bring as a negative that would be passed on to his games.
At 48 he has a youthful exuberance that could only be found in someone who enjoys what he does. He has the air of a favoured teacher that would seem equally at home in front of a class-room as a computer, and Molyneux revels in any chance to speak to his creative community.
Catching the computer bug from an early age he has grown up with technology all around him. Born in Birmingham before moving to Guildford, where he has settled ever since, Molyneux’s career has followed the fortunes of the video game industry almost directly. “I have always been involved with technology. You know I’m a geek and geeks love technology. Whether it’s technology 40 years ago when I was eight or whether it’s today I still love it.
“I first got my hands on a computer which was when I was at technical college. That was it. I new I was gonna do something on computers.” But his big break came with his first company Tauras which he set up in 1982 with a friend, and the events that followed have tainted his career ever since.
“There was this phone call that came through, it was from Commodore. They were about to release this fantastic new machine called the Amiga.” Confusing Tauras with a similarly named company, Touras, which was also involved with computers, Commodore continued to make a deal, and explained how impressed they were with Molyneuxs work. “Which I thought was a bit strange because I hadn’t started writing anything yet. Bearing in mind the company was only two months old. I thought this company stuff is easy!
“When your running a company you have a lot of devil and angel moments.” So Molyneux, perhaps listening more to the devil on his shoulder than the angel, continued to make the deal with Commodore hoping he could impress the company at a later date. But, understandably, Commodore wanted to know how the work was coming along.
“We’d really like to see what you’ve got working because we’ve got this big bit of the stand for you to show off on (at a trade fare). And I said that’s no problem at all and I kept giving all these excuses why we couldn’t turn up. I said once the car had had a puncture, in the end I ran out of excuses…….they caught me on the phone and I didn’t have anything in my head or prepared, I said ‘I’m sorry I can’t come and show you because I just had my thumb amputated!”
Thankfully, Commodore was suitably impressed when they eventually saw the software Molyneux had written and the question of why his thumb was still attached was never raised. “Morally, I was lying through my teeth.”
With his new found success Molyneux was able to set up his next company, one specifically for making games, and so Bullfrog was born. His previous adventures with Tauras had given him an interesting idea for a game, but technology being limited it would have to wait. Bullfrog became famous for making games in which players took on the role of a manager, differing from games of the time. The late 80’s and early 90’s had been awash with mindless violent shooters, which were essentially carbon copies of each other.
Molyneux and Bullfrog became famous for games such as Theme Park, where players built and maintained their own Disney-like park, making decisions from roller coaster design to how much sugar should be in the cola. Molyneux’s games became known as the God-Sim (God Simulation).
During his career Molyneux has become a key speaker at many of the industries events all over the world. He is known to wax lyrical about the potential video games have and often his explanations have led to some unfulfilled promises. The internet has provided a platform for a very vocal community of game enthusiasts, many more than happy to share their opinions on Fable, “During the game's protracted development (over four years) we heard about how you could become good or evil, make decisions unique to your character and weave a story that would be markedly different to anyone else's. All nonsense.” Gamesmaster a video game critic.
“Telling us so many excellent features that soon the hype is so high the end product can’t compete, which was the case with his last game Black and White, a great title but left many people disappointed. There is no denying the brilliance of the man. However, bless him, he can get a bit excitable when discussing his new games.” Said elmosgotagun. But all creative works has its critics as well as its admirers, like Hilary Goldstein, a video game journalist, “Fable’s freedom is allowing you to play how you want, to make your own choices as to how you will reach the climatic battle at the end of your adventure. You will be hero, but you can be noble like Galahad, a rogue like Robin Hood, or a tyrant like Genghis Kahn.”
Molyneux’s son, at five years old, is too young to comprehend the games his father makes, but still plays a role in helping Molyneux understand the artistic direction he is taking with his games. “Sometimes you can watch a film and you can feel that passion welling up inside you. I watched ET again and of course I burst into tears …..my son was there as well, he wasn’t quite bursting into tears……that feeling of being so emotionally bound to whatever’s happening. I’d love to do a game like that.
“There’s a very good reason why computer games are almost exclusively about shooting and killing and horror, it’s because shooting, killing and horror is pretty easy to do.
“I’ve never been a tremendous fan of looking at games for direct inspiration. Films defiantly. The thing about films, there’s some visual stuff, like everything to do with Fable 2 at the moment, were looking (for inspiration) around a film called The Brotherhood of the Wolf. That’s a very direct inspiration.”
The silver screen has obviously played a huge role in giving inspiration throughout his life. Many of his games can be traced back as results of particular films. During the 90’s Molyneux’s big hit was Dungeon Keeper in which players controlled and built up an evil dungeon, much in the same way they controlled the Theme Park, but instead players gave orders to ghouls and goblins.
“Some of Dungeon Keeper was inspired by those saccharin sweet American movies, like Independence Day and all those movies which are just ‘the good guys always win’. You know the first minute of the film exactly what’s going to happen. I was watching it thinking ‘God, why doesn’t someone go and do something about bad guys!’”
Throughout his success Molynuex has always remained professional keeping his family life personal and yet deriving much of his inspiration from them. His most highly acclaimed game Black and White in which we see the appearance of the guardian Devil and Angel characters, inspired by the escapades with Commodore in the 1980’s, comes from a developer very aware of his parental instincts. The game casts the player as a deity in which, with guidance from the characters on his shoulders has to rule over, help, guide, hinder or destroy a small civilisation. “That feeling of watching something grow and maturing something is definitely from life experiences.
It’s the journey that you’ve taken to the point of the drama.” In an artistic sense, Molyneux’s games reflect his own journey through life whilst giving the player the opportunity to create theirs. But what to do next? For a developer constantly pushing the envelope what would be the perfect game?
“That’s easy. My dream is to make something you believe, absolutely and categorically is alive. That’s what I want to do. Before I ever saw a computer I watched films that made me believe that computers would be alive. No one’s even got close to that. I’m talking about a human being. That would be the dream, because if I could do that, just imagine the games I could make.”
There is an urban myth that circulates the film world. It has been said that during filming in the 1970’s, Steven Spielberg was watched by a member of his crew. The ambitious young director was seen sitting on a sandy beach in a small hole watching the tide as the sun set. When the director got up and left, the crewmember sat in the exact spot where he had seen Steven sitting. When asked what he was doing by a friend he replied “I just wanted to see what he saw.”
It’s not too hard to imagine a young game developer leaning over Molyneux’s shoulder tying to catch a glimpse of where he’s about to take us and maybe wishing he’d listened to his angel and devil.
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