Molyneux And The Room

hammersuit writes "GameDaily recently visited Peter Molyneux in his UK-based Lionhead Studios and had the opportunity to discuss a few things. The Room, a new dev tool being worked on internally, sounds exciting: 'Even more intriguing than The Room itself, was the purpose behind it. Peter wants his next generation titles to mimic the real world as closely as possible.' The piece goes into depth about what The Room is about, but also about episodic content (likes it), MMOs (wants to do one, but not Fable 2), and the future of the Fable series." If you'll recall, Molyneux used his 'Room' technology as his entrant into the game design challenge at last year's GDC.

Maybe I'm alone, but I'm not the only cynic

[MrSquishy]

Most things that Molyneux talks about are exciting. It's just that the end products are about 15% of what he envisions. The guy isnt so much an awesome game designer, just someone who made a career off of videogame fantasies (not the creepy kind).

Re:Maybe I'm alone, but I'm not the only cynic

[Arkham79]

Agreed - I once went to a talk given by him and even had a few drinks with him afterward. This was just before Black & White came out - after the talk I was so impressed that I bought the game immediately when it came out and never bothered with reviews and the like. It didn't live up to my expectations (or anyone else's I think). Since then I have been distrustful - Fable did not deliver and I have no reason to think that a new tool will help, though I will always hope.

He created Populous and for th

Re:Maybe I'm alone, but I'm not the only cynic

[Reignking]

If he says he creating "The Room", I bet it ends up being more like "The Cubicle"...

Re:Maybe I'm alone, but I'm not the only cynic

[KDR_11k]

Those who have worked with him say that he changes his mind every five minutes and unfortunately tells the press everything he's currently thinking about instead of the things that have been agreed upon already.

The god of simulation?

[Pearson]

"What we saw really makes us think that Molyneux is the true God of Simulation"

This calls for a Celebrity Death Match featuring Peter Molyneux vs. Will Wright!

Re:The god of simulation?

[random256]

Heh, that's hardly a fight. Wright delivers. Molyneaux chokes. Nuff said.

Re:The god of simulation?

[PhoenixOne]

Heheh, saw it in 2005 at the GDC. [slashdot.org]

Molyneux put up a good fight, but Wright won hands down.

hmmmm

[VGfort]

Well at least tinkering around and just exploring new ideas might result in some new creative games since they arent sitting down discussing how to we do a better FPS game with 1 new neato graphical effect. The Movies was definately a step in the right direction, although I've yet to play it

That was a pretty bad article.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod me troll or whatever, but the article was poorly written ("place center"? "the feeling"?), contained very little real information, and was obviously written by someone who knows very little about how games and the game industry work.

They made a demo app running on specialized hardware that has a lot of interactive stuff in one room? yeah that sounds like it will translate easily to a COMPLETE TITLE.

It's a neat demo, but that article only contained about a paragraph, if that, of real information, recorded and translated by someone who really has no idea what they saw.

The technology to make a "fully interactive" or "reality" type game has existed for a while. The reason no one bothers to make it is that it will take artists a hojillion years to create all those assets, and it breaks the 90/10 curve pretty bad. That is, with 10% of the effort you could create a world that had about 90% of the same interactivity where it really counted. That full-on level of interaction just isn't worth it.

I hope it's more "viable" than his other visions

[Opportunist]

Remember the vision in B&W? The learning creature, that piece of software that should be the revolution for AI design?

It was. Oh, it certainly was. It was tracking a billion variables, every single one had some tiny influence in the creature's behaviour. The impact on the game was a mix between zero and unplayable. Zero, because the many little things went by unnoticed, unplayable because you couldn't make a connection between cause and effect, between what you did and how it affected the creature.

I just hope that this magical room isn't going to suffer the same fate. Yes, it is very nice that items behave "realistic". That they age, that they follow physical and biological laws, but the question that remains is: How much will it matter in the game? When the game is set for a period of a few days, I doubt the "aging" effect is noticable. Let's just hope that the cool features don't suffer the same fate they did in earlier games: Being somewhere between unnoticable and annoying.

Re:I hope it's more "viable" than his other vision

[carcosa30]

I couldn't even get B&W to work. It crashed on every machine I tried it on, so much that it was unplayable. Tech support was 100% unresponsive.

I'm never going to buy another game by this guy. That game was the most over-hyped piece of crap ever.

Re:I hope it's more "viable" than his other vision

[Opportunist]

Well, it wasn't THAT bad, and concerning being overhyped, it can't hold a candle to WoW in that department.

But it sure was a game with a LOT of potential and a LOT of thought put into, with the result of being a rather mediocre "build and crush" game. Too much emphasis on the "new and cool" features, too little on gameplay and playability.

They learned their lesson with B&W 2, which is indeed better. But again, the comperative isn't necessarily better than the positive, it's still not a "good" game.

Presentation at GDC 05

[10Neon]

http://www.pqhp.com/cmp/gdctv/ [pqhp.com] This particular presentation is on the very bottom.

Molyneux showed B&W2, The Movies, and The Room during this presentation.

I agree that it would not make a very compelling game, but it would certainly be an interesting toy.

Re:Presentation at GDC 05

[grumbel]

### I agree that it would not make a very compelling game, but it would certainly be an interesting toy.

Something like The Room could be the perfect base for some kind of "Alice in Wonderland"-like adventure game.

What I like about The Room is that it bends the laws of nature, something far to few games do. Most games restrict themself to emulating reality and at best adding some explosions and special effects, but doors that lead you seamlessly to other places when you walk through them instead of around th

Re:Presentation at GDC 05

[10Neon]

I agree with you in that respect: it would be very possible to take the realism of The Room and make a game out of it. What I meant was, as everyone was referring to The Room as if they would expect it as a standalone game, they would not see much direction beyond the highly-detailed world(s) they had established.

Going for a Myst-like game, or any game that attempts to utilize the full detail it is capable of, has the problem of turning into the kind of content explosion that Will Wright talks about in his