Interview Peter Molyneux - Complexity is only simplicity multiplied

[Jason]

Tags: Peter Molyneux

<p>It's time to forget about the <a href="http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=45056" target="_blank">unpleasantness</a> of the day and <a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/5828/true_evolution_a_peter_molyneux_.php" target="_blank">join Peter Molyneux</a> for a journey through Mr Pete's Wacky World of magical gun swords, emotional grinding, and near-fatal ketamine overdoses.</p>
<blockquote>And we then said -- you remember this, Josh -- Josh [Atkins] is our lead designer on Fable III -- we said to ourselves, "What if we just had one sentence that said, 'To do a quick attack, press the button quickly; to do a build-up attack, hold the button down.' Suppose we said nothing else after that."<br /><br />Because of that, we then made swords work in a very similar way to guns to work in a very similar to magic. Suddenly, the whole hour of tedium went away for players because we unified that combat system and actually made it much more accessible for the more casual side of Fable III players, and made it much more interesting for the core players because they could start combining magic together and switching between guns and swords, because they were the same.<br /><br />That meant that, even though it was simpler, it was actually more complex and sophisticated.</blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>

 

[StrangeCase]

At this year's GDC, he explained that in quest of a larger audience he and the team at Lionhead have decided to simplify the much-awaited upcoming Xbox 360/PC title Fable III -- make the gameplay tie into the world more directly, and eschew statistics and menus in favor of instantly-accessible and comprehensible in-world reflections of game concepts.

Not only is Fable evolving, but we're seeing the RPG genre as a whole changing.

Peter Molyneux: It is; it really is. We feel like the whole industry's kind of evolving, itself. There's a huge amount of innovation now. Only a few years ago, everyone was saying, "Oh, there's no innovation." Now, there's a lot of stuff happening.

here's this new thing called the digital relationship: we have a digital relationship with players now where now, in Fable III, any of the shops in the world can be online-enabled.

PM: So this little village here [indicating screen] -- you may not realize it, but what's in a shop in this village may actually be downloaded from online. So we can populate those shops remotely. This is a new digital relationship; that, coupled with the fact that we can give things episodic content.

Allow players to marry each other; allow them to have children together. All this stuff is all new stuff, which just makes a big difference to the game.

All this on just the first page. There are four pages. Great.

 

[Arcanoix]

PAY WITH CASH, CREDIT OR DEBIT TO OPEN THIS DOOR.

 

[circ]

Peter Molyneux: It is; it really is. We feel like the whole industry's kind of evolving, itself. There's a huge amount of innovation now. Only a few years ago, everyone was saying, "Oh, there's no innovation." Now, there's a lot of stuff happening.

I didn't know de-evolution was considered innovative.

In a very near future games will no longer have content. Only locations. Gamers can make up their content with each other. LIKE MMORPRGS SIMPLIFIED IT'S INCONCIEVABLY FANTASTIC.

 

[Shannow]

The mis-use of the word "evolution" is painfull to watch. What they are doing is "intelligent design" or better "moronic design", nothing evolutionary about it.

 

[Der_Unbekannte]

Well he is kinda right, there is changing a lot. Let's look at his examples.

There's a lot of social stuff happening; there's a lot of casual games happening; all the motion controllers are changing; there's new titles coming out that kind of change people's thoughts like Heavy Rain;

Yep he's right. There is a lot of change. BUT IT IS ALL SHIT!

Social stuff - combining games with facebook.
casual games - no comment
change people's thoughts (Heavy Rain) - Games become movies

If this is the direction of the evolution of games, than i should start playing tabletop soon.

 

[StrangeCase]

Some fun highlights from page 2:

You can have all of this new tech, but if it's not presented in a way which is ultimately -- especially in today's world, where everybody just needs to get to the point as quickly as they possibly can -- if it's not presented in an amazingly accessible way, it's just going to fail.

What was the last game you played that had a tutorial?

Like "Now push X and..."

PM: Yeah, exactly. "Push X, and that will take your sword out." I haven't played one for ages!

No, and I'm glad, because those were one of the worst parts of gaming.

PM: Yes, they were like forewords in books; you never read them. It would be arduous. Now, we don't have them anymore. When you go back to a game and play them again, they just seem arduous and tedious and, oh God, I just want to know the game; I just don't want to be taught to play the game. They seem so old-school, but three years ago we had them all over the place.

I think that's something the game industry has, up to this point, struggled with: "complexity equals depth", which it doesn't, necessarily.

PM: Well, that was my big mistake. It took me years, you know -- a ridiculous number of years -- to realize that adding more features actually took away from the game rather than added to the game. It's not the number of features you've got; it's how well-exploited those features are.

Now, it's been a very interesting journey with Fable III: taking a lot away from Fable III actually adds a lot to it. We took away leveling up. Taking away the leveling up in the GUI and saying, "We'll make leveling up part of the game experience. We'll put it into the world." So taking away the complexity and abstraction of it and making it all part of the world actually made it better and more understood. People anticipated it more, and that really worked well.

PM: Yes, it's right. Fable 1, Fable 2, Mass Effect -- I think all of those games we probably were inspired in some sort of way by other games like... Things like BioShock came along, and that had a great start. BioShock 1 had a great start to the game; it threw you in there.

Then you look at something like Uncharted 2, which was another great start; there were no tutorials, and you were just kind of thrown in there. That was great. And the Modern Warfares and Call of Dutys -- that's looking really, really good. It's all happening at once.

So often, this happens like that. If you look at films and books and TV, everyone seems to have the idea at the same time.

It reads like a alternate screenplay for This Is Spinaltap. Except he means it.

 

[1eyedking]

New Buzzword "Digital Relationship" found!

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED

 

[Der_Unbekannte]

Reading throug this interview i got one thought:
"What happend Peter? You used to be cool!"

Now he is just a fucking lunatic. Talking about "relationship" with the player but never listening what they want. NO ONE wants to buy the stock of an virtual shop with real money so he can buy it with virtual gold. That's bullshit.

 

[Fritz Haber]

I think it is that retarded glee with which those cynical ideas are offered that is so disturbing here.
Ignorance and incompetence as wonderful and desirable traits in a consumer.

 

[tunguska]

Petey was never cool. He was just a hypemonster with a couple of pretty-good-but-not-great games to boast of. I actually thought Black and White was pretty good in a torturous addictive sort of way. I still remember with scorn all his interviews before Black and White where he talked about a kind of revolution in terms of game AI through the use of connectionism/neural network programming techniques to produce game characters that were truly unpredictable even by the developers themselves. Never implemented of course.

 

[Shannow]

PM: Well, that was my big mistake. It took me years, you know -- a ridiculous number of years -- to realize that adding more features actually took away from the game rather than added to the game. It's not the number of features you've got; it's how well-exploited those features are.

Wait, wait, what!?!
So he realized after a ridiculous amount of years that for a feature to be good, it needs to be well implemented. How does he jump from that to "adding features takes away from the game". Those statements have no logical connection...

 

[Fowyr]

Peter Molyderp.
Ridiculous what this man make Syndicate, Genewars and Dungeon Keeper. Simply unbelievable.

 

[Konjad]

He used all his intelligence on these games.

 

[relootz]

Peter Molyderp.
Ridiculous what this man make Syndicate, Genewars and Dungeon Keeper. Simply unbelievable.

Seems like someone is faster then me this time.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

when I played World of Warcraft this was like a dawning moment of realization for me: that the steeds in World of Warcraft, brilliantly, didn't come until you were level 40.

That anticipation that it built up in me as a player -- I didn't care what the gameplay was like; I didn't care how tedious it was. I just wanted to get a steed!

Fantasy RPG is a knight running around horseback and killing things.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

PM: So this little village here [indicating screen] -- you may not realize it, but what's in a shop in this village may actually be downloaded from online. So we can populate those shops remotely. This is a new digital relationship

New (paid in in-game money) items arriving every now and then has potential to be pretty cool.

I just know it will be haxsword of awesome and new clothes for $2.99, though.

 

[Vibalist]

I didn't care what the gameplay was like; I didn't care how tedious it was. I just wanted to get a steed!

 

[Angthoron]

when I played World of Warcraft this was like a dawning moment of realization for me: that the steeds in World of Warcraft, brilliantly, didn't come until you were level 40.

That anticipation that it built up in me as a player -- I didn't care what the gameplay was like; I didn't care how tedious it was. I just wanted to get a steed!

That's just fucking retarded. For Petey's information: WoW is a subscription game. An MMO. A Pay to Play MMO. The sort that likes to keep players in longer by creating extra content and various means to prevent the player from getting there.

He is designing - to my knowledge - a single-player arcade. In single-player arcades, you don't get e-peen envy to the better players that ride on their pet multiheaded steed. The desire-reward mechanic in a single player game is completely fucking different from the motivations of progress in a fucking MMO. The pacing must be different, the content must be different, the play style is different and must be addressed.

Just reading the quotes makes my hair go prematurely grey. What is this bullshit.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

Reading a forward to a book is arduous? Jeez, no wonder Molyneaux is an idiot: REDDING IS TEH HARD.

 

[Angthoron]

Reading a forward to a book is arduous? Jeez, no wonder Molyneaux is an idiot: REDDING IS TEH HARD.

Not to mention that just like a forward to a book, the training missions in games should be skippable. I might not care what the editor has to say about the book, and I might not want to learn how to press the "A button or Enter".

 

[Vibalist]

And there it is. The problem can be solved by making toturials skippable, rather than continously making gameplay more and more simple to the point where you only need to press one fucking button to accomplish everything.

 

[1eyedking]

He used depleted all his intelligence on these games.

Fixed?

 

[Clockwork Knight]

And there it is. The problem can be solved by making toturials skippable, rather than continously making gameplay more and more simple to the point where you only need to press one fucking button to accomplish everything.

When you let people skip the tutorial, they will skip it and later bitch about how they don't know how to do something. A skippable tutorial is like a manual, and we know how many people read those.

 

[Angthoron]

He used depleted all his intelligence on these games.

Fixed?

You can't fix anything Moulineaux-related, he's beyond salvageability.

When you let people skip the tutorial, they will skip it and later bitch about how they don't know how to do something. A skippable tutorial is like a manual, and we know how many people read those.

People could RTFM? Paper manual (great to read on the porcelain throne!) or electronic, in-game manual (a-la Pirates!)? Or how about Google? It's amusing how games used to be incredibly difficult when there was little access to game knowledge save for game manuals and strategy guides, today, games are playable by newborn puppies and the info is just a couple of keytaps away and still the fucking morons can't fucking look things up, ffs. In-game manuals, people!

 

[Achilles]

I don't understand how Pete declined so hard. Did the reptilian overlords snatch his body or something? I never had an interest in Fable, but the thought that they are still dumbing down their already dumb as fuck games is scaring me