Molyneux's Unfocused Innovation

[Smooth Operator]

Fable would be fine if they wouldn't try to reinvent warm water every time, keep good ideas and improve upon those.
As if you go look at a car, well let's innovate something, hmm... throw out the engine and make it a peddle car?, NO, engines are an awesome idea so keep them and have they have of room for changes and improvements.
So don't go taking away maps, just shuffle it around a little, maybe put a fog of war on it that clears as you explore and your dog leads you in the general direction of your quest when asked to do so.

Also don't shove elements like sex and relationships down peoples throats, keep that shit optional, those who want it can pursue it and the rest of us wont be annoyed on every turn.

And how the hell did anyone think those Fable 2 job minigames are a good idea, you put an actual tedious job into a game?!
Does every company now employ one looney that designs minigames, and everyone just goes along so they wont freak out and cut their wrists?

 

[SiskoBlue]

It's true the days of "names" seemed to have disappeared but I guarantee they'll come back soon. Games aren't movies but their production is pretty similar, so I imagine their history will be as well. Movies started out as more technical displays, entertaining but only on the most basic level, they didn't even have sound. Games had a similar start with Pong and BASIC games. Both were largely produced by enthusiasts who had the time, patience and income to do it. Not because they were brilliant talents but because they were keen.

Then you start get an "industry" small studios making small productions. Which leads to break-out stars. Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, in games Sid Meier's, Peter Molyneux. Not only are they making something new they making in more entertaining than others who have jumped on the band wagon.

It's not long before people aren't impressed by this stuff anymore. It's not really improving, and the same stuff keeps coming out. The crash. It happened with the movies (mostly because of the depression they say), and games in the 80s. But then there's an innovation in technology. Sound for films, and consoles for games. Suddenly this new entertainment is more affordable and much better. Technology gets bbetter and companies start bragging about it. Technicolour, Panaramascope, xbox and PS2. But this costs money, and enthusiasts can't afford these innovations. Now there are some big companies forming. The rise of the studios like MGM start for movies. Games have Sony and Sega, Nintendo, Microsoft buys in.

That's when you get the age of the blockbuster, the golden age of Hollywood. All the big movies are super expensive productions. There are "names" but they are more commodities of the studio than individuals. Games starts going down the same route of CoD, Halo, Mario. Big franchises, made with big bucks to make even bigger bucks.

But then something happens. They become "formula". People are still interested and they still make money. But then some guy makes a film for a pittance and it gets as much money at the box office as the big film. Then he does it again? People see his work as "art". The studios see an oppurtunity to get the same money for less cost and risk. You start to get "named" talent. Not just the actors but the directors. The person with creative control whose job it is to over see everything. Lots of people can manage but this guy somehow does more than that.

In movies this gave rise to films from 50-70s. In wasn't how much was spent it was who is the star and who is the director. I think we're at that point in games. Tim Schafer is a good example. He's not always been successful but he is one of these people making low-budget entertainment that pulls in big revenue. The team that mad angry birds, and the guys that made Limbo. We already have known development studios but I think we'll get more and more "names". Cliffy B, Randy Pitchford, you could include Peter Molyneux but he's gone a bit Orson Wells.

There will still be the blockbusters big and small just as there are in movies, your transformers and Saws, or your CoDs and Halos. But I think more and more we'll get specific concept games by specific developers. It won't matter to us what genre the game is, it'll be who the creative head was.

That's my theory anyway...

 

[megaraccoon]

whats wrong with taking my imps and brutally tortured and converted fairies on a dinner date? i need to get to know them before i asked them to die in my name. anyway i like peter as much as yahtzee and i did love fable more than COD or medal of honor im not kidding when i say that i completed both single player campains in two hours, and yea i know its all about the multiplayer and socialising but heres the thing i play games to avoid socialising if i want to socialise i'll go to my local pub or to a nightclub or to skate parks, or comic/scifi cons not sit on my arse with a mic in my ear with god nows how many morons screaming in my ear like they think they're suddenly the stars in saving private ryan.

 

[the_pleasure_is_mine]

I don't know about syndicate but his hands are tied when it comes to Dungeon Keeper... He no longer owns the rights to make the games... Same goes for a lot of his old games. There is a new Dungeon Keeper coming out but its going to be an MMO and only released in Asia, sadly Lionhead have no part in it.

That sucks... I'd love a new Dungeon Keeper game ._.

Also according to Wikipedia, EA have Starbreeze Studios [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starbreeze_Studios] working on a new Syndicate game.

 

[TheTinyMan]

I was not a fan of Black & White...despite, or perhaps because of, over a year of biting my nails waiting for it. Ultimately, I think it did in fact try to do too much - I felt like I couldn't connect or communicate with my Creature, and I had trouble bringing myself to try because there were always people begging clearly for my assistance.

That as it may be, when Petey there was Bullfrog, it put out some truly amazing things. To this very day, I'd balk at being asked to write a terrain system that looked as good, and was as mutable, as Magic Carpet..and that ran on my 486.

Meanwhile, while I missed out on Fable 1 on account of a foolish high-school-kid anti-Microsoft bias, and haven't gotten around to Fable 3 yet, but I found Fable 2 to be scarcely worth playing in any regard.

Anyways, back on topic: I'm not sure that the world is as bereft of creativity as Yahtzee makes it out to be. We still have our true originality - our Minecrafts, Dwarf Fortresses, Limbos, Braids, Portals, Bioshocks, Osmoses (Osmosees? Osmos's?), Assassin's Creeds, Left 4 Deads, Heavy Rains, and our Mount & Blades. We still have fresh takes or new combinations of existing ideas, like Borderlands (much as I hated it), Mass Effect, Arkham Asylum, The Witcher, Castle Crashers, inFamous. I'm not convinced that there are fewer quality and creative games out there, but I do agree that there are more games of poor quality every day, making the average go down.

This is what we have game reviewers for, right Yahtzee! :-D

 

[Phoenix Arrow]

Well, maybe his head is but his developers suck.

Nah. I know someone who works for him and apparently he'd come in some days and go "I just had a great idea for the game" and usually this great idea would mean recoding weeks worth of work. That's not really a bad thing I suppose, unless you work for him. Having a visionary design a game is certainly better than having whoever designed Medal of Honour games do it, but he needs switching off and on again. The best thing he could do right now is forget about the Fable name, forget about the games altogether and work on a completely new title. Freshen things up a bit. But of course, he'll never do that.

 

[stuhacking]

What is C2DE??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRS_social_grade

He's talking about social classes... I think.

Man... I parsed it as "Cursed 2 Die Early."

 

[reachforthesky]

I disagree with the idea that his ideas don't work just because they aren't new. The biggest problem is that when you actually have a moment to inspect these features, they're all incredibly shallow. Marry an NPC? Sounds great until you do it and realize you're marrying someone who can say about a dozen sentences and looks a lot like approximately half the female population. Buying property would be awesome if only the whole thing wasn't so simplistic and one-dimensional, not to mention the fact that working the real-estate market is an awfully boring alternative to dragon-slaying. It's not that these things aren't good ideas, they just fall short when you realize how little work was put into them. It would be incredible if you could marry an NPC and then actually be able to interact with them the way real couples do, if not a bit creepy.

What I'm saying is that non of Pete's good-on-paper idea's fail because they're novelties, they fail because they are either implemented in the most shallow way possible (marriage) or because they don't belong in an action/adventure title in the first place (real-estate)

 

[Wolfram23]

What is C2DE??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRS_social_grade

He's talking about social classes... I think.

Man... I parsed it as "Cursed 2 Die Early."

Haha! Maybe both? But yeah that totally makes sense, thanks! Those lowbrow scum! (jk)

 

[NaramSuen]

I played the first Fable, but found it so unbalanced and boring that I never bothered with the next two. Part of the problem with the game was the options. Buying property didn't really benefit you at all and marrying someone was pointless. Also, the spells were ridiculously over-powered. Perhaps these game mechanics were improved upon in the sequels, but from his review and this follow up it doesn't seem like it. I have a friend who loves the Fable games though, so to each their own.

 

[Norman Rafferty]

J'accuse! What was the "Era of Names", and how is it weaker or stronger than it used to be?

Here's a start to the listing of Big-Name Game Designers. To be a Big Name, when someone heard they were working on the game, lots of people bought it.

This list also includes their tenure of game design. While many worked on games early in their careers, this list attempts to start from when their name became endorsement worthy. (For example, Schafer becomes a big name starting with Grim Fandago.)

Douglas Adams (1984-1998)
Clive Barker (2001-2007)
John Carmack (1992-2011)
David Crane (1978-1994)
Richard Garriott (1980-2007)
Hideki Kamiya (1996-2010)
Hideo Kojima (1987-2010)
Cliff Johnson (1987-1995, maybe 2011)
Jordan Mechner (1984-2003)
Sid Meier (1987-2010)
Shigeru Miyamoto (1981-2010)
Peter Molyneux (1989-2010)
John Romero (1992-2000)
Tim Schafer (1998-2009)
Stuart Smith (1980-1986)
Warren Spector (1990-2010)
John Carmack (1992-2011)
Roberta Williams (1984-1998)
Will Wright (1984-2008)

Omitted from this list are endorsements: Tiger Woods, Tom Clancy, John Madden, Tony Hawk, Shaun White, etc. are all big names that help sell games, but they aren't in a primary, creative decision role. Also omitted are studios, so no "Two Guys from Andromeda". (Honorable mention to Steve Meretzky, but Infocom's studio name was demonstrably a bigger selling point than his name.) Also, only the period where the name is a selling point is considered. (Sorry, Romero, but after 2000, your name was no longer bankable.)

There's probably more names to add to this list, but this is a start.

Observations:
* Out of 18 names on this list, 14 had a career of ten years or longer (more than 3 out of 4).
* Seven of them had a career of 20 years or longer. (That's more than 1 in 3.)
* 13 are were still active in the 2000s (three out of four), and 8 of them are still active in programming today -- 9 if you count Will Wright's think tank.

In conclusion, there's still a lot of big names making the kinds of games they want to make. (Whether you want to play them is another story.) Maybe if Tarn Adams or Markuss Persson lend their names to a second project, we'll see more big name endorsements. You really can't ask, "Where have all the big names gone?"

You can ask, "Why can't they make competitive games?" And many of these games are exactly what the creators want. Kojima loves Metal Gear's big long cut scenes. Molyneaux, you've already criticized at length -- and Schafer's Brutal Legend got the same treatment.

Sometimes, technical barriers got in the way. For example, Jordan Mechner commented there was a lot more he wanted to include in Sands of Time but had to be cut for budget reasons.

Some of this nostalgia is rose-colored glasses. Romero's magnum opus, Daikatana, could probably mix with today's linear, nonsensical, escort-quest games with just a little polish. Miyamoto is on record that from day one, he wanted "Video Game Man" to be a franchise in dozens of games ... and Nintendo has carried the Mario torch through many franchises, so his plans are still on course. And Populous cheats, dammit.

The main thesis is the problem: a big-name game designer might have the freedom to make whatever they want, but that's not necessarily what you want to play. A real auteur would accuse you of not "appreciating" their brilliant game. (It was Roberta Williams who famously blamed her lack of success in the 2000s because too many "average" people thought they should be allowed to own computers.) Yes, there's lots of soulless committes out there, but the roster of rock-stars is still pretty big.

 

[GasparNolasco]

I'd fell in love with one of my imps once... You did revive old feelings.

 

[CrawlingPastaHellion]

Syndicate had management in it. Not as much as, say, X-Com: UFO Defence /UFO: Enemy Unknown, but it did have enough. Syndicate did have at least two management elements: taxes, regions with enormous taxes would rebel, and research to make better equipment.

So I would say that's not a very good example of a pure-gameplay game.

 

[Aurora219]

I do somewhat agree here. Fable never really did seem to do anything but provide a wide world of disassembled menial tasks to keep people entertained. I always wanted a more specific control over the world; once I've bought every building, yes I've got a billion tons of cash, but nothing to do with that cash. If I could field soldiers, improve the lives of the people, whatever, it may be more fun.

 

[Traxx]

Aw, hell. Why'd you have to go and mention Dungeon Keeper?
-Now I'm all sad, thinking of that lost time when Games Were Good and the console peasants knew their place. :c

I think what Molyneux really need -and have needed since Black & White went crunch time- is someone with the authority and cojones to put the foot down and say "no, maybe next time" when he's about to go prancing off into "wouldn't it be cool if..."-land.

 

[VondeVon]

Whine, whine, whine.

This week's extra punctuation read more like a petulant teenager finding fault with everything than any true dislike, but that could well be a side-effect of me having such a polar opposite view of the game.

I think this is the first time I have so strongly disagreed with you and it's pretty refreshing!

Regarding no map: It can be frustrating, but if you like exploration it can also be pretty awesome. The only negative in this scenario is that the world itself is so darn linear that you don't really need a map and exploration is essentially just connect-the-dots. If the Fable world had been as large as Oblivion's - and had as many or more secret little villages and quests hidden away - I'd have loved trekking through with no map and only the golden trail to be switched on after getting thoroughly lost. That's exploration.

And to your comments about the kiddy look, having the main character teleport to the sanctuary, the humor often having an unapologetic dirty edge without being too adult...

Seriously? What exactly do you want, Yahtzee? You don't want a game-by-committee with a checklist of expected and obligatory components but you also don't want someone trying something different unless it's exactly what you want? You'll only grudgingly take this over the clones being churned out?

I'd rather the fingers-in-multiple-pies approach than any strict genre restrictions, myself. (Just action-adventure or just management are a dime a dozen, after all.)

Fable 2 & 3 weren't perfect by a long shot (especially Fable 3, which was way over-hyped), but they were fun.

 

[VondeVon]

I do somewhat agree here. Fable never really did seem to do anything but provide a wide world of disassembled menial tasks to keep people entertained. I always wanted a more specific control over the world; once I've bought every building, yes I've got a billion tons of cash, but nothing to do with that cash. If I could field soldiers, improve the lives of the people, whatever, it may be more fun.

That was my major complaint as well. I quite enjoyed all the tasks you could do, they broke up the monotony of constant questing. But I wanted more. Especially of the world-building stuff. If I'm Queen, let me enjoy it! I want a city made of ivory over here, all those bloody graves dug up and chucked into a lava pit (toss in those ugly, whiny guys too), more clothing and villager types, better looking men (and women, to be fair), the ability to move your people to different locations, whether they like it or not, closer character ties and more ability to choose how those ties develop...

Hmm, maybe this is what Yahtzee meant by the Fable games no longer containing new and exciting things?

 

[dfcrackhead]

Oh, Yahtzee.

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I haven't said anything because I dislike posting in forums. But now I'm finally gonna say it, and the fact that you'll probably never end up reading it doesn't change the fact that I'll be glad to have finally gotten it out and vaguely in your direction.

I enjoy your videos and columns despite the fact that I disagree with you on a considerable number of important points about what makes a given game good or bad, and I think the reason for it is that I disagree with you in different ways from how I disagree with most people. I find it refreshing to hear comparatively fresh and valid criticisms of the things that I like despite their flaws, whereas most of the criticisms I hear tend to seem ignorant.

This is a perfect example.

The issues you take with Fable 3 (and the Fable games in general) are perfectly reasonable issues to take. At the same time, while the reasons you like Peter Molyneux and his games might be outweighed by your problems with Fable, you still find value in the innovation he brings to the table.

Take Fable 2. The conclusion of its main storyline was, whether a given player enjoyed it or not, fresh and different. I suspect that you would not have liked it, but I also suspect that your reasons would be drawn from a lack of investment in the events leading up to the conclusion, which could have made the whole ordeal much more powerful -- which is a perfectly respectable viewpoint.

After I finished Fable 2, everywhere I looked, I saw people complaining about the ending, and it was always for the same reason: the main villain dies without a big, epic final boss fight.
I could even understand the complaint that the main villain's death was unsatisfying due to the way the conclusion was put together, but that was almost never the complaint. The complaint was nearly always that said death was unsatisfying due to the way the conclusion was -not- put together; specifically, that it lacked a nigh-universal gaming convention.

I can appreciate a difference of perspective in which something I like is criticized for executing something poorly. I have a much more difficult time appreciating criticism that stems from an aversion to a change from the familiar.

Your criticisms have an insightful substance that I find endlessly refreshing, even when we don't agree on those matters of substance.

So, in the unlikely event that you actually read this, I want to thank you.

The industry might be moving as you described regardless, but we can always hope. We might not place any bets on the matter... but we can hope.

That was well-thought out, decently written and pretty intelligent, you should definitely post more, we need more people like you who actually put thought into their posts and don't just post for the hell of it or go trolling. Good job.

OT: I haven't really played a Fable game since The Lost Chapters, but I agree with your article in principle, the industry needs more innovation and should move away from Call of Halo 6: God of War 4: The Prequel. I hope that if/when I make it into the industry that maybe I can add a little ingenuity to whatever company I join and have it be successful to the point where other companies take notice and get a bit more creative.