Molyneux's Unfocused Innovation

[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.

 

[kurupt87]

I'd completely forgot he was Bullfrog, those games rocked.

Fable is a good game, no doubt; I spent a crapload more time playing Syndicate and Theme Park though.

 

[Xanadoool]

How hard would it have been for the Fable team to add a 'random ruling decision' system? Something where every once in a while after winning the main campaign, you still get a sense that the world hasn't hit the pause button. Towns have riots, raids, etc on which you can spend the 13 billion gold you have after playing the game for a few hours after buying all the properties in the entire country.

Yet again, despite Peters assurances, the game simply stops when the action does. I have never told someone I haven't finished a game because I haven't fully upgrading one of my weapons by farting in the face of 20 people on-line. There seems to be heavy reliance on the on-line/sharing aspect of this game, which means if you don't use Xbox Live because of all the prepubescent twats running around on there, you don't have access to part of the game you bought and paid for.

That's a good idea, punish people who don't go on-line for either my reasons or even because they can't afford an internet connection. Way to encourage them to buy your next title. They should at least start releasing DLC compilations on disc so if you don't want to waste your internet cap downloading something you've just paid for, you can walk to the shops, pay for it there, walk home and still be able to use the net this month. Yes, New Zealand has rubbish caps and ridiculous data charges.

All said and done, the Darkness has to be one of the coolest antagonists I've seen in years! Pity he got shoved into the mess that is Fable 3.

 

[normalguycap]

This...was kind of depressing...about the industry I mean. Yahtzee knows his stuff. I know I'll be a game designer and I'm going to do my damnedest to make games the way they should be.

 

[Xanadoool]

One of the scariest words a huge corporation can hear is 'open-ended'. The idea that the consumer won't tire of the game after a few weeks--thus not buy another of their titles--just doesn't sit well with them. This, I believe, creates the environment in which we are seeing so many RPGs but so few that could claim legendary status.

I have a copy of LORD 2, a BBS game from back in the day. It has been on my PCs since 1998. Why? Because it allows you to create 'total conversions' once you've done the game to death, make a new one. Just like another game I still play, Doom 2. This is the only reason I still like PC games over console, even if the game wasn't supposed to be edited, give it a few weeks after its release and there are half a dozen map/mission editors out there.

Ah, but gone are the good old days. Now, a lot of publishers simply see us as wallets with short attention spans. Sure, that's true of my nephews and other youngins, but there are more and more of us oldies out there that aren't so easily impressed.

If it wasn't for indie games and the occasional gem, I'd have thought the industry dead long ago.

 

[Ericb]

snip (but highly relevant post)

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.

Yes, I think so too!

Disagreement does not have to entail in aggressiveness and passive-aggressive adolescent sarcasm, something which happens quite a lot around here. But it is for posts like this that I still can't back, adide of course for artciles and videos by Yahtzee and a few others.

Keep it up!

 

[Gyrefalcon]

Well, maybe his head is but his developers suck.
And what's with those imps and romantic dinners?
Is there something you aren't telling us?

I agree, the gnomes were a terrible idea. They broke the mood for everything from major battles, to dates, to weddings, to *spoiler* your friend going blind. A plot device shouldn't override the entire story.

I actually wrote Lionhead studios and heard back from them. I encourage everyone to write them. But you have to actually know what you did like and what you SPECIFICALLY didn't like in order to help them get the series back on track.

For example, *more spoilers* I thought the scene at the fort with the tutorial with Lucky was really, really well done! It was interesting enough and lept straight into game play! And not just a little, it was a serious test of your ability. If more of the game were like this it would be fantastic!

Yet too much of the game was like the opening. Too much effort to shoehorn the player down a rigidly narrow, linear path with drawn-out, repetitive mini-quests. I hated that the game assumed I could not understand a room having multiple doors off of it at the same time. It was also teeth-gratingly frustrating to try to do the tutorial bits and constantly get summoned back to the map chamber to show you another of the said doors. Do they think children are playing it? Not if the parents are worth their salt! Do they think there are many people who have never seen a video game left out there? If so, they would not start with the THIRD game in a series! So why is it written like this. And much like a movie, if the beginning jars you out of your suspension of disbelief, it is extremely difficult to get back into it.

It's biggest flaw: No choices. You can't choose which expression you will use. You can't choose more than one food item. (So why bother with the fat and thin thing? It becomes a live or die in battle one instead.) You can't choose to save of your own free will in case you make a wrong turn or choice. And that is an idea that was discarded some years ago. It isn't more "realistic". It is frustrating and annoying.

And unless there is a patch for the "aftermath", I agree with Yahtzee that it is stupid that you have to forever live with an unsightly world when you had to do something to save it for a single day.

Oh, and why do all the buildings have rock stars living in them? It's the only way to explain why they degrade so quickly causing the rent to go down or stop. And why can Jeeves suggest how to decorate a house but not handle the micromanagement of upgrading them as long as you have the cash? Again, filler =/= fun. And yet we hope the next game will get the mix right since each game has promise.

At least Lionhead studio does try to listen to its customers still. So get out that archaic pen and paper. Say it as nicely as you can so it won't get tossed in the trash. Why? Because maybe the next game will be the one you were hoping for. And because it's cool to get a letter back from them.

 

[rob_d]

The future of gaming is actually pretty bright.

More and more little companies can get on the bandwagon and some will make substantial amounts of money.
Most of the indie game companies are driven by very passionate people.
And what do you think when one of those companies have a series of massive successes.
Do you think that they will continue to make a little game or do you think that they will amass some extra resources and try to make the next Shadow of the Colossus?

I think that we will see the latter emerging in a couple of years or so.

Not all of them will be successful and it might even be the downfall of some of them, but a couple will succeed and these will be the games people will talk about fondly for years and years and years.

Another good development (I think) is remakes.
There have been some fantastic titles in the last 25 years or so, the old generation (i.e. me) is still interested in it, plus they have money to spend. And the newer ones might be interested in it.

Let's take Dungeon Keeper as en example. With a minimum of effort you could spice up the graphics and sounds and the interface. Plus put the stuff in it which the original dev team didn't have the time for. For these projects the scope is very clear and limited, little surprises during development and you only need a small team. If you then sell it for 20 or 30 bucks, the risk for customers is low and it would sell like hotcakes.

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

People that line up for these megaliths like Modern Warfare are to me as pop music fans. Statistics show there are huge numbers of them, but I have yet to meet one in person.

 

[John Horn]

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.

A lot of the games you listed here are Indie games. Or developed as independent mini-projects in-house like Portal. I think you've misrepresented Yahtzee's views here. He never stated that the world is bereft of creativity. He's highlighted this to be a problem primarily in AAA titles. Creativity is generally higher in indie games, exactly because the developer is not limited by publishers or shareholders. The larger the budgets, the more the shareholders got to lose. And the more they got to lose, the more cowardly their development becomes. They play it safe, because they already got too much to lose. All the great studios, including Bullfrog, started out as small teams. A friend of mine (Chris Hill) made the graphics for Syndicate. He told it was a small studio at max 20-30 people when he joined during Populous 2.

I inherently agree with the premise of Yahtzee's article. In fact, I've long thought that Peter Molyneux has lost his marbles. It started with Black & White, which I was both impressed and disappointed with. Though there was something amusing about having a giant gorilla throw feces into the local water supply.

Once, Peter Molyneux stated that the best and most innovative game of that year was "Prince of Persia: Sands of Time" - I shook my head in disbelief. While he's dug himself deeper into his pit of experimental undisciplined ideas, he's simultaneously gotten the taste for the bland and mainstream. I find this paradox illustrative as to what makes the man tick.

Assassin's Creed is a rare example of a great and original AAA game that was developed and conceived in an already large studio. Left 4 Dead is a zombie survival game - don't see the originality here.

Bioshock has an original style, but is gameplay-wise a steampunk 50s version of System Shock. Made by some of the same people who did System Shock.

Heavy Rain was original only in story structure. The game was excellent and stirred me for days after I finished it. But I will not sit idly by amid claims that the game play was original. It was just a bunch of poorly written QTEs (Quick-Time-Events), and poor 3rd person controls.


My conclusion is:

All great ideas begin small, and as they grow too large for themselves without temperance and balance, they rot from the inside out. Like all the ideologies, and all the great empires have always done.

 

[lord.jeff]

These days, everywhere, I look I find more and more evidence that the breed of games I like most - immersive, artistically-driven triple-A console titles - are dying. Unsustainable. Ruinously expensive to develop and insufficiently purchased by consumers who have gradually been bred to immediately reject anything that doesn't have the shiniest graphics, the realistic-est physics and the growliest insecure-est white male space marines.

And now you see why I support the Wii so much Mr. Croshaw. At least it tries and does things different with this industry and doesn't bend over backwards for the graphics whores and space marine shooter snobs. I'm not saying the other consoles don't occasionally have more original artistically driven stuff but it's few and far between now between stuff like Killzone, HALO, Call of Duty, ect. I don't buy a console just to play FPSs set in space or in a real life war. I need variety.

I was going to say something similar. Why is it that Yahtzee is so bent against the Wii and Nintendo if this is the way he feels about games? Does he think that triple-A means a visual level that the Wii can't handle? That motion controls have led to no innovations or expansions to the medium? He seems to be being hypocritical in the passage you quoted.

Nintendo are hardly the most innovative either. They've got their major IPs. The recent Super Mario collection for the Wii is a prime example. Nintendo are no better than any other company. For better or worse they gave us motion controls and a 3D handheld, but even then their first thought is "How do we get Mario, Zelda and Metroid on this?"... Ok, Microsoft is a little worse I guess because what they did is design their own motion control system and go "Now, how can we make this more like the Wii."

PS3 has done some pretty good work, the move seems like a shameless rip off of the Wii, but at least its, for the most part, being used on games that attract a core audience. Even they suffer though, churning out God of War sequels that keep getting progressively worse. But they developed a console MMO which was an interesting move.

360 gave us some interesting titles too, Overlord, Dead Rising and, yes, even Fable.

None of the devs are majorly innovative. If Nintendo do take more risks, it's not a noteworthy amount.

Okay they like to use Zelda and Mario a lot, but what about the last three Kirby games, Pikmin and a few of the Mario games too are all pretty innovative. Nintendo is just being smart release a few titles that guarantee millions in profit, then dick around and try something new tell the next Zelda game is ready.