The Crucifixion of Peter Molyneux Shows How Far We’ve Fallen

We ask our game creators to take risks and chances and we tell them it’s OK to fail — that we’d prefer them to try something new and bold and fail in the process rather than succeed at the same old song and dance — but when they do, we crucify them for it.

[Godmars290]

Defending someone who's been riding on their reputation from decades ago. Who has confessed himself that he makes things up during interviews just to make himself sound interesting.

[Palitera]

Exactly. We also ask for devs and salesmen not to blatantly lie about their products.

[Naga]

Molyneux's fall from grace is not the result of striving for greatness and failing to achieve it. It is the result of lying to millions of people repeatedly and promising far more than he knew he could deliver. This man sailed along on the waves of false hopes and empty dreams to his public demise, and I feel absolutely no shame in watching it finally catch up to him.

[theshonen8899]

This entire situation has absolutely nothing to do with creating new games. If he was kickstarting a sequel we'd still be angry.

[breakpad]

Peter Molyneux should never had been bothered with games ....probably has no knowledge in coding ,directing or he is some kind of talented artist ...he just had some poor ideas for gaming (as most of us have and alot better than his) and managed to get some people relative with the industry to support him financially and technically ..for that reason all his games suck ..except B&W and populus in which probably never had any interaction with and just gave the idea (and found the talented people who dedicate themselves to make them good ) .... molyneux should leave the semi-fraud tries to make a game, refund people and leave industry for good

[Wingsfan24]

Most ignorant comment of the day award goes to you, sir. You should really read up on Molyneux, because he's done a lot more for gaming than you might think. Unfortunately, he gets a bit ahead of himself when it comes to time tables and over promising things, but he's got a real passion for what he does. It's awesome how excited he gets about the work he does, and I feel bad for him on not being able to deliver on everything he dreams to do.

If he takes a step back and delivers on what he promises, he'll regain his rep. But right now, he just needs to stop talking to the press and work on Godus and get it done.

[Chapter11]

Not to mention taking people's Kickstarter money and making a half finished, micro-transaction filled game. Apparently his studio is working on a new game as well, using that Kickstarter money.

[ValKilmer]

Nobody deserves to be treated like Peter Molyneux was by that certain site who interviewed him. He's a game developer, not a war criminal.

[DarkOcelet]

He deserves this. The guy is dishonest. Hyping his games just for it to sell.

[lelo2play]

Stop acting all high and mighty hypocrite. Every developer does it. It's called business.
Tell me one developer that don't hype their games to make more sales?

Peter Molyneux doesn't deserve all the crap he's getting. He gave us some of the best games ever when he was with Bullfrog.

[OrangePowerz]

I don't think he deserves everything he gets.

@lelo

Hyping your product is different compared to overpromising on features that will never make it. Yes he worked on great games, but that was before he started to talk constantly about games.

[DigitalRaptor]

That's a bit unfair really.

He may have been dishonest, but he doesn't hype his games just to sell. That's wrong to say. He hypes features of his games that his team were in the process of building, that he was excited about. He sells the experimentation of his team, and promises things that he BELIEVES will come to pass, no matter how unrealistic they are.

It's his own fault though. After all these years, he should have realised that hyping up unrealistic ambitions was never going to end well, especially not promising a game in 9 months that was clearly unachievable. And now he owes his Kickstarter backers many, many things that he probably hasn't budgeted to provide.

[OpieWinston]

The lies he told when it came to Fable nearly killed the franchise.

Fable Legends has had no BS hype, and will build a new fanbase over the coming years. A fanbase built on what the game gives and not a bunch of lies.

[porkChop]

Actually, that site should be praised for that interview. They did their job, unlike many other sites. They asked the tough questions, and they made clear that their loyalty is to their readers not to the industry itself.

And, "treated"? Really? What they did was present the facts, and quote him back to himself. How can that be mistreating someone?

[OrangePowerz]

I don't agree with the overpromising of sruff that he is know for and I agree with some of the qiestions. He should know what budget is required and that he or someone else needs to keep an eye on it so that they don't go overboard because they just continue to try stuff. That's the problem with studios that work independently and don't have a Publisher to answer that gives clearer deadlines and budgets and checks up on the studios. Tim got far more money via kickstarter than what he asked for and went over budget making the adventure game.

What I don't agree with are qiestions like "are you a pathological liar?". That's not professional.

[rainslacker]

Hard hitting interviews are not berating the person you're interviewing after starting off with a question that instantly puts them on the defensive.

Good interviewers know how to frame their questions in such a way that lets the person answer them without making it obvious that the interviewer wasn't going to accept any answer except the one they want to hear. Good interviewers allow their interviewees to answer the question, and then follow up with questions that would contradict the answer to achieve the answer that they may want to get to, which hopefully would then lead to a more informative interview by discussing why those things may be the way they are.

All this interviewer did was mostly ask the same question over and over again, constantly trying to catch Peter in a lie.

The interview was not a good one, and I think you said it was a good one in another comment which compelled me to read the whole thing. Any journalist that treated their interviewee's like that in traditional media would never get another interview with anyone of interest or without a lot of PR handholding.

The interviewer did not do his readers any service whatsoever...he just came across as some petulant forum goer that just happened to have the chance to say their hate filled comments directly to Molyneux himself.

If you think that this interviewer did his job, and did a service for the readers, then you have to be able to say what positive benefit the reader got from the interview. All I see is that a developer got pissed off at the entire community of gamers. I thought Phil Fish was a tool for doing the same thing, but in this case, I don't actually blame Peter, because his entire career has been lambasted into nothingness by the current media who apparently service their readers.

Molyneux certainly deserves some of the criticism he gets, I would never deny that. But he doesn't deserve to be treated like some new-comer who exploited the gamer for their own gain.

[Maxor]

This guy sell dreams. Then he crushes them.

[DigitalRaptor]

It wasn't a crucifixion in the slightest.

These are all questions that have been needing answers - STRAIGHT answers - for years. He's been riding on his own hype for years, and I get that he's been excited to promote the games he's worked on, but the empty promises and lies were always going to catch up to him.

Fable is a franchise that is never returning from the path Peter sent it down many years ago.

[thebudgetgamer]

Trying new things and promising things you know you can not deliver are two different things. Perhaps if he slowed down the hype train it would not be as bad. It's better to under promise and over deliver.

[rainslacker]

It's better to keep the big ideas in house, and then talk about them once they are implemented.

Molyneux certainly dreams big, and his ideas are interesting, and people get excited for them because of that. He builds expectations too early, and then many people feel let down by the final product, even though in most cases, what he delivers is still better than a lot of stuff out there.

It's one think to talk about what you'd like to achieve, and it's another to say something will be something when it's likely his engineers probably told him it would be difficult.

Anyhow, I respect him for his past work. I don't like how he over-promises, which is why I don't listen to that stuff. I would think that after seeing people complain about how he over-promises for over a decade now, that they wouldn't be so surprised now. When I saw him talking about Godus, I knew something like what happened would happen. I didn't think it would be quite as bad as it turned out, but I knew from seeing his target goals that he would never come close to achieving his vision.

[WelkinCole]

Don't know much about him. As a matter of fact I never played any of his games.

He comes across as someone that dreams big which is fine with me. He has to be honest though at the right time if he knows he can't reach what he set out to do.

What I like about people like him though is that they set their goals very high but even if they miss where they land is still pretty good.

[mixelon]

Absolutely this. He tries, he's just not very good at moderating his enthusiasm and expectations. You know when he aims for something he intends to hit the target, it's just sometimes it won't work. People working under him have both said it's infuriating and inspirational, and it can push them to great things.

We need more auteurs, not less.

That applies to potentially disagreeable and hot-button creators too, some gamers go out of their way to punish any sort of eccentricity or weird opinions - in the arts those people often produce good, interesting work.

[Godmars290]

No. An artist should know the limits of his talent as well his tools. And Molyneux repeatedly made the mistake of making claims he had no intention or even ability to deliver on. Which likely set his team to groaning when they heard about them. And he only kept doing it.

Worse, he'd admit to it after the fact *then* repeat the mistakes.

[WelkinCole]

The thing is from what I read is that his games are still much better than most games.

If the end result was piss poor or well below average then I would have a problem with his over promise.

Personally I like game designers that think outside of the box and push the envelope which seems like what it is what he always strive to do which is commendable.

If he fails then we are not worse off than before.

In the end it really is up to the gamer themselves to to temper their insane exceptions and learn to read what is BS, might be possible and what is possible.

[christian hour]

@welkincole

@mixelon

I was worried I wouldnt find anyone commenting in here who understood molyneux so its good to see your comments.

He never promised anything, just spoke candidly about his ideas to reporters as if they were close friends and the way those interviews have been delivered over the years has made them seem like official promises.

Personally I have a lot of respect for molyneux and I understand that when I'm listening to Molyneux most of what he's talking about might never come to pass due to time constraints, technical limitations or an idea that worked good in theory but not in practice.

I don't get why people think this is a bad thing. I don't know of any other developer who would share his ideas so soon and intimately with the world, I think the ones who hate are ones who just never had a brain that is creatively firing its synapses every minute.

I know I've discussed big plans for my own artistic endeavours with friends over the last 2 decades, 99% of which turned in to something different or never quite worked out as planned. If I did the same thing with interested journalists I'd never hear the end of it, "x was not like Y and what happened to Z, You damn idiot liar!"

Personally I would prefer if more of our artists discussed their budding ideas, their creative process and approach, cos I know for damn certain the first 15 years of creating work for myself, I had no idea what I was doing or how I should be doing it or if I could be doing it differently or better.

Only in the last 7-8 years have I wrapped my head around it. But I would search high and low for artists of all mediums I looked up to discussing their plans and process and always came up with naught.

Molyneux is a big kid at heart, and his "lies" do not deserve the hatred they get. They're anythign but lies, just big ideas that never came to be for multiple reasons.

If there's anyone who's lies deserve attention, its the greedy decietful business tactics and PR runarounds that come out of UBI/EA/ACTI/microsoft/whoever on a regular basis, be it lying about a game, pricing schemes, downgrades, content cut specifically for dlc or a DRM machine, these are the ones who should be named and shamed.

Phil Fish reminded me of a young peter molyneux; a perfectionist with new ideas every day and making constant changes. I imagine if Peter Molyneux had twitter back in the day, he would have left the industry decades ago.

It's also clear a lot of people didn't even bother to read this well written, logical and unbiased article. So I'll leave you with what I felt was the strongest statement made by this article.

"We ask our game creators to take risks and chances and we tell them it’s OK to fail — that we’d prefer them to try something new and bold and fail in the process rather than succeed at the same old song and dance — but when they do, we crucify them for it."

[Godmars290]

The problem was that Molynex came to represent MS and not just himself. That supposedly the man had all of the resources of the Xbox brand, was towards the end of his relationship with the company put in charge of Kinect, and he only came up short.

Milo was suppose to be a thing, but in the end it only so much vaporware - which Molynex continued to stood behind.

The man never took risks, he just did PR.

[christian hour]

Milo is a different story altogether, that was when Molyneux was head of microsoft games, it was one of the defining reasons he left that station so soon after accepting it, he felt they didn't have gamers best interests at heart, were too corporate in their thinking and were more interested in making a product LOOK good than to actually deliver as intended, aka kinect/milo/starwars/anything from that era in MS history circa 2009-2011 when they lost the plot and chased nintendos coat tails.

And before you say something like "isn't that waht molyneux does?", Molyneux never showed a working prototype of his ideas (or "promises" as people like to call em), Microsoft did for Kinect.

A LOT.

Most of it faked or staged, the stuff that wasn't, was unimpressive or finicky at best. Kinect was a colossal waste of gamers time and just a gimmick to lure in the casuals. My sister is a casual gamer. She bought the wii, the wii fit, the 360 for a kinect, a ds for nintendogs, so on and so forth. (she's now part of some pyramid scheme called Forever Living or something... ugh)

A week later all these things are shoved under the stairs/in a wardrobe. Thats the consumer microsoft spent the last 4-5 years chasing, the impulse buyer looking for the latest "trend".

Thankfully Microsoft have done all they can in the last year to restore faith in their hardcore audience, ya know, the ones who actually stick around.

[Godmars290]

You missed the part where Molynex stood before, besides and behind Milo from the beginning. It was going to be definitive example of Kinect, and he had been put in charge of both.

I give the man credit for what he did with Bullfrog, what he and others did when DOS was a thing, but I just don't get this continued blind defense of someone who by painfully obvious example of what they've done recently that they just didn't have that good a grip on the tech.

And yet here you are, ready to jump on another GODUS bandwagon if it were announce tomorrow.

[christian hour]

"And yet here you are, ready to jump on another GODUS bandwagon if it were announce tomorrow."

I've never played nor ever plan to play godus, not my cup of tea, nor was populous etc (Was a big fan of theme park/them hspital/b&W) but my love for molyneuxs games doesn't really extend beyond that.

However I'm interested and curious enough to want to know what molyneuxs up to next, as it may peek my interest or be the kind of game I like to play.

I'm interested and curious about every aspect of this industry and try to come at it with a level headed mindset and an unbiased attitude.

Peter Molyneux is an overambitious auteur and if you take his ideas, musings etc as a bold face fact or as a "promise" then you have only yourself to blame.

You're the one misunderstanding this person. You're also taking the molyenux/milo incident out of context and not taking in to consideration the differences between the milo fiasco and molyneux's previous "promises".

One being an over enthusiastic man uncandidly talking ideas he came up with in the last week to journalists, the other being a tech demo forced by microsoft in which peter molyneux could say or do anything about, confidentiality and contract reasons etc.

I'll let you figure out which is which and why, in this case, the milo thing holds no merit for what has occured recently with godus.

Gamers online are so quick to cry witch and paint someone as the bad guy, if not completely ruin their career. Sure phil fish was hot headed and let trolls get the better of him, but we lost one of gamings greatest talents because of how the gaming community decided to attack him.

And I'd say most people were doing it jsut to fit in and be a part of something, where they're words would be validated by the angry mob and responded to by fish.

Absolutely zero empathy from gamers, serious lack of empathy on the internet full stop, and its a damn shame, when I was growing up and being beaten daily, gaming communities on the internet were a place I could come to, and find people who would empathise with me and help me.

Gaming communities used to be nice.

Now I have no idea where to find a friendly, logical, understanding gaming site.

No idea at all.

Everyone's so quick to hate and ridicule, and it's done us no favours.

Theres nothing sadder than a lynching mob.

[OrangePowerz]

I don't think it's right how he gets sometimes treated, but there is a difference between taking risks and failing and overpromising every single time.

[BitbyDeath]

We all miss bullfrog. He should make a new studio and buy the ip's back from EA.

[mixelon]

That would be unlikely but amazing.

Magic Carpet would be totally crazy on modern hardware, haha.

[fanboysmackdown]

Some gamers and game journalists treat developers like dog$hit. Some deserve to leave the industry, such as Fish but to treat them like criminals or pathological liars is hilarious. So what, Molyneux is passionate and overhypes his games, who gives a shit? Don't buy his products, pretty simple really. It's so easy to pick on other people's flaws to deflect our own.

[rainslacker]

Fish's problem was that he responded to the trolls, and took them too much to heart instead of focusing on those that actually liked his work. Haters gonna hate and all that. The press was not all that harsh on Fish to be honest until his little melt down, but even then, it was used more as a way to criticize the general community instead of Fish's own petulant attitude.

Peter has been criticized heavily in forums for years now, and mostly never responded, because it seemed like his ideas/games were what he wanted to talk about, which is what it should be.

I think he often got misrepresented in the current media, because more often than not, we see only bits of the interview that are used to sensationalize what someone actually says.

Peter does "promise" a lot, but not all those broken promises were actually promises to begin with, just his expression of ideas.

Anyhow, the author of this article was right, the media want's devs to be more open and honest....apparently...but when devs do so, they get shot down as liars or hacks. It's unfair to the developer, and the most vocal people only compound the hate, despite the fact that most people probably love the games that a particular dev may make. If people didn't like a devs games, no one would care what they have to say about anything, nor would they be getting interviews unless they had some sort of sensational comment for the fan boys to lap up.

I remember playing Fable on the PC, not knowing it was even related to Molyneux or MS Game Studio. I thought it was absolutely great and fun. Not perfect, but I upset that I brought it. But according to many, Fable was terrible because it didn't live up to all the promises. I don't blame people for having expectations if they heard promises, but broken promises do not make a game bad.

[Redempteur]

it's not about taking risk or failling ..it's about taking responsability for one's action.

It's about fullfilling promises. Curiosity was not a creative idea , it was just a con , everyone who was part of it failed , from the 2000 players to the one who won.

Piss poor management doesn't escuse the lies ..and goddammit doesn't he stop lying this molyneux...

[Malice-Flare]

that was a long time coming. the way it started was the only complaint, too confrontational...

[STK026]

Here's the thing, if it were only about Peter making promises and failing to achieve them, I would completely agree, he doesn't deserve to be treated so harshly by the community.

But with games like Godus, Molyneux has gone and promised a lot of stuff, has taken our money, and then, when he got bored with the project, he bailed on it and started working on something else.

It's one thing to fail to meet your own hype due to your own incompetence, it's another thing to leave a project unfinished because you simply don't feel like working on it anymore. Once you have the customer's money in your pocket, you should be focused on making sure they get their money's worth. Peter hasn't done that in years now. He promises things, takes your money, and once that's done, he just moves on; and that's a disgusting way of doing business.

[bitboi]

I bet they took some of the KS money and used it for other projects...

[rainslacker]

I agree with you up to a point. I agree that what happened with Godus was just a big fail on Molyneux's part, and he really should take responsibility for it.

What I don't agree with is how he's been constantly bashed by the media and the community for a very long time now because people couldn't always recognize the difference between ideas and promises. The fact that a lot of those past "failings" were used as a way to try and make him look like a compulsive liar I take particular issue with, because as you say, "it's one thing to fail to meet your own hype due to your own incompetence", although I find incompetence the wrong word to use.

[InTheLab]

The thing that kills me with this is how no other (reputable ) developer ever lies about their product as often as Molyneux.

I remember reading a story about how the last Fable game was not on rails and that Molyneux had shown a very basic clip of the game and had 50 "journalist" sign off on it....and the game is blatantly on the rails.

All of the good will he had leading up to Fable 2 is long gone. He's burned it all up With flat out lies and deceptioN. Remember him calling Milo and Kate a game and telling the world it was not scripted only to come clean about it after duping 24 million people into buying false advertising also know as Kinect?

[christian hour]

In regards to Milo, that was when he was head of microsoft games, that was a microsoft lie not a molyneux "lie". In fact it was one of the main reasons he quit that job, said they didnt have gamers interests at heart etc.

[DougLord]

Agree with this article 100%. Many posters are vile, scumbags that have never accomplished anything in life and are ripping a guy to shreds so they can play Internet tough guy.

Peter's Resume is AMAZING

Populous (1989) (designer/programmer)
Powermonger (1990) (designer/programmer)
Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods(1991) (designer/programmer)
Syndicate  (1993) (producer)
Theme Park (1994) (project leader/lead programmer)
Magic Carpet (1994) (executive producer)
Hi-Octane (1995) (executive producer)
Magic Carpet 2 (1996) (designer)
Genewars (1996)
Dungeon Keeper (1997) (project leader/designer)
Black & White (2001) (concept/Lead designer/programmer)
Fable (2004) (designer)
Fable: The Lost Chapters (2005) (designer)
The Movies (2005) (executive designer)
Black & White 2 (2005) (lead designer)
The Movies: Stunts & Effects (2006) (executive designer)
Black & White 2: Battle of the Gods (2006) (lead designer)
Fable II (2008) (lead designer)
Fable III (2010) (lead designer)
Project Milo (formerly known as The Dmitri Project) (tech demo) (lead designer)
Fable: The Journey (2012)

[maniacmayhem]

I feel this guy just gets overhyped and worked up about features for his game that are on paper. But when it comes to execute them for the game they don't materialize as he planned. But it's too late everyone is expecting what he promised.

And after reading the Godus debacle I can't really feel sorry for the guy. Sure threats and harassment against a person is never warranted, but it's time for this guy to shut up and actually let his finish product do the talking, or a well trained PR mouth piece.

[SpiralTear]

I don't feel sorry for Molyneux, but that's not gonna stop me from saying that the interviewer was a piece of crap too.

[strauser360]

Black and white was a good game, I would actually be excited if they made a third.

[Kenshin_BATT0USAI]

Man you guys are terrible peter is such a liable fella.

[MasterCornholio]

Cruxifiction?

Peter just look at the bright side of life.

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

[WikusVanDeMerwe]

Why don't all you Peter sympathizers go to his house and you can all cry yourselves to sleep with his millions of dollars to wipe the tears away. Poor Peter indeed; no one should have to suffer the way he does. Such a sad mistreated individual.