Peter Molyneux Interview: “I haven’t got a reputation in this industry any more”

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/02/13/peter-molyneux-interview-godus-reputation-kickstarter/

 

Most wildly un-professional interview I've ever read. Can't believe that guy even has a job.

 

Which one?

 

He most certainly does still have a reputation: a reputation of overselling projects and not being trustworthy.

 

Peter M.'s a nice guy - I don't believe he's means to deliberately mislead anyone. His trouble is a lack self control and an overbearing desire to please.

He's right about many of his points, you can't control events that you can't predict, and his day to day life is probably a lot more complicated than just being a run-of-the-mill developer or producer. He can't personally micromanage what's going on around him... sounds like he needs a good PA, maybe a whole team of PAs.

As for his image, people (meaning the media) expect him to say something new and exciting whenever they call, so he does it, and in the process digs a slightly deeper hole. I can't say I've never done the same (on much, much tinier scales though). That's where he needs to draw a line, for both himself and the people who work with him.

But, it can't be easy trying to live up to your own legend.

He's not very good at maths mind. 50,000 hours of (Godus related) interviews...what's that, 5.7 years @ 24hours/day? Perhaps he needs to let someone else do the accounting.

 

Well, he did make a couple of great games back in the day. And being self-employed makes self-firing difficult.

 

I think he means the journalist

 

Ya think?

I was trying to voice my disagreement with the stated opinion. Emoticon added for clarification.

 

I think the interview was rather restrained, compared to the notes I'd prepared after playing Godus. John isn't saying anything players wouldn't want to say, but he's not saying *everything* some of them want to say.

Peter used to have an assistant whose sole purpose was to stop him from saying things. I dunno what happened to her.

 

Well doh then XD

 

She probably joined the half a dozen or so poor souls mentioned in the interview who "have since left the industry."

Which was another weird thing in and of itself: Whenever Mr. Molyneux mentions a member of his team leaving the industry, he seems oblivious to the possibility of him having anything to do with it.

 

I am not the biggest fan of Molyneux himself but I do love the games he has made in the past (I sunk countless hours into Dungeon Keeper) and I respect him for taking on this interview and sticking with it through the interviewer's fairly uncomfortable and unprofessional method of questioning. Even though he hasn't delivered on Godus, the industry needs more dreamers; and one less Molyneux with big and expansive ideas is one slightly-less interesting industry to work in.

 

So what's the key take away from this interview? I got about two pages in, realised how long it was, and that the interviewer was both a jerk and had no skill at interviewing. (Seriously, the guy made his comments on timing and cost in the first paragraph, nothing new came up in the next two pages of badgering. Moving along people.)

So a kick starter project from a relatively high profile developer failed. So what? That's the risk of kick starter. There is a real risk that you will loose money on the projects.

This seems to be the key problem. If he wasn't in so many interviews he may have been able to spend time developing the game.

 

The interviewer is an ass, the harsher these critics are the more views they get. These are the type of people we have to deal to get press.

 

I'd like to hear the audio recording of the interview. I suspect we lost some tone there. Also remember: Both parties are British.

 

I stopped reading it at:

 

I had played Populous and Power Monger from Bullfrog way before I ever knew who Peter Molyneaux was. It wasn't until the widely hyped Project Ego development for Xbox that I even first paid him any attention. I didn't know any better to not take him too seriously with his claims of what the game currently was...

In one instance, I read an interview with Peter where he described sitting down to watch a tester play the game. This player married a character in the game who happened to be the mayor's daughter. The player then went and led the mayor out to the woods, where the player then murdered him. He then went back home, murdered his new wife, and stuffed her body in the closet. Peter was shocked to discover that the player realized he would now inherit all the mayor's properties and riches. He was stunned at all the possibilities that existed in the game that the developers hadn't even intended.

For anyone that played the original Fable, you know it turned out quite a bit different than all of that. It wasn't that it was a terrible game... It just wasn't anything close to what Peter was promising it to be right up until the week it was releasing. Being an amateur Flash animator, and feeling strongly about it myself, I even made a video about it to pick on the guy (which one of the community managers later suggested that Peter himself had watched!).

Tadgh Kelly just wrote a great piece on Molyneux that sums things up nicely. I would add to it by saying that gamers are getting much less forgiving about failures these days from someone they see as being The Man. If an indie studio launches a game on Kickstarter and runs into issues, I think generally people are pretty patient and understanding as long as the developer communicates well with what's going on. Peter Molyneux is no small-time developer, though. And when he does communicate, he doesn't do a great job at it, to be honest. Tadgh mentions it may be due to his dyslexia, which I can imagine would definitely have an impact, but I think it's also because it's just who he is. He's expected to boast about his games and how great they'll be, and the media has up until recently been happy to let him do so.

I've had my share of resentment towards him, but in all honesty, the industry would be in a lot sadder state if it weren't for people like him. Do I wish he would be more honest about separating his ideas for games from what features supposedly are already being implemented? Sure. But dreamers gotta dream, and I hope this doesn't break him and push him out of the industry.

 

Totally agree. The interviewer is out to make a name for himself. Job done.

I appear to be in the minority as I am a big Peter M fan from the 90's. There's not many developers can say they created a genre as he did with Populous and with other games like Syndicate and Dungeon Keeper under your belt I think you deserve a little bit more respect than he was showed.
Yes, some of his latest work has not met customer or probably his own expectations but there's a serious lack of professionalism in that interview.
I don't know, maybe i'm being a bit harsh, perhaps the interviewer is just too young and needs a history lesson ?

 

My opinion - Peter Molyneux is one of the heavy-hitters that shaped this industry. You show the guy serious respect, even if you ARE asking him tough questions. The person interviewing him is more interesting in making himself feel good than anything else. He comes across as an immature gamer rather than a professional journalist.

 

Wanted to watch your video. It says it is private...

 

You'd think people had better things to do than haul him over the coals. Sadly not.

 

It's things like this that have accelerated my departure from the industry. Being a game developer used to mean something great and exciting and mysterious and creative. Now it just means getting reamed for the sake of page views. If not that then getting reamed in comments sections.

In the game industry, you are literally only as good as the last thing you did. Whatever great things you may have done in the past to contribute to this art form, no one gives the slightest damn about. It's all what's next? What else can you give to me? What else can I get from you? How much more can I needle away at you until you either give me what I want or give up?

I like RPS in general but jeesus give the guy a break. So something failed. Move on. People expect everything, every time, with no forgiveness. No mercy. No understanding except gimme gimme gimme. Peter M. is a freaking game genius. What the hell is with people?

Screw that. I'm out of here.

 

They're treating Kickstarter in a way that it isn't really intended. They are approaching it as a guarantee to get a product rather than merely donating towards develop with a small reward for doing so.

 

While I totally agree that there's no point in people starting some Molyneux witch hunt, I also agree with the sentiments expressed in in this video:

No one is above criticism, regardless of whatever "industry-royalty" status they earned decades ago. Does the guy deserve to get trashed and shamed? No. Does he deserve some criticism for his recent (as in, past 15 years) practices--regardless of his intentions? In my opinion, yes.

 

No, but a critical part of project management is risk management. You're supposed to identify where things will be unpredictable or where there are things out of your control, assess their risk to the project and plan accordingly. Indirectly, that's what the whole line of questioning about the cost of development vs. the Kickstarter funding goal was all about - PM supposedly knew it wouldn't be enough and was thus essentially setting himself up to have negative contingency for a high-risk project. In other words, the interviewer was saying that his project management was increasing risk rather than decreasing it, at the same time as knowingly being short on budget.

I don't know specifics about this project, and it does indeed look like the interviewer was out to impale PM before roasing him over coals, so I'm taking that whole interview with a grain of salt. Still, as a developer and project manager myself, if someone managing a project for me said some of the things written in that interview then they'd never manage a project for me again. I wouldn't be asking questions of that style, of course, so they wouldn't be answering under such stress and things could go very differently.

I find the whole thing frustrating, really. Someone with such a high profile going to Kickstarter and not managing to achieve what they said in the timeframe and budget they set is disappointing and makes it harder for the rest of us to get funding through that avenue. That whole interview, from both sides, and others like it then make it worse by beating the whole thing up.

 

To be honest, if the interview can be taken at face value (that's a big if) it sounds like Molyneux could use some project management training. A lot of what he was saying in the little of the interview I read constantly went back to not knowing how to manage risk. You can't accurately estimate a budget, first solutions don't always work, timeframes are nebulous. All true, but also often manageable.

 

Have to agree with this one. As a project manager from outside of game development, the first rule you learn is "Double your initial time estimate". If you are trying to do anything for the first time then it can be a case of triple or quadruple. Same is for cost. Games is an industry where cost is almost entirely labour. So more time is more cost. This is opposed to the traditional triple constraint model. But it should be natural to any project manager after his first project.

But rather then training I would suggest he hire a project manager next time. In many cases you are better off hiring someone to deal with your weak areas, and focusing on your strengths, instead of constantly shoring up your weaknesses.

 

He's being crucified over the things he says in public. Last I checked, he's a game designer, not a public speaker. If his newer games aren't good then hey, maybe stop hanging on his every word that they will be, and wait until the thing is done to find out how good it is.

This whole thing is just a bunch of drama about some guy who is way too overenthusiastic about the games he makes, and he can't keep his mouth shut because of it. That's what all the fuss is about... Hey, this guy said this a bunch of times and then, and then, he was wrong!!! RAWR!!! Get the pitchforks!!!

A Kickstarter project isn't going as planned. What else is new?

Yeah, guess what... when you realize that someone constantly over-hypes things and yet you still keep listening, who's fault is it in the end when things don't go as you'd hoped? The person who did the hyping or yours for believing it after so many times? It's not P.M's fault that people keep believing him. The guy can sure as hell design a good game. That's for damn sure. Creative people have issues and faults and problems. That comes with the territory. He is no different. He talks and talks because people keep asking him to.

Society loves to build people up so that it's more fun to tear them down. It happens in every creative field. So, are people mad because P.M. tells "lies", or are they mad because his games aren't always everything they'd hoped they would be? If it's the former then there are some serious crossed priorities going on. Nothing surprising there in this new game industry frontier.

 

Exactly!

Like Andy Touch (I think) said, the games he makes are great. As a game designer he seems to be pretty good. Everything he's getting picked on for is project management, which is a completely different field of expertise.

On one hand, I think it's fair enough to expect that since this has been a weakness for the majority of a 30 year career it's fair enough to think he'd have done something about it by now. But guess what? On the other hand, the same can be said of everyone who kept putting the project management in his hands!

Edit: No, I think that last (removed) comment about the backers was a touch unfair. It was his business, so even if he doesn't have project management skills he should at least have identified that as a weakness and brought the skills in. Sure, backers should have recognized that as a risk themselves, but in all practicality that's not how Kickstarter works.

 

It seems like a lot of people view Kickstarter as a place to pre-order a game, instead of as a place to donate a small amount of money to help sponsor a cool idea.

Having said that, I do think Peter Molyneux clearly over-promised on the time table for the project. He is easily experienced enough to know that complex projects take time to complete. Telling potential backers that the project could get done in a matter of months was a mistake. He did not deserved to be attacked by that interviewer, though.

 

That goes without saying, but it's always easier to say it in hindsight, and when you're on the outside-looking-in.

Still, he does paint himself into an incompetence corner, but that's pressure for you. RPS don't play by the normal rules of engagement and I think he knew that already.

It's not uncommon to find people in (any) industry who are great at one thing and terrible at another (especially when mixing creativity with business nous). But you surround yourself with people who can - that's the first thing anyone successful will tell you. There are some genuinely talented people around who can do-it-all, but they're few and far between, and even they know better than to try keeping that up after thirty years. Short story; Peter shouldn't be managing, he should be delegating, and it sounds like his delegates leave as soon as they get an itch, and he hasn't been replacing them as it happens.

All of this is irrelevant anyway. The interview is really about the failure of Godus, Peter's just a piñata.

The true reason they screwed up Godus is clear: They used Marmalade.

 

Which part? The risk mitigation stuff (the bolded bit) is a fairly standardised practice for professional project management, and while there's certainly no guarantees it's a well studied and documented field. It's not specific to this, to games, or any particular project.

Of course, if we're going to consider hindsight then lets also consider prior experience in similar projects, too.

 

Risk management is standard practise in any business - telling someone who runs a business they need to employ it is a bit like showing grandma a book on things you can do with eggs

25 years in the games business and one thing I've discovered about hindsight is that it's treated like an annoying flea by everyone except the people who actually do the work (because they feel the effects of mistakes harder than management). We'd have a perfect industry if people learned from their mistakes, but few do. I expect there's an old chinese proverb about "life is a never-ending lesson which few people learn".

Experience is only useful if you're aware of and can recognise the driving forces behind it, and not just putting it down to life shafting you. I guess Peter may be an example of failure to learn or accept. But even so, there's still a big difference between risk assessment and risk management in-situ. The latter falls back to delegation, and having people managing risk elements, and replacing them when they fail or leave.

"We know this volcano is going to erupt, but we have a plan!"

How many movies celebrate such plans going wrong?

I'm not defending him - actually I think his perspective on Kickstarter rewards is unhealthy and wrong - but I do think this can happen to pretty much anyone. If it wasn't for the fact it's a Kickstarter project with "public money" so to speak, it wouldn't even be noticed. Most games are late and most of those under-deliver, and many studios close each year because they're run incompetently or victims of life's gambit. That in itself isn't news.

 

It should be, but it is clearly not.

I tried to carry on conversation past that, but thanks to the nature of the interview I felt bad about anything I wrote based on it. About as far as I can go, since it comes from my own observations rather than that interview, is that there seems to be a definite pattern and no change in behaviour to manage it.

 

What does astonish me is the expectations and the budget. The article cites half a million pounds. That's chump change in my industry, and I gather its not that much in gaming as well. Expecting a industry changing game to be delivered on that budget is ridiculous.

 

Not as ridiculous as promising it.

I haven't been sure what to think about this total cluster bomb of fail. The reporter sounds like a dick, but Peter's actions are... questionable to say the least. When so many people are mad it's naive to say they have no right, or that they are just some angry mob. There's likely truth to what they are saying. Look at the steam reviews for Godus. People are really upset. I don't think they are upset because it failed (which happens), I think it's more to do with the motives involved.

 

The designer expecting it was ridiculous. The backers expecting it was ridiculous. Not without some other method of getting funds.

 

I feel much more lenient towards backers. They get no investment, carry all the risk, and what was their crime? Being enthusiastic consumers. Believing the claims that established veterans make is not 'ridiculous', or if it is, is there really any trust left between consumers and game creators?

What is going on in this industry.

 

"Kickstarter is not pre-ordering" reminds me a lot of the "piracy is not theft" argument. Both are magic phrases that are meant to terminate debate.

I agree that piracy isn't theft. But does that make it okay? Does that make it legal? Ethical? Maybe it's not theft but it's a lot like it.

And I'll agree that Kickstarter is not pre-ordering. But how does it follow that failing to deliver on campaign promises should be free from all consequences, including criticism? I'm pretty sure that the Kickstarter license agreement doesn't require backers to refrain from having and/or expressing negative thoughts about the projects they are backing.

And that's all that's happening here. Backers are expressing discontent (or having it expressed on their behalf in this instance). All that Mr. Molyneux is getting is a tongue lashing, and a rather civil, English-accented one at that.

He still gets to rake in the profits, still gets to keep his studio, and is still working on a game that "[builds] on feelings and emotions untapped so far," i.e. he will live to over promise and under deliver another day.

 

See you got everything that's wrong right there: you called them consumers. Kickstarter isn't for consumers. It's for investors. And investment carries risk.

They have to exercise judgement. Peter is a human being. He is fallable. The very fact he is on kickstarter, is because it's too large a risk to finance himself.

What next? people suing mcdonalds because the coffee was hot and they decide to place it between their legs in a moving car? I mean how much further must the world go to support stupidity?

IMHO Kickstarter is a bad trend in this industry. What is wrong with buying a completed and full game instead? Sending a message like that is far more powerful.

 

The coffee WAS too hot. It was one of the few major lawsuits without a bullshit premise

 

Boiling water is too hot for coffee. Check. I should only make it almost boiling.

 

Except, it isn't for investors, because amongst other things investors expect a return for their risk and a share of the company. That's why they do it. Kickstarter is 'technically' a hair-brained donation scheme, but practically a pre-order system. Using kickstarters own terms, a backer helps to bring a creators project to life by pledging money. In return creators give the backer rewards. Now substitute: a consumer (backer) helps to bring a game to completion by pledging money. In return the developer gives the backer a copy of the game (the reward). In plain language, that's a pre-order system. A S***ty pre-order system where the consumer assumes all the risk and none of the reward (by reward, I mean if the company gets sold to Facebook for 2 billion, lol sucks to be you).

It's amazing anyone even does it. I imagine over time consumer protection laws around the world will tighten around this. I believe that's already begun.

 

There are actually rules and guidelines at McD for the serving temperature, so it's not as silly as you try to make it out to be

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaurants

Coffee is still served at the temperature that burned the lady.

 

But the warnings got larger, which is what should happen to anything involving Molyneux

 

Or get this, instead of having large warnings everywhere, in 16 different languages with voice-overs, actually teach people to not be stupid. You know, drill it into kids that they've got to have some responsibility. Instead of an entitled world where everyone can't be responsible for their own actions, which will lead to a society where intelligence isn't important any more since you're on rails. Where, in a few hundred years time, thinking for yourself is no longer required.

Far fetched? Don't think so.

 

You can browse posts here to confirm this isn't going so well

 

Thank goodness Unity doesn't have roadmaps.

 

I did look on steam and one guy wrote: BORING BORING BORING. He has over 100 hours clocked on the game.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/232810/