Peter Molyneux, famed designer of Populous (a game I obsessively played on a friend’s computer) and Black & White (which I wanted to love, but didn’t have the time for), has created a new game, Fable, for the Xbox. From Letting Gamers Play God, and Now Themselves:
‘Most role-playing games, you have to make an enormous amount of choices up front: I’m going to be a thief or a barbarian. And that just seems crazy to me. I hate being asked that question, because I have no idea what the game is going to be like.’ Mr. Molyneux wanted to create a video game in which these types of choices are made with the same pace and subtlety as in real life.
That may be a slower, more subtle pace than a busy adult has time for. It sounds like the kind of game I dreamed up as a teen:
And so in Fable, the player-controlled hero will end up a barbarian only after building muscles in fistfights, earning scars from combat and acquiring a heroic tan from constant journeying outdoors. If he behaves otherwise — eats so much that he develops a non-heroic paunch, or keeps his body lithe and unscarred by relying on his crossbow — then the character will grow and age in a very different fashion.
There’s a reason it’s called Fable:
All the while, the game tempts players to indulge their dark sides. Merchants need not be paid when they can be killed. The money received from a husband desperate to keep his extramarital affair secret might prove more useful than any honor gained from refusing his payoff. But those who live a mean-spirited lifestyle will grow horns and attract flies, while the good will gradually develop glowing skin and be mobbed by available lovers.
Molyneux’s bio:
Mr. Molyneux was born in Sydenham, a town near London. The son of a toy-shop owner, he was encouraged by his parents to become an accountant. His declared affection for trees and his abysmal grades, later partly attributed to dyslexia, led a high school career counselor to suggest he pursue forestry.Sitting cross-legged and shoeless in a Manhattan hotel penthouse last month, Mr. Molyneux recalled his reaction: “I can’t be a lumberjack. All my friends are going to be doctors and accountants.” After college he worked in market research, but he had already discovered a motor for his motivation: computers. “I can remember sitting down there and almost the moment I touched the keyboard, I just felt I just really want to program,” he said. “I just really want to invent stuff.”
In the early 1980′s, Mr. Molyneux started developing business software, but was fascinated by the growing popular excitement for computer games. “I decided I was going to write a game that wasn’t a shoot-’em-up,” he said. “It was going to be a business simulation.” He posted an ad, and having precisely calculated a flood of orders, warned the post office and cut a bigger hole through which to receive his mail. He received two orders; one, he said, was from his mother.
Momentarily deterred, Mr. Molyneux set up a database company, but in 1987, some bumpy computer graphics that vaguely resembled uneven terrain inspired a vision. “I thought, ‘Wow, that really looks like I’m standing way up in the heavens looking down,’ ” he said. “Suddenly this game started evolving, and it was called Populous.”
Imagine that your dad owns a toy-shop — and he wants you to become an accountant. No thanks…