Peter Douglas Molyneux, OBE is an English video game designer and
programmer. He created the god games Populous, Dungeon Keeper and Black &
White as well as Theme Park, the Fable series and Curiosity – What's Inside the
Cube? His new studio 22Cans currently works on Godus.
Career = Early career=
Peter Molyneux began his career in 1982 by distributing and selling floppy disks
which contained video games for Atari and the Commodore 64. He believed that
including games on the disks would improve sales, and later decided that
the games were the main selling point. He created The Entrepreneur, a
text-based business simulation game about running a fledgling company. "In
those days you could literally call a game 'Space Blob Attacks Mars' and sell
about 50 million copies. So what did I do? I did a business simulation",
Molyneux later said. Molyneux published the game himself in 1984 by duplicating
hundreds of tapes on two Tandy Corporation recorders. After taking an
advertising space in a game magazine, he prepared for the game's success; he
later stated in an interview, "I was utterly convinced that this game would
sell tons. I thought, 'You know, this letter box is just not big enough. It's
just not going to fit all the envelopes.' So I cut – and this is no
joke – I cut a bigger letter box". However, the game received only two
orders, one of which Molyneux speculated was from his mother. In 2007, a GameSpy
reviewer commented that the economic gameplay mechanics in Molyneux's Fable
II may have been a descendant of The Entrepreneur, stating, "I'm a little
concerned that it's Molyneux sneaking in a remix of his first game,
Entrepreneur". Due to the game's failure, Molyneux
retreated from game design, and started Taurus Impex Limited—a company that
exported baked beans to the Middle East —with his business partner Les Edgar.
Commodore International mistook it for TORUS, a more established company that
produced networking software, and offered to provide Molyneux with ten
free Amiga systems to help in porting "his" networking software. "... it
suddenly dawned on me that this guy didn't know who we were", Molyneux later
said. "I suddenly had this crisis of conscience. I thought, 'If this guy
finds out, there go my free computers down the drain.' So I just shook his
hand and ran out of that office". Taurus designed a database system for the
Amiga, called Acquisition - The Ultimate Database for The Amiga and, after
clearing up the misunderstanding with Commodore, the program was released and
became a moderate success. = Bullfrog Productions=
Using money earned from the database program, Molyneux and Les Edgar founded
Bullfrog Productions in 1987. Molyneux provided the original concept for
Populous, the first god game for the personal computer. Released in 1989,
Populous was a major success for Bullfrog and went on to sell over 4
million copies. Electronic Arts, Bullfrog's publisher,
acquired the studio in January 1995. Molyneux had become an Electronic Arts
vice-president and consultant in 1994, after EA purchased a significant share
of Bullfrog. Molyneux's last project at Bullfrog was Dungeon Keeper, which was
released in July 1997 to high critical praise. A significant innovation of the
game was its unique combination of first- and third-person perspectives, in
the ability to "possess" any one of the creatures in the game world, yielding a
first-person experience reproducing the physical characteristics, visual
perspective, gait and voice of the minion. Molyneux left Bullfrog in August
1997 to found Lionhead Studios. The last title released with the Bullfrog logo
was published in 2001, and in 2004 Electronic Arts merged Bullfrog
Productions into EA UK. = Lionhead Studios and Microsoft=
Molyneux came up with the concept for Lionhead's first game, Black & White,
and convinced his small staff to take on the task in late 1997. He paid the $6
million in development costs himself. After three years, in 2001, the game was
finally released. In April 2006, Lionhead Studios was
acquired by Microsoft Game Studios. At E3 2006, Peter Molyneux gave several
interviews in the press, in one of which he stated that "I think you're going to
see a lot more fantastic games from Lionhead because of that relationship
[with Microsoft]." On 4 June 2009, he was promoted to Creative Director of
Microsoft Game Studios, Europe, although he continued to produce video games with
Lionhead Studios. On 7 March 2012, Molyneux announced that
he would be leaving Lionhead and Microsoft — after the completion of
Fable: The Journey — to begin work at a company founded by former Lionhead
Studios CTO Tim Rance called 22Cans. In the media
As one of the industry's leading and best-known figures, Molyneux has
appeared on many television shows and video gaming news discussion or
documentaries. He has been repeatedly interviewed for shows that include
GamesMaster, Games Wars, Gamezville, Bad Influence!, Gamer.tv, and Games World.
He also made an appearance in the Scottish web series Consolevania. More
recently, Molyneux was featured within an episode of Godus alongside The
Yogscast. An episode of G4's games retrospective
series Icons was devoted to him, during its third season. More recently, a
comprehensive two part interview was filmed of him during the 2006 Brighton
Games Developer Conference by leading UK website Eurogamer. He was also featured
in the fourth episode of the Discovery Channel mini-series Rise of the Video
Game alongside Will Wright and Sid Meier, fellow developers of simulation
titles. Molyneux was accredited in the "Top Ten Game Creators" Countdown by
GameTrailers. He has given keynote addresses and spoke extensively at
worldwide conferences, including Games Convention, Games Convention Asia,
Develop, and the Game Developers Conference.
Despite the success of his games, both critical and financial, Molyneux has
acquired a reputation for issuing over-enthusiastic descriptions of games
under development, which are found to be somewhat less ambitious when released.
This goes back to Black & White, though the most well-known case of this was
with Fable, released in 2004 without many of the features talked about by
Molyneux in press interviews during development. After the release, Molyneux
publicly apologized for overhyping the game. In February 2014 he is quoted as
being "Ashamed of the final product Fable 3 and I never want to work with
Microsoft again." In February 2015, Peter Molyneux stated during interviews
in gaming blog Rock, Paper, Shotgun and British newspaper The Guardian that he
will "never speak to the press again". Both publications were under the
impression that they were conducting the last interview.
Awards and recognition Molyneux was inducted into the AIAS Hall
of Fame in 2004 and was honoured with an OBE in the New Year's Honours list
announced on 31 December 2004. He was awarded the title of Chevalier de
l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in March 2007. In July
2007, he was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Science by the University
of Southampton. In March 2011, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award
by the Game Developers Choice Awards and has received a BAFTA Fellowship at the
2011 British Academy Video Games Awards. Games
= Pre-Bullfrog= The Entrepreneur
Druid 2 = Bullfrog Productions=
Fusion Populous
Powermonger Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods
Syndicate Theme Park
Magic Carpet Hi-Octane
Magic Carpet 2 Genewars
Dungeon Keeper = Lionhead Studios=
Black & White Fable
Fable: The Lost Chapters The Movies
Black & White 2 The Movies: Stunts & Effects
Black & White 2: Battle of the Gods Fable II
Fable III Project Milo
Fable: The Journey = 22cans=
Curiosity – What's Inside the Cube? Godus
References External links
Peter Molyneux at MobyGames The Worlds of Peter Molyneux from
Wired.com