The excerpts of Interviews with Peter Molyneux that have previously been quoted here on Loinhead.net gave us a couple of intriguing hints about the new, “Secret Game”, the concept for the next big title from Lionhead (alongside Fable 2) that they’ve been kicking around the office.

What do we know about this game? Probably only what he has said (almost nothing), which is mostly concentrated on this website.

  1. We know that LH is hiring new people for an upcoming project
  2. We know that this project will be very different from what LH has done in the past
  3. Lionhead has been toying with elements of this game for years
  4. We might see elements of Dimitri in the upcoming game
  5. It is going to have a lot of elements that PM has been discussing over the years. (His love for giving the user godlike athourity, Little people in the games, his ‘Holy Grail’ concept, and borrowing elements of Sci-Fi TV and film)
  6. The biggest hint of them all: He got the idea on September 23, 2005, and it is related to some event that was going on in the world at the time.

The post in the news page said “We could find nothing significant” that happened on that day. I am not satisfied with that.

And so, I want to try and put together all events worldwide that were going on during that time (perhaps not specifically on that day, but during that time), and see if we can’t come up with something meaningful.

  1. 9/23 is “Celebrate Bisexuality Day”. This isn’t important, I just wanted to say it.
  2. Hurricane Rita hit the coast of Texas in the US, causing further flooding in New Orleans, which had only recently been severely damaged by Hurricane Rita.
  3. The FBI killed Filiberto Ojeda on Plan Bonito Hormigueros, Puerto Rico.
  4. The FCC published the “Net Nutrality” policy statement on this day.
  5. Jack Hensley’s beheaded body was found in Iraq, his beheading was shown on tape
  6. The fourth Anniversiary of Bush’s signing of a law freezing the assets of terrorist organizations occurs on this day (which was struck down in courts)
  7. Build 4029 of Windows Vista was leaked, the fourth leak of a Vista build. It shows a windows-like taskbar and the sidebar clock.
  8. It is the Beginning of National Banned Books week

There was little of significance that happened exactly on that day, but there were plenty of interesting things going on in the world at the time:

  1. The US was busily dealing with the loss of a major city from Hurricane Katrina
  2. The English Cricket team had just one The Ashes
  3. The largest ever UN summit had just been concluded, the hot-buttun issues there being Iran’s nuclear program (with Russians supporting it and The US and EU being rather against it), and the situation in Iraq. North Korea’s nuclear program was also discussed.
  4. Petrolium Prices are reaching an all-time high.
  5. It was election season for many democracies at this time. Leftist politics generally did very well.
  6. American conservatives were facing several Embarassments at the time, regarding the POW abuses in Iraq, and shady financial dealings of party leaders.

Perhaps what Peter was referring to is slightly less newsy. There certainly is not a lot of information to go on in here, and something that would be hard to translate into an open-ended simulation type of computer game. But perhaps the idea of natural disasters, or nuclear war, or cricket management play a role in this concept?

Many of us Lionhead fans are of the reasonably intelligent sort, so perhaps if we put our heads together we can discern something useful from this information.