Loinhead

There’s a brand-spanking new interview with Molyneux up on Gamepro.com. They ask him a whole bunch of questions, and although he can’t reveal anything concrete about Fable 2 he says a lot about how they’re working on it, how the story in Fable 2 is getting so much more work than in Fable, how the English have most evil percentage points and how interesting Xbox Live is as a game mechanism, what you can do around that (bearing in mind that Xbox.com still has Fable 2 up as a single-player game, this could be for the secret game … ?). Interview follows after the jump.

- Read on »

Introduction

BC is a game that had been under development by Lionhead Studios, which places man in a mythical prehistoric world, where cavemen face dinosaurs on a daily basis, and just surviving from one day to another was an epic struggle.

If humanity is to survive, the tribe needs to evolve

Development of the game began in 1999 or 2000, even before release of Black & White, under the aegis of Lionhead’s satellite developer Intrepid Studios. It was had a target release date of late 2005, and was to be released on the X-Box. Development continued until 2004, where it was cancelled not long after the game was demoed at that years E3.

- Read on »

Back on February 2nd, it was announced that RDKF had gone gold and would be published by February 12th. While there’s been no further announcements anywhere, it seems like it’s gone retail. Amazon carries a copy, too, although it is “currently not available”.

Rag Doll Kung Fu, if you weren’t around or reading Loinhead back in ‘05, was a great indie game by Mark Healey, who used to work at Lionhead until he moved into working on RDKF full-time. It got snapped up by Valve and sold over Steam, and is now finally being distributed in a box by Wild Hare Entertainment, a publisher in North America specialising in publishing indie games.

The excellent gameplay consists of dragging around puppets using just your mouse, left-clicking to move, right-clicking to attack, trying to power up chi at the same time. It doesn’t sound anywhere near as great as it really was, and you could quickly become a master puppeteer. Unfortunately it didn’t sell all that well (though decently) and multiplayer had died down mostly by ‘06.

Mark Healey is now working at Media Molecule, making an unknown (you might even go so far as to say … secret) game for the PS3. Working with him are a bunch of other like-minded folk, including several from Lionhead such as Kareem Ettouney who made the B&W2 box cover artwork.

The annual GC Developers’ Conference in Leipzig, Germany, will again take place this year on the 20th - 22nd of August. The GCDC is like the GDC only in August (roughly). Molyneux was there the last time and I think even the time before; add to that the fact that his face is on the website’s front page and it looks fairly certain that he’ll be there! Topics and events include “international keynotes, workshops, panel discussions, prestigious speakers from the fields of computers, game consoles and mobile devices, will impart inside information on current trends, and themes of the future.”

GC Developers Conference 2007

Over the last five years, GC Developers Conference (GCDC) has become the leading conference for game developers across Europe. The German developer scene has simultaneously strengthened its position on the international level and is developing its thought leadership in the industry.
The strategic value of GCDC as a forum for developers in the areas of computers, game consoles, and mobile entertainment will grow in 2007 as international business keeps step. GCDC participants gain valuable new perspectives into future technical and economic standards pertaining to the video game industry. GCDC also facilitates international dialog amongst developers and publishers, offering excellent opportunities to share and exchange experience and knowledge.About GCDC

How did the Lionhead artists make this awesome picture from a month ago? Gradius, one of the Fable 2 devs, asked the artist for an explanation.

I asked the artist resposible, a Mr Mike McCarthy, and he told me this…

“The picture itself I worked on over maybe a couple of days, on and off, but it is actually a “paint over” of a rough 3D model that I built as a concept for the game. (“Gasp!! YOU CHEAT!”) When I concept buildings I sometimes find it easier to build them as a simple model, then any changes in scale, layout etc are much easier to do. I painted over a plain render of the model using “Painter” and added bits and pieces as I went along.
It’s a nice easy way of getting a good result without having to worry too much about perspective , etc. Glad you like it.”

The awesome forum has now moved to forums.loinhead.net. It also looks different. You should check it out and post! :D

Cookies work properly too, now, so you can stay logged in as long as you like.

Italian site Spazio Games has a huge list (Google translated - original version here), which is now also on a sister site, of games with release dates in 2007, the info apparently freshly gathered off Xbox.com.

These are the items of interest:

80. Fable 2 - by Lionhead Studios - Release given 2007 TBA (Official Situated)
176. Project “Dimitri” - by NGS/Peter Molyneux - Release given 2007/8 TBA (Further Information)
1. B.C. - by MS Games Studios (Further Information)

This should all be cautiously believed at most, but if it is true … oh my god - although of course Lionhead are only supposed to be developing two games, not three.

Stomp 224 noticed the mention of Dimitri. A genius.

On one of the sites, the disclaimer is:

We attend confirmations or refutation from part of Microsoft.

Xbox.com, run by Microsoft, put down a release date of 2007 for Fable 2 on its page. I am unsure how new this is, but it seems to be pretty new.

It also says that Fable 2 will be for 1 Player, although this could change later as more feature info is released - or not, of course.

These news could be part of Microsoft Game Studios’ campaign to show just how many games the 360 has.

Edit: all the other game edits etc. have been moved here.

Edit: they’ve pulled the release information (it’s now 18:45 GMT on the 20th of Feb). Looks like it was sensitive info.

Update: A 2008 release date has been announced on the Fable 2 website. 10/03/07

Taking Molyneux’s place, Georg Backer gave a speech on storytelling for the Berlinale Event on the 13th of February.

Watch the video here (direct link).

[After showing the Fable 2 trailer]
Right, that was the nice video bit, and now we go back to PowerPoint. What I’m talking about today, what I quickly want to talk about — it’s a really big topic, so I can only give an overview — is storytelling and video games. Storytelling and video games have a bit of a history, as in that we games people were until recently not really good at it, and also that storytelling for games is something different than storytelling in movies. And I’ll try to go into that a bit further. I just want to give an overview about what I’m going to talk about, quickly: ‘What games do differently to movies’ — there are a few obvious things, there are a few less obvious things; ‘How games and movies influence each other’; ‘We know what we’re doing wrong’, that is in terms of storytelling in games, ‘but we’ll start doing it right.’; ‘This is how we’ll deliver story experience in the future’ and ‘What else the future holds.’

- Read on »

Molyneux apparently couldn’t make it due to illness, so Mr Diet Coke Georg Backer took his place instead. Backer is a storytelling guy at Lionhead:

Georg Backer, Online and Infrastructure Manager, Lionhead Studios (UK)

Georg Backer is currently working at Lionhead Studios heading up Research and Development in games storytelling.

He joined Lionhead in 2000 and has worked on all the company’s major releases including Black & White where he did scripting. Georg’s talent for this line of work were apparent then. So on Fable which was released in 2004, he worked on both the games cinematography and story development.

His interest in the similarities and differences between games and film have led him to complete several film courses and he is proud to be a member of BAFTA. Now Georg is working on the development of story telling for next generation platforms with particular emphasis on the Lionhead’s next major planned release, Fable 2.Berlinale Keynotes Organisers

Transcript up soon. Watch the video here (direct link).