Loinhead

The Guardian has another article on the games industry. It has quotes by Molyneux and “additional reporting” by Kieron Gillen.

The vast majority of industries – and especially creative industries – have crunch times. We always worry about our work/life balance, but if a game takes three years to make, and someone turns around and says that the last three months are going to be hard, solid work, I don’t think it’s different from making a film or a TV programme or even writing a book.

Saying that, we are striving so people have the right work/life balance. This industry has changed unrecognisably in how we make games. I think she [Hoffman] was right – this industry was bad at pushing people very very hard for far too long … but I think that’s changing now.

Peter Molyneux has said something again about the games industry today. The Guardian’s Kieron Gillen asks him about the (non)visibility of games designers.

“This produces twice as many column inches in a magazine or online… and suddenly they can literally quantify the benefit from getting stars out there,” he says.

Clearly having a celebrity touch gets newspaper articles twice as many column inches too.

Gamasutra have a 5-page interview with the Molynator. Here is a brief selection of tantalising phrases which may or may not be related to the interview or, for that matter, Fable 2: henchmen that can do everything you can, Peter playing with and designing for his wife, finding the middle ground between arcade and hardcore and the audience to go with it, something about “women” having “insight”, the industry, the past of Bullfrog yet again. Also he likes Phantom Hourglass.

Yarr.

The magazine 360 interview Lionhead and a few other British game studios. Via Develop. Part 2 is here.

How are UK developers placed in the competitive world of the games industry?

Peter Molyneux: The merger of Activision/Vivendi, and the continual shrinking of the development pool with companies like BioWare/Pandemic, Travellers’ Tales and Bizarre Creations all being snapped up (and if the rumours are true a few more announcements to come) mean the landscape of developers is changing more rapidly than ever before. UK developers need to increase their ability to be competitive and there is a lot of talk about developers in Canada and the Far East who are treated far more sympathetically by their governments in terms of subsidies and tax breaks. Where British developers can still compete is in terms of originality and innovation.

Is there any concern that cheaper production costs abroad will push publishers away from the UK? What can British developers do to make sure they offer more than just cost effectiveness?

What can British developers do to make sure they offer more than just cost effectiveness? I kind of answered this above but we can’t compete on production cost so we have to compete on quality and what UK developers are good at is uniqueness and our ability to solve design problems – UK developers still have a lot to offer.

- Read on »

gamedeveloper is conducting a survey among game professionals about the top 50 development studios, running until this Wednesday. If you are a “games professional”, you can submit the survey about Lionhead – if not, don’t, because gamedeveloper doesn’t care what you think. Via Gamasutra.