Loinhead

Loinhead has a copy of original Fable, Xbox-style, that it would like to give away. There’s nothing special about this copy … unless you consider signed by Peter Molyneux special. Still in its original packaging. Touched by at least three other members of the Lionhead team!

To enter, all you need is a

• valid postal address

that can be

• anywhere in the world.

All you need to do to win is

• post on the Loinhead forums

within the next week! And all you need for that is to

• log in (password recover) or register.

Every day that you make a post increases your chances of winning! And it looks like, right now, your chances of winning are close to 100% 50%.

GameDaily.com has a user-submitted interview with Peter, mostly about him as a person and the ideas behind Fable 2.

“No. I hate demos. What either happens, is you either make a demo that people think is too short or, you know, is too confusing,” said Molyneux. “There are a million reasons why they go wrong, very few reasons why they go right. What was the last great demo that you played and then went out and bought the game?” – Videogamer.com

Molyneux has also updated his BBC diary.

At the Develop Conference in Brighton later this month, Lionhead have:

Fable 2 Art Showcase — Ian Lovett and John McCormack (14.30 - 15.30, Thursday, July 31st)

and a as-yet undated “New Gameplay Dimensions in Role-playing Games” talk by Molyneux. From the latest Develop Magazine.

In what we consider to be the first publicly documented case of Molyneux writing anything (hopefully putting the majority of detractors that claim he cannot write to rest), Molyneux is keeping an “E3 Diary” at the BBC.

So far, Molyneux has one entry, pre-flight to E3. He shares his bizarre fear of going to the toilet and claims that his hairline has receeded further (is that possible?). They’ve made nine different demos and three different videos. - Read on »

In the super-short superficial entirely worthless “Players Only” series, this week dealing with the console race, Peter Molyneux is featured for a whole thirty seconds saying he likes the Xbox because of Live. (The only actually interesting comment is from Michael Pachter.)

This is no exaggeration. Quoting Molyneux:

There aren’t any new ideas going in. In fact - and this is something I’ve had to learn - each idea is like a little baby. You have to nurture it and grow it. But I’ve learned over the years that if something doesn’t fit, you have to get rid of it.

By which he clearly means: drowning the little rats. (At least it’s not abortion, anyway.)

He also happens to say no demo, significant ‘Merican-voiced character and Sam is very disappointed.

This article would have been illustrated, could we find our stock photo of Molyneux killing babies. (Submissions welcome.)

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.