Peter Molyneux Apologizes for Fable

InFoMaD writes "On the official Lionhead Studio forums Peter Molyneux apologized for announcing features that did not make it into the final version of Fable." Their forums are already getting hammered. Post text available below.

Text from the Lionhead Studios Post -

A message from Peter Molyneux.
There is something I have to say. And I have to say it because I love making games. When a game is in development, myself and the development teams I work with constantly encourage each other to think of the best features and the most ground-breaking design possible.

However, what happens is that we strive to include absolutely everything we've ever dreamt of and, in my enthusiasm, I talk about it to anyone who'll listen, mainly in press interviews. When I tell people about what we're planning, I'm telling the truth, and people, of course, expect to see all the features I've mentioned. And when some of the most ambitious ideas get altered, redesigned or even dropped, people rightly want to know what happened to them.

If I have mentioned any feature in the past which, for whatever reason, didn't make it as I described into Fable, I apologise. Every feature I have ever talked about WAS in development, but not all made it. Often the reason is that the feature did not make sense. For example, three years ago I talked about trees growing as time past. The team did code this but it took so much processor time (15%) that the feature was not worth leaving in. That 15 % was much better spent on effects and combat. So nothing I said was groundless hype, but people expecting specific features which couldn't be included were of course disappointed. If that's you, I apologise. All I can say is that Fable is the best game we could possibly make, and that people really seem to love it.

I have come to realise that I should not talk about features too early so I am considering not talking about games as early as I do. This will mean that the Lionhead games will not be known about as early as they are, but I think this is the more industry standard.

Our job as the Lionhead family of studios is to be as ambitious as we possibly can. But although we jump up and down in glee about the fabulous concepts and features we're working on, I will not mention them to the outside world until we've implemented and tested them, and they are a reality.

Thank you for reading.

Peter.

Missing apology!

[by Anonymous Coward]

Where's the apology for Black & White? :-P

Re:Missing apology!

[sgant (178166)]

Black & White wasn't a bad game. Sure, there was a ton of hype about it, but not all of it from Peter. The press had a ton of hype about it also.

And when all was said and done, it wasn't that bad of a game. Over-hyped for sure, but not bad.

I had fun with it and it brought a smile to my face...what else should a game do?

Reality.

[JavaLord (680960)]

It's Gutsy for him to come out and say it. His statement:

However, what happens is that we strive to include absolutely everything we've ever dreamt of and, in my enthusiasm, I talk about it to anyone who'll listen, mainly in press interviews. When I tell people about what we're planning, I'm telling the truth, and people, of course, expect to see all the features I've mentioned. And when some of the most ambitious ideas get altered, redesigned or even dropped, people rightly want to know what happened to them.

Anyone who has ever developed software for a living knows this is the truth. Early on you spec out cool features, come up with great ideas, etc, etc. Your game/app is going to be the "BEST EVER!"...then somewhere along the way in the development process reality kicks you in the face. Bad features sometimes get added, good ones need to be dropped for technical reasons or time constraints.

The crappy part about it is, usually you only talk to people in your company about an app early on. Or maybe if you are in a small shitty company you talk to the press and no one cares. But the "big name" programmers are expected to deliever on everything they say and then some. It takes a lot of guts for Molyneux to step up and say sorry I couldn't give you everything I said.

Re:Reality.

[gl4ss (559668)]

yes. but the guys a pro. he should know better to not shoot his mouth off about things that are not certain.
except that by now he has probably figured out that big hype == big pre-orders and that big promises == big hype.

games biz is almost as much about the hype(pr) as of creating the actual games, big pre-hype enables them to get funding without questioning.

and for example, the trees could still have been made to evolve probably somehow, just with a differenct tactic(without wasting some magical 15% of

Re:Reality.

[*no comment* (239368)]

and for example, the trees could still have been made to evolve probably somehow, just with a differenct tactic(without wasting some magical 15% of cpu time on it).

I was wondering that too. Why not instead of gradually grow, they jump a little? But only when they are off screen and not visible, and not during combat, if the hieght changes were subtle you would not notice them grow, just one day they are bigger, and you don't have to have the cpu calculating every second how to draw them.

I'd rather hear about it

[Sentry21 (8183)]

I dunno, but as long as he makes it clear that whatever features are what he wants to have in the game, if adding them in is reasonable, then he should talk.

I don't know about you guys, but personally, I love talking with friends about theory, however practical or impractical that might be. What would be cool in a game, how you could implement it, races, ships, whatever. I think Mr. Molyneux should talk with the enthusiasm that he has for his games, as long as he's not promising that those features will be there.

Let's be realistic: trees growing doesn't matter. I mean, really, it's immersive, but also irrelevant. I'm not going to notice if it's not there (well I might, but I won't care). That being said though, just talking about the possibility opens up dozens of possibilities in my mind, ideas and theories that I can discuss with my friends, and we can say 'wouldn't it be cool if we made a game that could do this or that or the other thing?'

As long as he's not influencing sales by guaranteeing anything, I'm fine with him saying 'we're working on realtime tree growth and you can watch the textures change as paint dries, and the shorelines will gradually recede or encroach depending on the phase of the moon and the changing climate and passing meteors'. If they really are working on it, then A+, and if it doesn't make it in, then hey, that's the way she goes.

--Dan

Standing firm

[M3wThr33 (310489)]

Usually the creator of a title should stand firm behind the final product. It doesn't happen often enough with apologies that I honestly don't know what to think either way. The Nintendo side of me feels confidence in all my MS-hating ways to see hype fail, but at the same time, he made a game to the best of his potential and realizes he's human. I make games, I can understand his enthusiasm to add lots of cool features and see them get removed at the last minute.

What I'd really like to see is an apology from Warren Spector for DX:IW, but all we got is that post-mortem on IGN on how he prefers console games and that it was a wonder the first Deus Ex didn't completely bomb.

My only problem with the game

[override11 (516715)]

... is that I beat it in about 9 hours of gameplay. I guess I really expected it to take a lot longer than it did (and yes, I did side quests, maxed fame / karma, got up to 17 silver keys, etc, and opened all but 2 demon doors) While the character development was pretty kewl, I was disappointed at the end. I was left feeling like, 'Thats it???' Dont get me wrong, I enjoyed myself a ton while playing the game, and there are a ton of cool features scattered around, but overall I was disappointed.

Anyone know of a nice long RPG in the works? I remember playing Wizardry 7 for months before I was able to get all the way through it.

Re:My only problem with the game

[UnknownSoldier (67820)]

> Anyone know of a nice long RPG in the works? I remember playing Wizardry 7 for months before I was able to get all the way through it.

You completed Morrowind and the 2 expansion packs?

It's no Ultima 7, but it's pretty good.

Peace

--
Original, Fun Palm & Web games by the Lead Designer of Majesty!
http://www.arcanejourneys.com/ [arcanejourneys.com]

Re:My only problem with the game

[scot4875 (542869)]

Anyone know of a nice long RPG in the works?

Not in the works, but already out: Tales of Symphonia by Namco for the Gamecube. Took me 49 hours to complete, and that's without doing much of the optional stuff (though there isn't a lot of it). I'm also not a slow player...

I found the story a bit cheezy at times, but that's pretty standard for Japanese-style RPGs, no matter how serious they try to be.

Beten Kaitos is coming out in November, also from Namco, and has been receiving positive buzz since its release in Japan last year.

--Jeremy

Re:My only problem with the game

[ivan256 (17499)]

Blech.

Tales of Symphonia, while a good game, is barely an RPG. It blurs the lines with action/adventure.

When are publishers going to get over this recent craze and realize that turning battle into a crappy button mashing version of SNES street fighter isn't going to make the game appeal to new audiences, and it's going to alienate existing fans. Star Ocean and the FF VII sequel are like this too. Add to that the delay of Xenosaga and this has been the most disappointing year for RPGs in memory.

Re:My only problem with the game

[Zangief (461457)]

I find the TOS gameplay very compeling. It is a nice mix between the 80s and 90s beat'em ups, and a standard RPG.

The history has some nice turns and twists, and there is a lot of extra things to see. I was not a fan of Namco until this game. yay!

Re:My only problem with the game

[MobyDisk (75490)]

Black-and-White was the same way. It was beautiful. It was fun to play just because you could sit there and watch things happen around it. But the enemy AI was so weak it was just as fun to play the game alone.

Re:My only problem with the game

[buffer-overflowed (588867)]

Tales of Symphonia - Fairly good RPG. I call it the game of anime/RPG cliches, because it is, but it's fairly long(40 hours+) and fairly enjoyable.

Star Ocean - 1-3 hours of utter boredom and then the game gets good. About at the 30-40 hour point.

Shadow Hearts - Just came out a few days ago, haven't played it yet, but I've heard good things about the series.

Baten Kaitos is coming out for the Cube in november. It's got a wierd card-based combat system.

Paper Mario should be pretty good, albeit wierdly

Re:My only problem with the game

[Paradise Pete (33184)]

Anyone know of a nice long RPG in the works?

Well, this Life game I heard of takes about 70 years or so. Don't know if it's any good though. I have heard really good things about Life II, but it may turn out to just be vaporware.

Re:My only problem with the game

[Johnno74 (252399)]

If you haven't already played it, you should definitely try out Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

It took me 78 hours to complete, but I taking my time, and I think I did pretty much all of the side quests that I could.

And the best thing about KOTOR is its replayability - I finished it playing as a light-side Jedi, and I intend to start playing again soon, as a dark Jedi. Will be a completely different playing experience, different side-quests are available, different force powers...

Refreshing...

[Paladin128 (203968)]

I must say, it's nice to see someone with as big a name as Molyneux apologize to the community for this. Most people that are in the "industry pioneer" category tend to be just [johnromero.com] a bit [mailto] arrogant [penny-arcade.com]. He made some claims about features, gamers were pissed they weren't there, and he took the blame. Admirable.

Maybe next time, he won't blab every wild feature he plans.

Re:Refreshing...

[Paladin128 (203968)]

I don't have time to search for links to interviews, but he basically stated things like:

Daikatana would be the game that not only changed the industry, but would make people stop playing all games that existed before it.

He whined about the stuff that happenend at iD, and basically took all credit for Quake being good.

Ion Storm would be God's gift to gamers, and the way he ran it is the only intelligent way to run a studio.

Now, post-Ion Storm Romero is a different story. After he was taken down a few k

Could be worse

[jammer2kbigfoot.com (726158)]

At least he doesn't act like Derrick Smart. We need more developers like him, willing to admit things are perfect. Never played any of his games, but like his style.

Re:Could be worse

[by Anonymous Coward]

We need more developers like him, willing to admit things are perfect.

Don't be ridiculous; Dr. Derek Smart, Ph.D, is more than willing to admit that he's perfect.

Fable Features

[MilenCent (219397)]

A feature in a game like this doesn't mean much unless it adds to the gameplay.

Is it possible for real-time tree growth to improve gameplay? In fact, yes. Remember, Nintendo was planning something a little like that in the (vaporware) N64 sequel to Earthbound/Mother, where the player could plant a seed in a location and come back later, when the passage of time detected from the machine's real-time clock would tell the game when it had grown to a point where it could be harvested for useful fruit. Not quite the same thing that Molyneux's talking about perhaps, but indicative of the kinds of ways tree growth can improve a game. However, if the tree growth is merely decorative it doesn't influence the game *that* much.

I was actually fairly jazzed up about Fable until recently. The more I read about it the more I'm thinking maybe I shouldn't be so excited after all. I was hearing things before about a world that evolves around the player and dynamic gameplay, but now I'm hearing things that sound more like a 3D Zelda with Harvest Moon elements mixed in. Perhaps an interesting game still (HM isn't *that* bad, and if you're gonna copy, copy the best -- it's still better than almost anything else I'm aware of for X-Box), but it no longer is making me consider buying an X-Box again to check it out.

Re:Fable Features

[EddieBurkett (614927)]

Is it possible for real-time tree growth to improve gameplay? In fact, yes. Remember, Nintendo was planning something a little like that in the (vaporware) N64 sequel to Earthbound/Mother, where the player could plant a seed in a location and come back later, when the passage of time detected from the machine's real-time clock would tell the game when it had grown to a point where it could be harvested for useful fruit. Not quite the same thing that Molyneux's talking about perhaps, but indicative of the k

Re:Fable Features

[chris_mahan (256577)]

Actually, this should be a real enhancement, where plants (potato, wheat, lettuse, tomatoes, need to be planted, harvested, in order to "sell" to the local inn. That way, people can be farmers for real and when wizards and ghouls wan to kill the farmers just for fun, the local musclemen will go knock their heads, because they want to eat in 2 weeks/3 months.

This should also apply to woodcutters. Want a wooden shield? Need some wood, buddy. "but there isn't a single tree for thirty leagues!". "Well, then, better plant some, no?"

Also, fish, and ore. Ore should be interesting. It has to be mined. Miners are needed to go down there and the more "enterprising fellows" should be able to hire people to mine the mines and extract the ore. "Want a full body armor? Need 50 kilos of metal ore, buddy." "But, there isn't any ore around here!" "Well, then, better mine some, or get a wagon and go to the land of the dwarves and bring me back some."

This would then effectively create a merchant class.

It would also be fun to have food shortages, and fights outside the inn to break into the storage and steal their food so the 30 paladins could be bested by three enterprising thieves and three oxen carts, for lack of food.

Of course, same goes for leather. Want leather greaves? Find me a cow and a tanner. "But there's not a single cow for miles!" "Well then, buddy, wanna wooden shield instead?"

And a million GP won't make a difference when you hear "Wizard needs food, badly".

Finally, rangering skills would be invaluables: "Just got this deer, we can eat folks."

Re:Fable Features

[Dr.Dubious DDQ (11968)]

Sounds like the type of things the WorldForge [worldforge.org] projects have been intending to incorporate and handle.

Re:Fable Features

[hibiki_r (649814)]

While I find Fable to be a good, albeit short, game, it has very little to do with Zelda or havest moon. No 'dungeons', in the zelda sense, about 2 puzzles in the entire game, lack of a sense of exploration (you walk on 'tracks', no expansive countryside/ocean to explore. It's more like a more RPGish version of an action RPG like BG:Dark Alliance. If you're looking for Zelda+Harvest Moon, you're better off with Dark Cloud & Dark Cloud 2 for the PS2.

Re:Fable Features

[prockcore (543967)]

Remember, Nintendo was planning something a little like that in the (vaporware) N64 sequel to Earthbound/Mother, where the player could plant a seed in a location and come back later, when the passage of time detected from the machine's real-time clock would tell the game when it had grown to a point where it could be harvested for useful fruit.

And nintendo did exactly that with Animal Crossing. You can plant an apple, after a few days it'll be a full size tree, after a few more it'll produce apples.

Plu

Still Disappointing

[by Anonymous Coward]

I respect him for coming out and making a statement like that, but the game is still pretty disappointing. It's a decent enough RPG. You can see tiny glimmers of greatness as you play the game, which makes the game's flaws stand out even more.

I am not just referring to missing features. Those were disappointing enough, particularly given how much this game was hyped. For years this game was presented as the second coming of RPG's. The results were so far from the boasts one can't help but be disappointed.

Just 15 percent slowdown

[MobyDisk (75490)]

There has to be more to it than that. 15% just means that you create an to turn it off. Or put it in a patch. No big deal unless it impacts the gameplay.

That's one thing Doom 3 did differently than most games: They kept in all the CPU intensive stuff, and made it possible to turn it off. The knew that in a year, people would rather have it in there than not.

Re:Just 15 percent slowdown

[Paladin128 (203968)]

A few flaws with this:

1) It's a console game. No patch. No hope of having more CPU power in a year.

2) It was supposed to be something that affected gameplay as well... not just prettiness.

15%..

[TheVoice900 (467327)]

Often the reason is that the feature did not make sense. For example, three years ago I talked about trees growing as time past. The team did code this but it took so much processor time (15%) that the feature was not worth leaving in.

I'm no game programmer, but this seems a bit ridiculous... what kind of code were they using for this? Is time passing so fast in this game that you need to be constantly updating the trees?

Re:15%..

[orion024 (694922)]

You also have to take into account the *total* number of trees. This is no meager amount to have to process. You not only have to update the trees, you are also checking to see if they even need updating. This means wasted CPU which may not even result in tree growth.

Re:15%..

[gl4ss (559668)]

well you don't seem like a programmer either.

you could easily just check the areas trees when you move into a new area.

it wouldn't really have taken that much of imagination to do it.

of course it's a completely needless feature with apparently no point at all, so they just dropped it and came with this excuse.

Re:15%..

[tc (93768)]

Okay, this is standard bullshit technique. Molyneux probably has no fucking clue how much processor time the growing trees feature would take. Mostly likely because, in all probability, it was never really implemented. However, by making up a specific number to tell people, he is able to give the impression that the feature was a lot further developed than it really was. If he just says "it would have been expensive", then that's not very impressive, whereas if he says "15% of CPU" that sounds a lot more co

Re:15%..

[kreyg (103130)]

Molyneux probably has no fucking clue how much processor time the growing trees feature would take

That is quite likely... on the other hand, it very well could have been a crappy implementation, or simply completely unoptimized - iterating over every tree in the world every frame could suck up a big chunk. Programmers are exceptionally scarce resources in game development, probably better to have them fix show-stopper bugs or implement features more central to gameplay than make trees grow.

Re:15%..

[atarrri (580364)]

Seems to me that his programmers have some problems with optimization. Frankly I'm surprised that Microsoft allowed a game to be released with a sub 20 fps (my estimate) in many key areas of the game. So I'm not surprised at all that his programmers told him that it takes 15% of frame time to do growing trees. There are certainly methods of getting some form of growing trees in the game with minimal cpu usage.

Common sense is that you should never ever mention features that have a high probability of get

Re:15%..

[TheVoice900 (467327)]

I don't see the word impossible anywhere...

Re:15%..

[MemoryDragon (544441)]

Its not the tree growing itself, but you have to do that for the entire tree population probably and that basically means constantly updating stats for thousands of them.

Re:15%..

[TheVoice900 (467327)]

Not really, just whenever you enter a new area, you can calculate the age of all trees there and then use the appropriate model for the tree. This means just checking one property per tree... As a poster said below, the 15% figure is probably some BS that PM made up to make it sound like he was right on the verge of creating the ultimate game..

Biggest Missing "Feature"

[orion024 (694922)]

IMHO, the biggest missing "feature" of this game was the fact you could not play as a female. My wife was somewhat interested in this game (which is quite unusual), but when she found out she couldn't play as a female she completely and utterly lost interest.

In fact, I consider the ability to play as either gender not a "feature", but a requisite when playing an RPG.

Re:Biggest Missing "Feature"

[by Anonymous Coward]

I was more disappointed that I couldn't play a transgendered bisexual.

Re:Biggest Missing "Feature"

[unixbob (523657)]

damn, just run out of mod points.

mod parent funny :D

Re:Biggest Missing "Feature"

[Lord_Dweomer (648696)]

Well, you understand if they were to do females accurately, they would have to portray her chest growing as she aged. How would you decide that in the game? How would you avoid pissing off a woman who wanted a bigger/smaller rack? Think of the nagging!!!!!

Re:Biggest Missing "Feature"

[orion024 (694922)]

True, but one of the points of role playing is having the option to play a role. Without female characters the options of what "roles" to play become much more limited. I mean, really, what kind of role playing says "Here, play this *role*, you get to define who this person is, what they are like, the characteristics, their behaviour... anything you can think of. Oh, but you have to play as a man..."

Entertaining if unfinished game.

[Zaphod-AVA (471116)]

I didn't follow Fable during production, so I don't have any real problems with features that are missing

*Try to get your combat multiplier even HIGHER!*

from the game, but it is extremely clear that the game was released unfinished. While enjoyable, it suffers from a number of

*Try to get your combat multiplier even HIGHER!*

annoyances, to the point where the two missions you want more than anything in the game are to beat the crap out of the guy holding the camera, and kill

*Try to get your combat multiplier even HIGHER!*

the guy that made the controls 'default', but not customizable.

-Z

Comparisons to CoH

[Zonk (12082)]

It's interesting to compare this situation with that experienced by the developers of City of Heroes [cityofheroes.com]. There, the developers blabbed about their pie in the sky ideas to the press years before the game came out. As the launch came closer and massive revisions of the original concept were done, disillusioned fans rose up in arms. A good subsequent design and a successful launch has since made CoH a fan favorite, but even today Jack Emmert (the lead designer) states that that was the biggest mistake the team m

Re:Comparisons to CoH

[MemoryDragon (544441)]

I dont know, his interviews are more like a geek babbling over his latest creation. The problem was probably that he didnt get the direct feedback over forums until this game, otherwise he probably would have cut back on the early designs talk after black and white.

Re:Comparisons to CoH

[Denor (89982)]

What's interesting is that Statesman - sorry, I mean Jack - is now doing nearly the opposite on the CoH boards. He's very careful about what he says, because he's learned if he so much as hints at a feature people will expect it. And god help him if he gives anything resembling a timetable for anything.

This does not, however, stop him from teasing the fanbase by answering questions like "Feature X and Feature Y would be neat, but I don't like Z, what's the plan?" with nothing more than "Soon."

Re:I thought it was a great game anyhow

[Paladin128 (203968)]

• ...brilliant audio, a fairly good storyline AND lady grey has nice boobies boot!

13 year old fanboys... you don't say!

Re:I thought it was a great game anyhow

[arcade (16638)]

Black and white sure copped him some flack, but the man is always coming up with wacky new idea's, look at Syndicate, Magic Carpet, Black and white - Populous - the man does things differently and he's not frightened to experiment.

I wish for a remake of Syndicate and Magic Carpet. What I would really love would be Syndicate with more maps/areas (smaller countries), ability to play more players in multiplayer, and so forth. It was one of the coolest games I've ever played. Add TCP/IP options to Syndicat

Re:Impulse Control

[CodeWanker (534624)]

Yup. I remember the painfully pretentious National Public Radio [npr.org] bit on Black and White. And it sounded like you'd get a Ph.D in philosophy by playing the game.