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NYT Profiles Creator of Black & White and Fable 278

Posted by michael from the you-may-remember-him-from-such-games-as dept.
Amy's Robot writes "The NYT has a profile of Peter Molyneux, creator of 'Populous,' 'Black & White,' and the upcoming 'Fable.' In Fable, the moral decisions you make affect the character's appearance, the outcome of the game, and so on. You get the impression that Molyneux's unconventional approach to game design infuses each of his creations with something more than your average game. Fable will be released for X-Box on September 14."
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NYT Profiles Creator of Black & White and Fable More

NYT Profiles Creator of Black & White and Fable

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  • First RTS game (Score:5, Interesting)

    by revscat ( 35618 ) * on Thursday September 02, 2004 @12:27PM (#10140875) Journal

    I've had several discussions with my friends who swear up and down that since this guy was responsible for Populous that he basically invented the real time strategy game. I don't think this is true. I remember playing Utopia on the Intellivision years before I played Populous, and it was definately real time strategy.

    Don't get me wrong. I repsect the hell out of Molyneux. The two titles I have played by him - Populous and Black & White - were very enjoyable. I just don't think he invented the RTS genre. Some unknown dude at Mattel did.

    • North and South on the NES was also an RTS game to some degree.

    • Re:First RTS game (Score:5, Interesting)

      by DLWormwood ( 154934 ) <[moc.em] [ta] [doowmrow]> on Thursday September 02, 2004 @12:53PM (#10141163) Homepage
      I just don't think he invented the RTS genre. Some unknown dude at Mattel did.

      That would be Don Daglow [stormfront.com], who at last reckoning would be at Stormfront Studios. He was the primary programmer of the Utopia [intellivisionlives.com] game.

      Calling it an RTS would be kind of stretch, though. While it had the same diversity of resources/buildings that games like Warcraft and so on have, there were no real military units beyond a couple of boats and terrain tiles representing rebels. There was little opportunity for tactical play, or even basic "rushing."

      • Re:First RTS game (Score:5, Funny)

        by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @01:05PM (#10141304) Homepage
        Utopia was the first one. Boo-hoo you can't rush. What a bummer...game has to actually be decided by strategy! The game can't be won militarily? It must suck, then! kekekekekekeke OMG Zerg rush ^^;;
        • Everybody in the tunnel NOW!!!

          Badass [AWP] diedagain.
        • Utopia was the first one. Boo-hoo you can't rush. What a bummer...game has to actually be decided by strategy! The game can't be won militarily?

          /me rolls eyes

          Of course the game can be won with non-miliatry means, that was the point of my issue with calling Utopia a "Real Time Stategy" game. The RTS genre's defined by heavy unit manipulation in real time; Utopia's semi-turn based. You could only control one unit at a time, which had to be a naval unit. Land units were "terrain," not units. Buildings ha

          • Strategy: The science and art of using all the forces of a nation to execute approved plans as effectively as possible during peace or war.

            Tactics: The military science that deals with securing objectives set by strategy, especially the technique of deploying and directing troops, ships, and aircraft in effective maneuvers against an enemy.

            Face it, "RTS" games are nothing but "RTT".

            • Face it, "RTS" games are nothing but "RTT".

              And I would agree with you... I personally hate the genre for that very reason. (I prefer turn-based games.)

              But I'm not the one who uses the terminology in magazine articles, game reviews, and press releases. "RTS" has a whole connotation now that makes it a mild misnomer compared with the denotative meaning of the individual words.

              It's like calling George W. Bush a liberal. Even though it's literally true (for sufficiently economic [wikipedia.org] definitions of "liberal"),

    • Usually the Sega Genesis game 'Herzog Zwei' is credited as being the beginning of the RTS genre, though it came out after Populous. Populous is more lumped in with the "god game" genre, like Sim City and Black & White.

      anyway i found this article [google.com] that goes over the history of RTS in detail.

    • The Modern RTS Prototype (Score:3, Informative)

      by Arren ( 776080 )
      With regard to the current state of the genre, I maintain that Westwood's 'Dune II' is the mold in which virtually all RTS games since (to some usually large degree) have been cast. Modular base construction, one-screen GUI+top-down view, not to mention the cornerstone of all such games: the lockstep of game pacing to resource gathering.

      Although, IMO, the paradigm is a hoary old Cliche Golem here in 2004, when 'Dune II' arrived more than a decade ago as the unheralded sequel to an unsatisfying adventure

  • Reviews (Score:4, Interesting)

    by StevenHenderson ( 806391 ) <stevehenderson@NOspam.gmail.com> on Thursday September 02, 2004 @12:27PM (#10140878)
    Fable is getting some pretty solid reviews [gamerankings.com].

    • Re:Reviews (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @12:54PM (#10141174) Homepage Journal
      you still have any trust in before-the-publishing reviews?(_previews_)

      if you trusted those then pirates of the caribbean would have been a good buy and maybe even daikatana.

      with a game such as this(and from this particular guy) you would do yourself a favor and see when the unaffected reviews hit the net after it's available from the stores(because you can't trust these previews on if it's buggy or seriously flawed or not, all you can trust them is the basic premise and story backgroud).

      with some of the linked so called reviews containing gems such as **"Well, it looks like this drawn-out story is finally coming to an end. The game is slated for actual release in Summer '04, which means that it's finally ripe enough to warrant a closer inspection. Having been afforded such an opportunity at the recent GDC convention, let me go on record saying that it was well worth the wait: Fable might well be the coolest game the master craftsman has dreamt up yet."** you can bet your ass that they're sugar coated(if not with anything else then with the "can't say anything bad because i didn't have the final version" complex of reporters doing it for living, sadly that makes such reporters totally worthless).

      so you know it'll be released "summer 04" so you create a "review"? remember that there's a strategy guide for halflife2 that has been out for almost a year too. a half competent journalist can create seemingly accurate reviews from just ten mins of gameplay, or just from screenshots!(wouldn't be the first either)

      • Difference here is that they discuss bad things about the game too. Review sites get games before release dates. It is all about choosing a site you respect/trust. I believe that IGN and Gamespot have played the game, and thus I will trust their reviews. You can do as you wish, obviously...
        • *Review sites get games before release dates. It is all about choosing a site you respect/trust.*

          yes it's all about trust. in them order to get the games they have to build a trust relationship with the publishers - not with you. this includes things like not bashing the game if it has some bugs that just might get fixed before the release..

          you see, there was once upon a time a perioid when game review magazines could if they wanted write "shitty commando clone" as the total review of a game(and be accura
          • I agree with you - I'm sure there is a lot of "favor for a favor" going on out there. However, just like with newspapers and politicians, the optimist in me (and all of us) would like to believe that there are some reputable sources out there immune to corruption.
            • Too bad IGN isn't one of them. They're known for giving highly hyped games really high scores, and they are normally ones to get those games early for review. Coincidence? I think not.

    • Re:Reviews (Score:3, Insightful)

      by prockcore ( 543967 )
      that same site has even better ratings [gamerankings.com] for Black and White.. so I would take that with a grain of salt.

  • deja vu? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @12:28PM (#10140883)
    In Fable, the moral decisions you make affect the character's appearance, the outcome of the game, and so on.

    reminds me of Star Wars KOTOR...

    • Re:deja vu? (Score:2, Informative)

      by HungSoLow ( 809760 )
      Similar, but this game seems to allow complete control over your character. One thing about KOTOR I didn't like is you couldn't go around and be a badass whenever you pleased: you had to do a quest/mission in order to gain Dark side points. With Fable it's different:

      from the article: "majority of malevolence is caused on a whim"

      I can't wait to try this game... finally I can be evil and get away with it >:]

    • Except in KOTOR, the choices you made only affected your character's complexion/force point costs, and some of the events on the very minor level- even at then end, you're stuck doing basically the same things regardless of whether or not you act like a good light jedi or a total asshole. They gave you the illusion of choice, but in the end you were basically just altering the scenery along the rail.

      Fable seems like it will be different in this regard. How well it does at it remains to be seen.

  • Does this trivialize ? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cOdEgUru ( 181536 ) * on Thursday September 02, 2004 @12:28PM (#10140895) Homepage Journal
    Now, I havent seen this game, I havent played his earlier creations, though I have seen people play Populous (and tried to get my hands on a copy) and Black and White.

    A bit in to the NYT article, it is said that the actions define the characters. It definitely does interest, but fail in the face of scrutiny since it is still too thin, too amateurish which leads me to believe it was a design choice to leave it less complex. For e.g., the characters tend to look their part, defined by the direction they take when presented with choices throughout the game. That is, one looks godlike, when said character chooses to be pious and honest, where as the same character look like a devil (with horns) when he consistently choose the wrong path. Why would Peter Molyneux decide to make a mockery of who the character is, is what stopping this game from achieving its full potential. Why cant the character look the same, act the same and still be good/evil? We certainly do not see people or beings among us with horns or wings?

    The picturisation of these characters and giving them a blessed or cursed look depending on their choices kind of trivializes or cheapens the whole experience in my opinion. I read a while ago that in the fairy tales and tales of kings long ago lived and fallen, one could clearly draw a line between those who were good and those who were evil. Yet, if we attempt to do the same now, that line will fall across the souls of each of us as that line will not seek to divide one from the other, rather it will show how that line which differentiates the good from evil is now resting upon our own soul.
    • Right. The best evil people will look just like the good ones. 9/11 might have beed a tad bit different if the hijackers had horns, hooves, and a forked tail.
      • 9/11 might have beed a tad bit different if the hijackers had horns, hooves, and a forked tail.


        That certainly would make me rethink the whole not going to church thing thats for sure.

    • Re:Does this trivialize ? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Gooba42 ( 603597 ) <(moc.liamg) (ta) (24aboog)> on Thursday September 02, 2004 @12:54PM (#10141172)
      I think you miss the point of both the game and the fairytales. They were caricatures of real life, not necessarily depictions of actual events.

      The fact that this game doesn't choose to depict a perfectly realistic world but instead chooses to draw upon a fairytale like mythos deepens the fictional world it depicts. It isn't supposed to be confused with real life.

      As the title "Fable" suggests, the contrasts of good and bad, light and dark are all going to be exaggerated and if it's written well maybe it'll actually have a "moral" at the end to be drawn from this world of sharper contrast than our own.

    • Molyneux's gimmick - old, old stuff (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Zhe Mappel ( 607548 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @12:58PM (#10141230)
      Yes, Molyneux's gimmick is a throwback to one of the oldest storytelling conventions: characters are condemned to wear their moral selves on their sleeves.

      Today that hackneyed convention lives on in countless genre pieces, comic books, and indeed much of the output of Hollywood and TV, even if modern people have come to see that the real face of evil may look as shiny, plump and friendly as the face of, say, an Enron CEO or a leader who lies to his nation. In this way, our imaginative fictions too often fail us by repackaging our tribal prejudices as villains. Typically in modern life it is the devil who looks and sounds normal--a paragon of the banality of evil--that one must fear, not some dark-skinned and different-looking Other!

    • You should read "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde

      This is on topic.
    • I believe Molyneux wants us to enjoy what we are, not hide from it. Why deny yourself? Regardless of inner voices or conflicts, our actions define us as good or evil. It's an externally, artificially applied label, but still, there it is, a fact of humanity. It is not the individual who decides what is good or evil, but the society. It is up to the individual to make choices and actions regardless of that definition. Molyneux is just making that obvious.

      Plus, it's a video game, come on.

      (By, they way,
    • I haven't RTFA, but I seem to remember waaaaaay back when, before the XBox even came out, Molyneux talking about this game. But in his earlier descriptions, the physical appearance changes had nothing to do with good/evil -- instead, it was things like "swinging a heavy axe will make your character look burlier, while using a one-handed sword will make them leaner. Using magic will cause your hairline to recede." etc.

      What happened to that? They already did the stupid good/evil morphing in Black & Wh
      • I haven't RTFA

        and...

        What's the draw, other than that your character grows horns or halos as the game progresses?

        Hmm. I haven't RTFA either, but I imagine that in some cases, R'ing the FA can provide answers to these types of questions... :-)

      • Take a moment to read it then. They do change your appearance based on using heavy weapons vs light weapons vs magic. A barbarian type will be burly and scarred, a thief will be lean, and a lazy glutton will be chubby.

  • Black & White (Score:2, Insightful)

    by smaksly ( 751439 )
    Really dug the completely in game mouse driven interface in Black & White (although rotating the viewpoint was annoying) and the game was cute.

    Ultimately though it came down to micro management and resource gathering.

    Nothing revolutionary.

    • Re:Black & White (Score:5, Funny)

      by Scrameustache ( 459504 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @12:42PM (#10141051) Homepage Journal
      Ultimately though it came down to micro management and resource gathering.

      Nothing revolutionary.


      Well, I Villagers need food... really liked the game.
      In fact, I found it quite Villagers need food... addictive.

      Hell, I had a game tester job back in those Villagers need food... days, and I would spend my evenings playing that after a hard day's playing something else. Villagers need food...

      It even did stuff like tell Villagers need food... you you'd been playing for a long time in a fun way. Once I came home straight from work and just played until the little devil Villagers need food... helper told me "Hey boss, its gettin' kinda late. Maybe you should rest a little.", that was surprising, and it made me realise it was 11:30 and I'd been playing for over 5 hours straight! : )

      Villagers need food...
      death...

      But man, the last level was a bitch, I never actually finished it. I get the feeling the game was released unfinished. In fact, I'm sure it was death.... That's why I like console games better, at least there is an authority such as Sony or Nintendo that forces the devs and editors to actually FINISH the game before they release it. Villagers need food... On PC its free-for-all, "patch it later" mentality. Sad really.
      death...
      death...

  • Populous... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by PeterChenoweth ( 603694 )
    was a great game. I remember seeing Populous I, playing many, many hours of Populous II, and still occasionally dust off "Populous (III): The Beginning" even today.

    B&W, on the other hand, is the worst game I have ever purchased. Awesome graphics (at the time) can not make up for bad gameplay, buggy code, and an AI that simply didn't work.

  • I had high hopes for B&W, but frankly it was just another micromanagement festival -- been there, done that too many times. I did really like throwing villagers and slapping my monkey around, though.

    Perhaps I shouldn't be so hard on him, but TFA makes him out to be some kind of visionary making truly revolutionary games -- which as far as I can tell, he ain't.
    • Heh, "slapping my monkey around." Ok, now you're just asking for it, especially at slashdot.
    • "but TFA makes him out to be some kind of visionary making truly revolutionary games"

      It is true though; how many of his games have you played and really be able to say 'been there, done that', as you say earlier on in your comment. Populous (amazing concept, good gameplay), Syndicate (amazing concept, amazing gameplay, amazing everything), Dungeon Keeper (what?!? I'm the /evil/ guy?!? Cool!) and Black and White (trhe game sucks, but have you seen your monkey/cow do this yet? And look what I taught him then

  • High Concept, Low Gameplay (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cephyn ( 461066 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @12:35PM (#10140970) Homepage
    Mr. Molyneux's game concepts are always amazing, topnotch, and sadly, overambitious. Thats how I've always felt. B&W was a disappointment, because for all the hype and all the "open-ended" promises, the game played pretty much the same for everyone, and had a ton of bugs too. I put it down after getting about 3/4 of the way through and just never picked it up--just didn't live up.

    Now that I hear that a lot of the promises of Fable didn't make it into the final game, I wonder if the same thing will happen -- huge concept, big promises, but weak on the execution.

    This isn't to say the games are bad, they're just horribly disappointing to me. A game that sounds like 10/10 ends up being more like an 8 or a 7/10, but given the expectations, tends to "feel" more like a 5/10.

    • Re:High Concept, Low Gameplay (Score:5, Insightful)

      by GeorgeMcBay ( 106610 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @12:53PM (#10141154)
      Black & White was a disappointment, yeah, but as a key player in the creation of many great games like Populous, Syndicate, Theme Park, Magic Carpet and Dungeon Keeper, I think I can overlook one overhyped flop.

      And from what I've seen Fable looks really good. I'll surely give it at least a rent.
      • He does have a lot of good stuff going, but it seems that the more ambitious the game, the harder it is to pull off -- and PM is more ambitious than most. 8/
      • What I find to be a disappointment is that the release date for Black and White II has slipped by about a year now all told, pissing my girlfriend off to no end. I guess now we know why, they've been working on Fable. It had better be really good or I'm going to be pissed off too :P Black & White was buggy and annoying to control. I've been hoping BWII will come out so I can see if they finally got a handle on the game mechanics and maybe made a game that will run for several hours without crashing but

  • Better than Black and White I hope (Score:5, Informative)

    by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @12:35PM (#10140971)
    That game was a disaster. I mean I wanted to like it, I really did, I'm a huge Populus fan and B&W sounded so cool. After about 6 hours of play I just had to accept the fact that the game sucked.

    The problem was too much of this pioneering and doing your own thing, I think. Like the creatures, he decided to make them really trainable and to that effect gave them a pretty indepth AI... that sucked. Good idea, shitty execution. Same with gestures. Seems neat until your wrist is aching from having to do that fireball gesture 100 times.

    Hopefully he learned something from that because Populus was just dynamite and I'd love to see more from him of that quality.
    • i agree. i think i remember seeing black and white once referred to as the "most addictingly mediocre game you'll ever play". i played it for weeks, hoping that i could just get it to the point where my creature and people would look after themselves. i really wanted to believe that if i could just get past that initial hump i would stop having to micromanage everything that happened, and could actually enjoy the game.

      eventually the reality set in. despite all of the stupid and pointless things you cou
    • I wouldn't hold up much hope on the interface then. Being released on a console platform first will inherently cripple the control options.

      That's one reason I've NEVER liked consoles. The controls just **SUCK**. They're only good for simplistic stuff, unless you want to master the up-up-left-down-a-down-b combo crap. Too much work for something I'm supposed to enjoy.

      My 2 cents anyway.

  • Hype (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FiReaNGeL ( 312636 ) <.moc.liamtoh. .ta. .l3gnaerif.> on Thursday September 02, 2004 @12:37PM (#10140982) Homepage
    I hope Fable isn't as overhyped as Black&White was... reading the previews, you had the impression that it would revolution gaming. Playing it (well, the 5 short levels, where your creature, the main part of the game, was taken away on 2 of em) was really disappointing. Few quests, no replay value AT ALL, AI not that revolutionnary (look! it can dance and root out trees if you show him too! and he can... hum... that's about it), big bug on the unpatched version (you couldn't finish the game), etc...

    That said, I am waiting with impatience B&W2 and Fable! Overhyped? I hope not!
    • > look! it can dance and root out trees if you show him too! and
      > he can... hum... that's about it

      You forgot the most important aspect of the creature: the non-stop pooping all over Eden. That's a feature I could have done without.

      I liked Black and White for a while, but playing it is like baby-sitting a two year old.
  • I bought Black and White and was amazed at how much people loved it. The mouse driven interface was frustrating as hell when you needed to do something quickly and as other posters have mentioned it all came down to micromanagement and resource gathering. I spent a good 30 hours playing it before I gave up trying to have any fun with it. In game cut scenes were long, annoying, and could not be skipped. The game was hardly revolutionary although it made taking out the garabage and doing dishes seem like

  • Game creators (Score:5, Insightful)

    by El Cabri ( 13930 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @12:39PM (#10141009) Journal
    I don't have celebrity game creators in very high esteem. In almost 30 years, they have failed to make gaming a recognized art form, which cinema had achieved at the same age by the 1930s. They leave no legacy, since video games mostly disappear with the platform they were running on. And game designers, instead of concentrating on the entertainment value of their games, like to hype BS "artificial intelligence", "real virtual worlds that interract like the real real world", and armchair philosopher's mumbo jumbo.

    • Re:Game creators (Score:5, Interesting)

      by CAIMLAS ( 41445 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @12:51PM (#10141133)
      THere are some games that have awesome creators.

      Take Deus Ex (the first one) for example. Incredible story, awesome gameplay, and a complex game world all lead to a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Granted, it was a literary's game, as it had a lot of references to culture and literature, but I think that certainly added rather than subtracted from the overall gameplay experience. It had a head to it, unlike most games which are fairly base in their approach to entertainment.

      Max Payne is another example of a stunning presentation and execution. Though drastically different in gameplay, it still had an awesome story and felt "finished". Nothing was out of place.

      All the good films that are remembered tend to have these same elements. They get you involved with the characters and the story and help you form emotional attachments.

      B&W had some good things about it, but the overall implimentation was lacking. The bugs were frustrating, the gameplay drawn out and poorly paced, and the actual goal and the method by which to execute it were pretty nebulous until you got further into it... never played Populous. I don't remember anything about it.
      • Deus Ex: great game, cool story...no Art. You experienced no emation (well, you know what I mean) during the game.

        Max Payne: ditto, but the purest pulp, and I mean that in the absolute best way. Pulp can be great, but very few make for Art, in any artfrom, and to my mind, Max Payne, whilst cool, was not Art.

        Homeworld: Art. Like Max Payne, it had the highest production values. Unlike Payne, it provoked real emotions. When you discovered your homeworld destroyed, with Adagio for strings playing (I always wo

    • Re:Game creators (Score:5, Interesting)

      by CaptainPinko ( 753849 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @12:57PM (#10141208)
      Personally I blame the gamers. When it comes down to it few of them (in my experience) have sophisticated tastes in art, film, theatre, and so on. Most of them seem to dismiss it as pretentious crap. When gamers say stuff like (quote from a conversation from yesterday) "I watch movies to turn off my brain" is it any suprise that games off as low-brow as they are? And think about even the books gamers read. Most of them are technical, or if they aren't they tend to be fairly blunt.* I find it a shame since I am doing a combined CS/Liberal Art degree.

      *By blunt I mean you can't miss the point, some SciFi have have good points about technology and society or pollution or something, but its fairly in your face lacking it subtlety and nuance. Also they don't seem to be drawn to behavioural novels, more plot driven ones.

      • As the title hints, maybe if you stopped being snotty about that arts degree, you could notice that reality isn't that simple.

        There are "gamers" and there are "gamers"."Gamer" means pretty much everyone from the die-hard who only talks about Counter-Strike ever, to the old grandma playing Solitaire and Minesweeper. We're talking people ranging from 2 year olds (yes, a friend was teaching his 2 year old son to play Wolfenstein) to teenagers to 50-60 year olds. (Yes, both my parents are gamers.) As for "tech
      • The problem remains that games nowadays tend _not_ to be up to either book or movie standards. Regardless of whether you're into plots, or angsty whiny character development, or whatever, your average computer game manages to just pull a ham-fisted approach to either.

        When they try to address any problem or issue, e.g., good vs evil, it's usually just a quick excuse as to why you're allowed to kill those people. They're just evil, go kill them already. Doesn't matter if they actually did anything evil at al
        • Hmmm...where to start:

          First off, let's have a look at this:

          "Black and White didn't really address any issue of good or evil, and didn't even try to get into the subtleties of being evil without being purely self-destructive for no good reason."

          And let's zoom in on:

          "the subtleties of being evil without being purely self-destructive for no good reason."

          Seems like a damn good definition of evil to me! Evil always has a reason which doesn't stand up to logic.

          As for your last statement: that's what mods do
          • "Seems like a damn good definition of evil to me! Evil always has a reason which doesn't stand up to logic."

            You seem to be missing the whole point.

            Both in history and in literature, the memorable villains weren't simply some random psycho who started shooting people off the street. They may be "evil", but they make for a piss-poor story or plot.

            The villains that got famous in either history or in literature or in movies, were the ones who had a _plan_. A plan which involves gaining allies, power, seeming
        • E.g., since we're talking about its creator, when I played the first Populous, once let it on auto-play, just to see how the computer plays. The "evil" guys were just minding their business, building their evil towns and planting their evil crops. The "good" guys suddenly built an army and slaughtered them all. Who was good and who was evil there?

          I can explain. The "good" guys had water-tight intelligence that the evil-doers had the capacity to launch an attack in less than fifteen minutes, and had to pre

    • Re:Game creators (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Ever heard of Shigeru Miyamoto?
    • Dont be so harsh, actually games pretty much have taken the same road early cinema did. The first few years were experimental and some really amazing games (works of art) came out. The works of Dani Bunten, Pitfall, PacMan, pretty much everything which came out from EA the first two til three years of its existence. Then "master" game developers arrived, with amazing early works. Dani Bunten, Bill Bugde, David Crane, Richard Garriot, to name a few. The mid nineties the whole thing became an industry, and wi
    • Of course, if you listen to the academics who mourn the still birth of the art of gaming, the critical flaw of today's games is ignoring storyline. To these people, interactive stories are the epitome of gaming, and it is the designers who choose to ignore the story present in all games, be it Madden Football or even Tetris. What I've gathered is that video gaming art should be an advanced choose your own adventure book with pretty pictures.

      Naturally, I tend to view these people as English students with a

  • Profiling is wrong (Score:4, Funny)

    by isa-kuruption ( 317695 ) <kuruption AT kuruption DOT net> on Thursday September 02, 2004 @12:39PM (#10141011) Homepage
    Isn't a violation of someone's civil liberties to profile them? I mean, shouldn't that be stopped? Especially when it comes to Black & White... racial profiling is wrong!

  • No! No more games! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Monkelectric ( 546685 ) <slashdot AT monkelectric DOT com> on Thursday September 02, 2004 @12:43PM (#10141058)
    B&W was a *GREAT* game. I logged about 350 hours on it and its expansion pack (it keeps track for you). The final level of B&W took me 40 hours alone.

    But at the same time the game was seriously flawed -- your creature was *ALWAYS* learning, so you could never misbehave infront of it. You could spend weeks training your creature to be good, then for some reason you might HAVE to kill people in the game, your creature would see, he'd start killing people, and you couldn't stop him from doing it -- because at some point you actually had to play the game instead of baby sit your creature, and at that point your creature would wander off, kill people, and you couldn't discipline him for it.

    Still a great game, finally a good use for my xbox :)

    • Re:No! No more games! (Score:4, Funny)

      by SensitiveMale ( 155605 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @12:58PM (#10141224)
      B&W was a *GREAT* game. I logged about 350 hours on it and its expansion pack (it keeps track for you). The final level of B&W took me 40 hours alone.

      All I know about Bush is I had a job when Clinton was president.

      you probably got your ass fired for playing B&W everyday. :)
    • "The final level of B&W took me 40 hours alone"

      I don't recall how long it took. Once I'd beaten the final AI opponent nothing happened. I left the game running overnight and eventually the win condition triggered itself. A fitting ending for a horribly botched game.

  • Dungeon Keeper (Score:2, Informative)

    by phr0stbyte ( 718187 )
    What about Dungeon Keeper?, I didn't play any of the Populus games, but Dungeon Keeper sucked away atleast 6 months of my and my friends lives. Hopefully this game will get released for the PC eventually, we need something new that isn't a sequel. And even though most Molyneux games are very similar in gameplay (your god), they always have something new and original that makes it worth playing

  • Face evolution (Score:5, Funny)

    by Espectr0 ( 577637 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @12:54PM (#10141166) Journal
    Hey this is cool. This is my starting evil character [top-delire.com] in the game.

    After doing some non evil stuff, my character now looks like this [buchkritik.at]
  • But we're still going to be able to run around and shoot things, right?!

  • same-sex marriages?!?! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 02, 2004 @01:15PM (#10141400)
    from the nytimes article:

    "Mr. Molyneux is both excited and anxious about the amount of flexibility in a game that allows the male hero to murder or marry almost any woman or man in Albion."

    oh no! this is going to be the downfall of video game families everywhere! everyone write their senators and congressmen immediately and help protect our video game family values!

  • This [justadventure.com] is an old game that the name reminded me of instantly. Hopefully the developers will avoid the problems that plagued this game 7 years ago.

    Namely nasty bugs, poor character development, and too many loose ends at the end of the game.

  • Ultima4 did this (Score:3, Insightful)

    by acomj ( 20611 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @01:50PM (#10141785) Homepage
    Ultima 4 had ethical questions at the beginning the determined your first characters class.

    I think this was in response to the repeated destroying of towns (or the same town over and over) in ultima1-3.

  • "Alignment" Hardly Revolutionary (Score:3, Insightful)

    by l4m3z0r ( 799504 ) <<kevin> <at> <uberstyle.net>> on Thursday September 02, 2004 @02:21PM (#10142127)
    Your character being affected by your actions is nothing revolutionary. Dungeons and Dragons has had a system of alignment(good/evil and anywhere inbetween) since the early days. Invariably this is where all todays good/evil ideas in games(video or otherwise) come from. I think the fact that it affects your physical appearance is rather nonsensical, and trivializes the concept of good/evil. Then again I'm an RPG fanboy and love my D&D so I might be biased.

  • Molyneux is a fucking hack. Much like dobby. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    He has a track record of destroying things he touches. Witness Black and White. Witness Dungeon Keeper. For the last 10 years, he has picked up other peoples' work and mashed it into the ground.

    Fable was NOT conceived of by Molyneux. It was conceived of by the folks who conceived of Dungeon Keeper in its pre-Molyneux (and pre-EA) form. Lionshead, due to Peter's enormous potential to gain funding from large entities (ie: EA, Microsoft) effectively bought out the entity that had been Fable. Fortunately
  • Francesco Carucci talk about his work at LH and on B&W2 in an interview [nvitalia.com] on an italian videocards website. Even if you can't read italian, the screenshots are worth a look!

    Bye!

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