RockPaperShotgun SKEWERS Molyneux
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Peter Molyneux Interview: "I haven’t got a reputation in this industry any more"
We speak to Peter Molyneux about Godus, Kickstarter, and his career of overpromising.
Pretty amazing. The leading question is, "are you a pathological liar?"
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Oh this should be good for a laugh...
"I have no idea how much money it costs to make a game"
Then you're fucking bad at your job. Seriously, you should have an idea of the ballpark by now.
"Making a computer game that’s entertaining and that’s incredible and that’s amazing is almost impossible, it’s almost impossible to do."
Then you're fucking bad at your job.
" we had taken an approach to this thing called the timeline and it just didn’t work. People were just not motivated by it"
Then you're a fucking terrible project manager
"anybody who is creating something new and original and different, which Godus is, it’s almost impossible to ask for the right time"
Somehow the rest of us cope.
"although we got £100k more than what we asked for, after Kickstarter take their cut, after paying VAT"
Shocker: fixed costs you knew about in advanced actually have to get paid! Film at 11.
So why go to people who trust you and trust your reputation and ask them for half a million pounds and say you’re going to finish the game in seven months, when you know you’re not going to?
Peter Molyneux: Because I absolutely believe that and my team believe that. That’s what the creative process is.
Then you're fucking terrible at estimating, which is part of your job
It’s one of those things where I thought someone else was handling it and they were. [...]They left and I assumed incorrectly that they had handed their handling of Bryan off to someone else and they hadn’t.
Then you're a fucking terrible lead
"Do you think from the line of questioning you’re giving me, that this industry would be better without me?"
yes.
"And someone called Peter Murphy who is the finance director."
Do you... not even know your own fucking staff? WTF?
" There have been many many times, many times in my career where I said things I shouldn’t have said about acorns and oak trees and dogs and god knows what else."
Which makes you terrible at PR!
" I wish I was smarter"
Me fucking too.
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That's the problem with Kickstarter, you are frequently giving money to people who are incompetent. It is very frequently throwing good money after bad. It is just a digital form of panhandling.
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Disclaimer: I have never, in 30 years, written a videogame.
"I have no idea how much money it costs to make a game"
Indie title: under $1 million, though can be as little as a few $k
Low budget: $2-5 million
Mid-budget: $5-10 million
Big budget: $15-50 million
AAA: $100 million+I've not hi-balled the Indie estimate as much as you may think; Shovel Knight raised $311,502 on its Kickstarter, and Thimbleweed Park raised $626,250. That's not to say big money means great games; after all, just $25,472 was raised for the best 2D platformer I've played since Sonic 3 & Knuckles
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The leading question is, "are you a pathological liar?"
Well, that and the sloppy-slash-nonexistent editing on Molyneux' are always a sign of a good, unbiased interview...
Other than that, yeah, it is pretty fucking stupid for someone like him to not be able to estimate a budget. Hardly unprecedented, though, he's really not the first or the last.
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Seems like the only difference between "big budget" and "AAA" is the size of the advertising campaign...
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Seems like the only difference between "big budget" and "AAA" is the size of the advertising campaign...
The big costs seem to be better, more extensive voice acting and more extensive localization (which multiplies the voice acting costs). Longer development times also massively increase costs, but that then puts them more in the scope of bad management, and MMOGs have higher costs in general due to the need for more content refreshing and running services and so on.
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Seems like the only difference between "big budget" and "AAA" is the size of the advertising campaign...
And, as @dkf says, more voice acting and localisation, two things which can eat a surprising amount of budget.
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It's taken them this long to skewer Molyneux? Damn, I could have done this last summer having heard it from the horse's mouth, so to speak, after speaking to Jack from 22Cans face to face.
I actually knew back then that they were in some financial difficulties - that they were pushing the iOS version with store to make money because they just weren't making enough because the Steam rep of the game was dragging it under and it wasn't making sales.
None of this is news though. And the opening question... is he a pathological liar? No, I don't actually think he is. I think he has these ideas, wonderful and creative ideas, but falls short on actually trying to make any of them real and has to back-pedal furiously because he just opens his mouth and spews without considering the consequences.
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Thank god I'm not in the computer game industry.
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The big costs seem to be better, more extensive voice acting
yeah, they spend lots of money to hire someone like Patrick Stewart or Kate Upton to do voice for the tutorial level, then spend more money for advertising to say "OMG, we have $celebrity in our game!!!"
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The big costs seem to be better, more extensive voice acting and more extensive localization (which multiplies the voice acting costs).
I eagerly await text-to-speech becoming a viable replacement for hiring tons of voice actors, just as virtual instruments have obviated the need to hire an orchestra* and Turbosquid has obviated the need to hire billions of artists**.
*Unless the bill for recording a live orchestra can be justified. That's going to be a hard sell unless you're Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, et al. **The one problem with content providers like Turbosquid is that the art is generic, and not tailored exactly to what your universe needs. However, for a small shop, it's much better to pay on average $1-15 per asset than $30/hour for a warm body.
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No, I don't actually think he is. I think he has these ideas, wonderful and creative ideas, but falls short on actually trying to make any of them real and has to back-pedal furiously because he just opens his mouth and spews without considering the consequences.
the guy is a great artist. who should've hired someone to manage the things.
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I want text-to-speech voice acting in procedurally generated games like ■■■■■ ■■■■■■■■. They'd probably benefit the most due to the huge number of possible dialogue lines.
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I want text-to-speech voice acting in procedurally generated games like ■■■■■ ■■■■■■■■.
Robot Fortress?
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They'd probably benefit the most due to the huge number of possible dialogue lines.
Not just that, they'd be able to make voices that sound like dead actors. Think how it would be to have Oliver Reed talking about a beer roast made with minced beer, minced beer and minced beer…
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I think it's elgiu belgium
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I wish we could banish all those ■■■■■■■ to a ■■■■■■■■ in Belgium. And whomever created the game; send him/her/it to Belgium, too.
