Peter Molyneux Accepts Blame for his Portrayal as a “Fraud”

Infamous game developer Peter Molyneux has suffered quite a hammering of late, not least due to the Curiosity/Godus debacle, and he now concedes that he is partly to blame for his portrayal in the press as a “fraud” and a “liar”, admitting that he’s guilty of waxing lyrical about game features that excite him at the time, but that won’t necessarily make it into the game that he is discussing.

“The mistake I made, and I’ve made it again and again and again, and if I ever do this again I’ll probably make it again,” Molyneux said, speaking at the Reboot Develop Conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia yesterday, “is to go to talk to the press about my current ideas. As you can see from the iterative development side, the current idea is the most exciting idea ever.”

Molyneux spoke about E3 press junkets, and how he would try to rouse weary journalists by giving them a glimpse into his imagination. “In Fable, I said ‘one of the things I’d love in an RPG is to have this world that evolves. I’d love to have trees that grew’,”, Molyneux said. “Well, they grew in Black and White. So I said I’d love to have an acorn you could plant and would grow into a tree. But of course the game didn’t have that, but that became the headline. And some people get so incensed. “why are you lying to us?” I wasn’t lying – this is what I thought of the game at the moment. They say this is fraud.”

I like Peter Molyneux. I think there’s plenty of room in a game industry dominated by AAA titles, sequels, and tie-ins for original thinkers with great ambitions, and Molyneux has had that box ticked for over thirty years. The guy is still very passionate about his work, despite regular criticism and attacks. However, it seems the irony of complaining about bad press in a public forum that will subsequently be reported in the press seems lost on him. Though he admits to mistakes, and that he will “probably make [them] again”, Molyneux must realise that not only is he’s swimming against the tide in continuing to fight this perception, he is as guilty as anyone of keeping it in the public consciousness. That die is cast, and he’s only reinforcing it by discussing it so frequently.

Conversely, instead of being chastised for failing to meet his own ambitions, Molyneux should be celebrated for having them in the first place, and long may that continue.

Thank you Gamasutra for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of Indie Haven.