Peter Molydeux

That time Uwe Boll contacted me via Skype in 2004 - Transcript

UB “Hello Peter, thanks for adding me! I have an idea for a big movie for ThemePark!”

PM “Ok, you’re probably better off contacting the publisher in this situation. Do you have their contact information?”

UB “Would you like to hear of my idea? Since you are the creator of this license?”

PM “It’s fine. I should get going now.”

UB “So most directors would turn this idea into a family film, like Home Alones in the Theme Parks or something.”

PM “Would they?”

UB “Yes but not me. So, the movie begins with a staff party for the Theme Park. You know, lots of drinking, DJ, strippers, cocaine. Everyone getting out of their minds. You know?”

PM “There was nothing like this in the game.”

UB “The party goes on for so long that it’s the next day. They still have to run the Theme Park but they are all so wasted! They are not doing things properly and so the rides are breaking and going wrong, people die in different fun ways like in The Final Destination films. Begins with small attractions like dodger cars and carousel but the final act sees an entire huge roller coaster fall apart! Lots of deaths.”

PM “Why would people keep going on the rides if the rides are killing people?”

UB “Peter, I read about your great game. How you can put extra salt in the food so that customers buy drinks. What if the Theme Park guys are putting cocaine in the food so that nobody cares and continue going on the rides?”

PM “So the film is just theme park rides falling apart, killing people?”

UB “Yes! But there is also lots of dialogue and crazy comedy too! A man in tiger costume poops himself and the children don’t like the tiger anymore because of the smell. So he kills himself but the children see it and cry.”

PM “Ok, I better go now.”

UB “I have an idea also for the old video game, Digger.”

PM “I have nothing to do with that game, sorry.”

UB “In Digger lots of people are take to a big huge cube. They have to dig into this big cube and are told what is in the center will change their lives forever.”

PM “Very curious. Ok, I’ve really got to go now.”

UB “Populous The Movie with Christian Slater as God? cool funny God who likes cocaine and swears?”

PM “Go—-gg—ii—internet—go…bb–bby”

UB “What?”

PM “Internet…b…bb….ccc…cutting…o…out….”

UB “Internet cutting out? Ok. Thanks for listening Peter.”

My one and only press release for my new game ‘TheTrail’.

Firstly, I am a man of my word. The game has launched and I’ve not said a word, so now my game is void of any criticism. Even this post will cease to provide any details about the core mechanics of my new game ‘TheTrail’.

Right now, my new exciting game can only be played in the Philippines. This was a decision that came about in a business meeting by business people. There I was, dreaming about a circus game, when one of the business people proposed the idea of releasing this game in the Philippines only. As they began talking about collecting data or something I suddenly felt myself getting very excited. A game that you can only play in the Philippines, what a creative idea! Especially from the business people.

Now I’m fully aware, that not everybody will be playing my new game but just how special could it be for those who decide to travel to the Philippines just to play ‘TheTrail’? (possibly for the first time in their lives!) You know how some people talk about traveling to an exotic location to ‘find themselves’? Imagine if you had a game alongside you to push that discovery one level deeper? My game may not be available to everyone but for those that play it the game could truly be life changing.

I do feel sad for those who can not play my new game so I’m currently creating a new game called ‘TheDoor’. The first X amount of people who figure out how to open the door will win a prize. That prize will be tickets to fly to the  Philippines so that they too can experience ‘TheTrail’. 

The business people did talk about eventually making the game playable in other places such as Europe and the US but if it does I urge you not to play the game in your own country. If anyone here from the Philippines is reading this post, please hold off from playing TheTrail and wait until it becomes available in a country that you’ve never traveled to.

Again, not my idea but the idea of a business strategy department that I’ve obviously been undervaluing in terms of creativity. I’m truly excited about what they will come up with next.

I sincerely hope that TheTrail will change your life, forever.

PeterMolydeux

GDC2014 “Are QA capable of feeling emotions?

Are QA capable of feeling emotions? This is a question that I only started to ask myself in the last decade or so when I was working on Fable 2. A QA tester that for the purposes of protection I shall be referring to as Colin. 

Colin was a fun chap but unfortunately also a QA tester. I remember interviewing him and asking him the very first question that I always ask everyone, including people outside of work;

“Has a game ever made you cry?”

Firstly, it’s a great ice breaker but also a insight into the understanding of where our glorious medium is heading. He replied with an interesting answer that compelled me for the rest of the day. Most people respond with the death in a FinalFantasy game. That’s a bit of a cliche, in reality I’ve probably had hundreds of games result in me turning into a crying mess but you often don’t hear about the others tear jerkers in the media such as Lemmings, A boy and his blob, WarioWare SmoothMoves and many many more. If you believed the media, only a handful of games such as FinalFantasy and Ico have made us cry. 

So, Colin’s interesting answer to my question? Pilotwings64. I won’t go into why as it’s very personal to him but it showed me that he was capable of feeling emotions. I was excited about having a QA tester that could cry even at games that were not designed to make the player cry. I almost believed it was possible to have a QA tester capable of feeling emotion. Yet, I was soon to be disappointed. 

During Fable 2 I had this idea to give the player a choice at the end of the game to sacrifice their dog for more wealth. I made sure to be there when Colin was testing this part of the game, I looked closely at his eye ducts during the process. He had previously chosen the option to save the dog but now he had to choose to sacrifice the dog for purposes of exposing new potential bugs. 

Not one single tear.

I asked him why he wasn’t crying. He then proceeded to tell me that he felt no connection to the dog other than hate because the dog was responsible for about 80% of the game’s bugs.

“But what about when you taught your dog a trick? Did you not find that doing so made the dog an extension of yourself?”

He looked confused, empty, soulless and tired. 

You see, the dog to him was just a piece of code. He was forced to play the game differently to how I wanted players to play my game.

I had to let him go. I can not begin to tell you the amount of QA testers that I have had to send away because they didn’t cry at REALLY sad moments in my games. They are good at finding bugs but terrible at finding emotion in games.

From then on I vowed to only employ normal people for a new role that I titled ‘Emotion testers’. I wrote the following ad;

Urgent: Emotion Testers needed for a day. Applicants must like games and be in touch with their emotional being. Must have experience of crying at games in the past and play games in a normal manner.

I was successful in getting applicants and had set up a room with the latest build of the game. The save file was near the end of the game and by the end there was not a wet face anywhere in the room. I asked why nobody had cried about sacrificing the dog and found out that nobody had become attached to the dog. That made sense to me so I had them all start the game from the beginning and paid them to stay a further few more days to play the entire game. 

When it came to that decision people began asking if they had to sacrifice the dog? At first I saw this as a positive result, in that perhaps they had grew their bond with the dog on such a level that they couldn’t emotionally cope with continuing their lives knowing that they had to sacrifice their beloved furry friend? No, they were just curious to know what happened if they kept the dog this time around. I told them to sacrifice the dog, no tears.

Sadly, I had to send them away as I knew that these play testers were just not capable of crying because they had not played my game properly. I stayed in the studio that night, alone, playing the entirety of Fable 2. At the end I chose to sacrifice my dog and I wept. I wept hard.

Only then, did I finally come to the conclusion that I had created something with great emotional weight. 

During build up of my new studio, I was interviewing someone and asked them this question once again;

“Has a game ever made you cry?”

They looked deep into my eyes and simply said ‘Dog. Fable2′. We nodded at each other for a couple of minutes before I asked a second question;

“WHY did it make you cry?”

He replied, ‘I don’t know. I just played it and cried at the end.’

‘Just played it, interesting’, I said. 

Just played it. That is interesting isn’t it? Do QA testers ‘Just play it.’ or do they do something else entirely? I now never expect to see tears in the eyes of my QA testers and I’m now a much happier person for it. These days if I want to ‘test’ emotion in games, I just stay behind in the studio, turn off the lights and just play the game as a normal human person.

By all means, have a QA department in your studio but don’t beat yourselves up when they don’t cry whilst testing your game. Remember that they are not playing your game, they are simply testing it. Once you truly come to accept this you come to appreciate QA and playtesters as their own kind. They are not like you or me but we CAN work together within this crazy land we call Earth by utilizing their main strengths such as the ability to notice a character in the game go through a wall and many more.

I’ll leave you with one more thought;

Imagine if when a certain Final Fantasy character constantly had her eyeballs on the outside of her face due to a bug, if a QA tester missed that bug do you think people would still be referring to that as one of the saddest moments in the history of this medium?

Thank you for listening. 

Some people misunderstood my Tomodachi tweet

First of all, Tomodachi Life looks wonderfully bonkers and as soon as I saw that video I tweeted, ‘It’s like Nintendo made a game just for me.’ (Me being an awkward over the top parody of Peter Molyneux.)

Since then, the excitement around that game has become a bit sour. This is not necessarily because the game only represents relationships between men and women, but mainly because Nintendo’s official response was essentially, 'Hey, it’s just a game lol. We have no obligation to make social commentary.”

You can read the official statement with the actual quotes here: http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/nintendo-virtual-equality-life-game-23620844

Earlier today, I made a reference this situation with the following tweet: “I still get praise for allowing gay relationships in Fable. To be fair it was possible by default, we just decided not to disable it.”

I was surprised by all of the seemingly confused people sending me messages justifying Nintendo’s stance. These people noted to me that the game had already shipped, as if suggesting that this made the erasure of same-sex relationships okay. They missed the point of my tweet, which was that at some point during Nintendo’s development of Tomodachi Life, there was a conscious decision made that ended up hurting people within the gay community. The general response I received was that Nintendo had done all this hard work and so wanting them to rework it would be unjustified.

The key word in my tweet is 'default’. When Nintendo coded the Mii’s into the game they are either male or female. They are not assigned as gay or straight in the code. So by default, any Mii character in Tomodachi Life could be imagined as gay or straight. The default character design does not have sexual orientation woven into it.

But Nintendo then included a feature that allows two characters to interact together. These interactions can be anything from dating to getting married. The point I want to make is that by default ALL characters would have been able to interact because code doesn’t judge. Code does not have a social agenda. Code does not make choices, nor does it make social commentary. But my point is that sometimes when a conscious choice is made, social commentary is made whether intentionally or not. Someone had to go in there and program the game so that women and men could date or marry, but not extend this interaction to encompass relationships between women and relationships between men. The choice NOT to do this is still a choice.

Going with the default (which is, to allow romantic coding to allow relationships between any and all characters) would have worked fine too. Nintendo wouldn’t have had to hire artists to draw horribly stereotypically gay-looking Mii characters or bring in voice-over people to do their best gay voices because gay people look, act and sound just like any of us. Gay people are an ordinary part of the world, and that’s the very thing that transforms their erasure into a statement, even if it wasn’t driven by a desire to make social commentary.

As Nintendo stated, this is just a whimsical and quirky game. No one intended to be political. Unfortunately at some point, somebody changed the code so that only 0 could interact with 1 and that that 0’s and 1’s could not interact. I am not suggesting that it was out of hatred. Maybe it more out of ignorance, possibly fear of the kind of waves this would create.

By default, the game would have included and celebrated everyone, but someone had to tinker with the default. And that’s why I think we need to talk about these issues as a gaming community – because erasure affects people and sends out a message about what kind of world is acceptable. I think it’s important to understand that for whatever reason at some point during development, someone or a group of people made a decision to disable the ability to represent gay relationships. I love the odd realities created by Nintendo. I really do. I love the strangeness and the creativity of the worlds they create. But eliminating gay relationships is destructive, not creative. Instead of creating new, surreal realities, you are chipping away at reality, a reality that has taken many, many years to become accepted (and which has yet to be fully accepted, to be honest).

And this is why I think it’s important to have these conversations. Everyone should be able to feel welcome in the gaming community. Let’s have games contribute to expanding reality, not erasing it. 

Firstly, if you are taking part in Molyjam2012 you are free to pick ANY design from my entire twitter feed. These are just a list of the designs I feel would make for great Molyjam projects.

Genre : Action, Survival Horror

Survival Horror combined with Bowling

Genre : Puzzle, Adventure

Game where you are a coin being passed around. Must travel as far as possible, placing yourself in ideal places to be picked up and transported

Genre : Puzzle, Strategy

Game where you play a life support machine in a hospital but during the night you turn into a diseased rat.

Genre : Puzzle, Strategy

Imagine living in a world where all anyone can do is hurt each other. You on the other hand, your only ability is to hug those around you.

Genre : Puzzle, Strategy, Action

What if the pause button was a weapon? Until developers think outside the box we’re going downhill.

Genre : Action

Game where you control a full stop. Enemies read you stories you and you have to jump in between words at the right time

Genre : Action

Game in which you must comfort children on a plane who are afraid of flying, game mechanic is similar to spinning plates.

Genre : Survival Horror

A survival horror game where the enemies can only be seen in mirrors? Could add more depth by having dirty mirrors that need to be cleaned?

Genre : Puzzle

Your child is made of lego, you have to detatch bricks to make bridges etc You need to keep adding bricks to stop him getting depressed.

Genre : Strategy

I also love the idea of playing a character who is PRETENDING to be blind, so you have to keep bumping into things to not arouse suspicion

Genre : Puzzle

Try to imagine a game in which you have an imaginary friend who doesn’t believe you are real, you must convince them that you are.

Genre : Strategy, Action

What if you could plant seeds that grow into cover systems?

Genre : Adventure

Imagine carrying a radioactive baby in a pitch black environment, your baby would act as a torch. Rocking the baby intensifies the glow etc

Genre : Platformer

What if your body is essentially a hourglass? Intense acrobatic game where you have to make sure sand is always falling and never stops

Genre : Puzzle

What if you could steal animation frames from other NPC’s animation cycles and give them to yourself or others to solve puzzles?

Genre : Action, Strategy

You are Cupid, you must find compatible partners. One arrow in each partner, connected with lasers. If any NPC touches laser, game over

Genre : Survival Horror

A survival horror game where you have to sing lullabies to your 2 year old to stop them from screaming/crying and giving your position away

Genre : Strategy

You are a bear but for some reason your oxygen comes from hugging people. Problem is that hugging people breaks their bones.

Genre : Puzzle

Imagine a game in which you have to join protests to make changes to the rules within the game’s world.

Genre : Puzzle

Game in which you control a waterfall and must travel the world hiding outdoor passages from adventurers.

Genre : Puzzle

You control a mystical rabbit at a bus stop during Winter. You must find as many creative ways as possible to make people miss their buses.

Genre : Puzzle

You play a hole, you must move around an environment making certain elements fall into correct targets at the right time.

Genre : Platformer

Would love to make a platformer where you play as a thing with a microwave for a head. You have to grab enemies, put them in your head. Etc

Genre : Puzzle, Action

What if everyone in the world had an explosive telephone in their body? If you could find out their number you can detonate their phone?

Genre : Strategy, Action

What if you lived in a world where all guns are required to be plugged into wall sockets? Now THAT would be a tactical shooter wouldn’t it?

Genre : Puzzle, Action

A game where if you touch the floor you die. The only way to progress is to kill enemies and use their bodies as platforms.

Genre : ?

You are a Pigeon who must go around the city trying to persuade business men not to jump off buildings by retrieving items from their home.

Genre : ?

Game where you must hold onto your mother’s hand. Let go for more than X seconds and it’s game over

Genre : Strategy, Action

You live in a little house made of guns. You need many guns to fight invaders but you also need to keep a roof on top of your many children.

Genre : ?

You are a scarecrow in a world with just 1 bird

Genre : Strategy, Action

Game where your arms are controlled by a psychopath who keeps firing guns at innocent people. You must turn away from them and run.

Genre : Puzzle

Visualize an open world game set in a white box. During the night you dream and can place elements from your dream into the blank world

Genre : Action

What if you were half man half tree? You can only fight when in soil and constantly grow throughout the game.

Genre : Action, Stealth

Interesting concept, enemies with dirty piano keyboards for heads. To kill them you must clean the piano without making a noise.

Genre : ?

Imagine if instead of reading a bedtime story to your child you played a 10 minute portable adventure game that generated random storylines?

Genre : Action, FPS

A FPS where you control a soldier’s shoe, however imagine if you play as a shoe that was left at home with your wife and children during war

Genre : Action

What if there was a fighting game where the mechanic was to ‘colour in’ parts of your enemy to create your own weak spots?

Genre : ?

A game in which you control a boy playing with action figures, you only control his big hands and also his mouth for making SFX.