March 4th, 2010 @ Sway Bar, London
UK studios converge to battle over who's the cleverest - have you booked your place yet?
Thursday April 22nd, 2009 @ The Brewery, London
The countdown to the MCV Awards 2010 has begun – with date, venue and categories announced.
July 14th, 2010 @ The Hilton Metropole, Brighton
The Develop Industry Excellence Awards is the only event which rewards the work done by Europe’s leading games development companies.
Famed designer to oversee creative operations at Lionhead, Rare plus external projects
Peter Molyneux has been promoted to creative director of European studios at Microsoft Games Studios, Develop can reveal.
Previously creative director of Guildford-based Lionhead Studios, Molyneux will now also oversee the creative direction of fellow UK Microsoft studio Rare, as well as other European external projects.
Molyneux assumed the role in March, and will continue to be based at the Lionhead offices.
He has over 20 years of experience with games Populous, Syndicate, Theme Park, Dungeon Keeper, Black & White and Fable to his name and “will bring a unique set of skills and an in-depth understanding of the games development process to this newly created role”, says the company.
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It's great to see him in that position now.
Also, please learn your grammar, it's not enjoyable to read a news story, which isn't written with proper grammar.
I hate reading poorly punctuated comments. Please learn to punctuate before criticising professionals.
Yeah for Peter!
Michael wrote: "It's great to see him in that position now.
Also, please learn your grammar, it's not enjoyable to read a news story, which isn't written with proper grammar."
Not that I'm a Grammar Nazi, but I think it would be better to write as:
"Also, please learn correct grammar. It isn't very enjoyable to read a news article which isn't written properly."
Now Natal or Milo technology will be implemented on more games!
Smart move MS, and well done to Develop on breaking the story.
Shame Gamasura couldn't bring itself to credit you for the details!!
I can't see what the big problem is with the grammar anyway. It could have been a little tidier, admittedly, but it stands up to scrutiny.
opoo - it's not the first time, and it won't be the last. bless 'em!
I can't wait to see his game ideas being developed by Rare. Rare still has a lot of talent, but there game direction died a long time ago.
After the decidedly fake looking Milo at E3 and all the bluster of 10 men at his command, it's only natural I suppose that The Peter would move on up. Looking more executive every year he is.
I think it's a big mistake by Microsoft though. Peter Molyneux is clearly a "face" now (a guy who does the talking to journalists) but what's he actually done in the last 10 years that was very creative AND well executed. Big ideas are great fun to play with but Lionhead have always failed badly when it comes to follow-through and execution.
Yeah, I'm one of those people who has never been let down by Bullfrog/Lionhead/Peter.
Never worked with him, though it has always been an ambition of mine. Also I'm not ***, so I think I'll fit in (joke!)
I hope we learn more about what his job entails. I can only assume he will liaise with Rare and other MS interests in Europe to implement his creativeness and give their games direction?
Perhaps if he were in the role sooner, Rare need not have sodomised Banjo Kazzooie with Nuts and Bolts! :)
IMO the Fable series is brilliant, but the execution comes back to the development team not meeting the deadline and releasing a buggy / unfinished game.
I apologise for our over-active word filter - although it does make Ferdinand's statement all the more brilliant when you work it out.
Brilliant and slightly depressing.
It is clear that Haylonix has never worked in the games industry, worked with Molyneux, or ever made a game for that matter.
Saying "but the execution comes back to the development team not meeting the deadline and releasing a buggy/unfinished game" is extremely insulting to developers everywhere. Molyneux is full of interesting ideas, most of which are absolutely terrible when implemented and simply don't work in the real world. He also is a blabbermouth and quite often tells the press about features going into an upcoming game that the development team don't even know about. Then, when he finally ends up back in the office, the dev team have to try and figure out a way to make his hair-brained scheme work.
It is not the fault of the development team. Another 'interesting' trait of Molyneux is that he's like a dog with a bone; he makes the developers iterate on some crappy idea for months before finally admitting it was a bad idea in the first place. His ego will not let him acknowledge that many of the ideas he comes up with are bad. I'm not saying ALL his ideas are bad (this is to head off the Molyneux-fanboys), but some clearly are and if he had acknowledged this sooner, many many schedules would not have been impacted.
When you work for a company where it's impossible to ever create a meaningful schedule, and the programmers and artists are forced to continue adding new features and changing core elements of the game right up to the last minute, it is inevitable that the game will either be late, rushed out, or both. Not locking down a game months before submission to first parties is a guaranteed way of having a game with lots of bugs and half-finished ideas.
It is extremely unfair to blame the hard-working designers, programmers, and artists who slog their guts out in ludicrous crunch periods just because the person running the company is an ego-maniac who can't ever finish anything.
