Peter Molyneux fought back the tears last night in his acceptance speech for his BAFTA Fellowship, the highest accolade the Academy can bestow.

Last night he became the fourth game developer to recieve the honour, joining Shigeru Miyamoto, Will Wright and Nolan Bushnell.

Presented the award by Sir Ben Kingsley, the industry veteran was instantly moved by a standing ovation from a packed room of industry luminaries.

Below you can read his acceptance speech in full.

“I had a fantastic speech prepared, honestly.

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“What’s so amazing is to start a little tiny company, with a man named Glenn, in Guildford, and then twenty years later to stand up in front of all you amazing, incredible people, some of which I’ve worked with, others which I completely admire, it’s just been an incredible journey.

“I’d like to thank the publishers; EA and Activision and Microsoft. Y’know, sorry for being incredibly late, and over-promising, and slightly un-delivering, but there you go. Thank you for your understanding, thank you for your belief. I know I’ve been difficult to work with in the past.

“I’d like to thank all the people I’ve worked with. There’s loads of completely incredible people I’ve worked with that are invisible, because I’ve got such a big mouth.

“Mark Webley, Glenn Corpes, Russell Shaw, Louise Murray, Paul McLaughlin – It’s been an incredible journey with all those people, who I’ve worked with them for years and years and years, I’m just this idiot who stands up and says ‘why don’t we do a game about theme parks, or dungeons, or god’. They’re the amazing people who take these ideas and deal with them.

“I’d like to thank the press. Sorry I slightly over-promised. I could name at least ten features I’ve spontaneously added to games to stop journalists going to sleep.

“I’d like to thank my wife, Emma, and my mother. I can’t tell you how depressed I get when a game is not going well, and they see me through. 

“We started this thing – we didn’t know what we were doing, there was far too much substance abuse really, and we were just doing this crazy god game. But the cool thing is, the amazing thing is about this industry, is that we’ve got all the incredible amazing cinematic stuff we’ve seen today, all the triple-A stuff, and we’ve got cool stuff like Limbo, like Minecraft.

“This industry is incredible man, and every day I wake up and thank the stars. I love my job so much, and I really feel like going back home and working harder than I’ve ever done to really prove that I deserve this award.

“Thank you so much.”