Neuromancer
Member
I'm sorry, I'm not sure what we're talking about any more.But that is not what the quoted part was about, was it?
I'm sorry, I'm not sure what we're talking about any more.But that is not what the quoted part was about, was it?
I don't think I missed the point at all.
You were suggesting that an interview like this is good but not in the games industry because it's the games industry and it's only entertainment critique.
By this paragraph you were suggesting it is actually great journalism, just not here "because games".
Ask any 'real journalist' how far they get by attacking their interviewees.
Reposting from the other thread:
Walker's interview is confrontational, sensational, relentless and uncomfortable, but absolutely necessary.
Molyneux and co. have taken a huge sum from backers and have not produced what was promised, and there are huge questions about the project, why this has happened and where things go next. Coupled with reports and speculation about Godus being abandoned and another project in the offing, and the story of the Curiousity winner, you have a situation where - finally - some direct, aggressive questioning is required, and while the opening question is shocking, I think it needs to be: these are questions that backers and the general gaming audience are asking - is he a pathological liar? Did he know how this was going to go? Were they misled all along? - and they need someone in the press to ask them.
If Godus had been snapped up by a publisher before the Kickstarter campaign and Molyneux had spent their money developing the game to the stage it's at now, I don't think you'd see the same response from the community, or the same interview from RPS. The kind of direct relationship with your audience fostered by platforms like Kickstarter comes with a catch: you take the money straight from people based on trust, so when you violate that trust, or are perceived to be violating it, they will demand direct accountability. Loudly, and rudely, if need be.
Kudos to John Walker, and kudos to Peter Molyneux for continuing with the interview and seeing it through. I hope it can lead to something better for Molyneux, Godus and all involved, but the defensive and evasive tone from Molyneux and the lack of self-awareness suggests it won't.
Jesus man.
This industry, if you don't sell yourself before you make a product, you will never make it in the first place. It's called a pitch. It happens with movies as well. A lot of bad movies have been made. No body wants to make bad movies.
For kickstarted projects, he might owe some folks who got promised a certain amount of things a few things.
But shit happens.
Fucking deal with it. He's doing this for consumers. For you. Sometimes shit doesn't work out.
And you speak for every single backer?I'm a backer of Godus and I never asked for some guy to go all internet revenge fantasy on Molyneux because the game didn't turn out great.
Think about what you are asking for a second. You think that as a customer, you should care about what developers prefer when it comes to interviews?
I'm sorry, I'm not sure what we're talking about any more.
Are you being serious right now? He practically invented an entire genre of game (god games) with Populous. If he'd done nothing else since he'd still be an iconic figure.Such as? What meaningful thing has molyneux done for the industry at all?
Agreed!Me neither, hahaha!
Lets agree on, there are still awesome games out there, but the industry as a whole could do some improvements?
whatsup with the link in OP?
"http://api.viglink.com/api/click?format=go&jsonp=vglnk_14238425934416&key=de2ccb8ca8943c06669720e0a267a9f6&libId=8a32b3e8-cd6d-4297-85ea-6cfec1813277&loc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.neogaf.com%2Fforum%2Fshowthread.php%3Ft%3D991418&v=1&out=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rockpapershotgun.com%2F2015%2F02%2F13%2Fpeter-molyneux-interview-godus-reputation-kickstarter%2F&ref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.neogaf.com%2Fforum%2Fforumdisplay.php%3Ff%3D2&title=The%20Trial%20Of%20Peter%20Molyneux%20by%20RockPaperShotgun%20-%20NeoGAF&txt=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rockpapershotgun.com%2F2015...n-kickstarter%2F"
some kind of phishing link?
More importantly they've tarnished themselves with the rest of the industry imo.
RPS: Yes, but you know that. Youve been working in the industry for over thirty years, you know how much money it costs to make a game and you put a specific amount
Peter Molyneux: No, I dont, I disagree John. I have no idea how much money it costs to make a game and anyone that tells you how much its going to cost to make a game which is completely a new experience is a fool or a genius.
RPS: But you have to have enough experience to know the basics of budgeting a videogame, youve been doing it for thirty years!
Peter Molyneux: No, I disagree. See this is where youre wrong. I think even Hollywood struggles. Lots of films go over budget. Ill give you an example, I had some repair works done to my house, they went over budget by 50%. I said exactly the same thing. Anything that involves creativity, you may think it should be a defined process, but its not. And the reason that its not a defined process is that the people who work on it arent robots, and you cant predict whether someone is going to be brilliant and you give them a piece of code to do and they do it in a day, or whether theyre going to take a month to do it, and thats the problem with creativity. Being creative is a very, very unpredictable force, and you try your best. You try your best to predict these things but very often you can be wrong. And I have been wrong. Every single project I have ever done, and people know this, every single project I have done, I have been wrong about the times. And Ive been very honest about that. And the only time I have absolutely stuck to my dates was on Fable 3 and I shouldnt have done that. I should have gone back and asked for more time.
RPS: I understand budgets can go
Peter Molyneux: Im running a business and god I wish to god that I could predict the time and I can assure you every single person has worked their ass off to try to make this game as quickly and effectively as they possibly can and everybody here is incredibly dedicated and still is. I mean, the Godus team were here at half past eight last night. We try as hard as we can to get things right the first time, to get a feature right the first time, we try to implement things that are going to be effective, but when youre creating something new its almost impossible, John. Heres the thing: this is what I truly believe. Making a computer game thats entertaining and thats incredible and thats amazing is almost impossible, its almost impossible to do.
Peter Molyneux: Well, I think if you talk to anyone, and this is the advice I have given to people about Kickstarter, is to not ask for too much. You cannot unfortunately ask for the actual amount you need. Because you dont really know. This is how I based my assumption of what money we needed. We had started implementing Godus, we were working on a prototype that was really going well. I thought, Oh, this looks pretty good. I asked everybody here, how long do you think well need to develop the game in full. We all agreed that nine months was about the right amount of time to complete the game. We did the due diligence on it. We asked ourselves if there were any technical questions and it all seemed to make sense. This wasnt me just plucking a date out of the air.
The reality came along when we chose our middleware, we had problems with the middleware. When we started implementing some of the features that were on paper, they just didnt work. Now I wish that every single idea you ever had when youre developing a game works first time, but they dont. When we first released Godus in May, to some of the pledgers, we had taken an approach to this thing called the timeline and it just didnt work. People were just not motivated by it. We went back to the drawing board on that. What Im trying to say without going through every sort of, every bad story about development, when youre creating something new, its like walking through a foggy forest. Youre never sure if youre taking the wrong route or the right route.
I know you can call on me, John, Oh youve got thirty years, surely you know what to do, but I would say that anybody who is creating something new and original and different, which Godus is, its almost impossible to ask for the right time, and in the end the amount of money that we have spent on making Godus is far, far exceeded what we got on Kickstarter. Far, far exceeded. Because you got to remember on Kickstarter, although we got £100k more than what we asked for, after Kickstarter take their cut, after paying VAT, you have to pay off after completing all the pledges, its far less than that. You do the maths, its that simple you can do this math, we had 22 people here. If you take the average salary for someone in the industry, which must be about £30k, thats 22 people, multiplied by £30k, divided by 12. You work out how many months Kickstarter money gives us.
We saw this coming, in around about March, end of March time. I knew by that time that the game was not going as it should have gone. I could have gone back to my pledges and asked for more money, but instead I went to a publisher and just signed up the mobile rights. Not the Steam rights, even though that would have made our life a lot easier to sign the Steam rights and we did have companies after us for the PC and the console rights. We ringfenced that and just did the mobile version and there were other reasons, but the money they gave us upfront far exceeded the money that we got off Kickstarter. And that was the business decision that you have to take, because you have to make these sacrifices both personally and professionally in the sake of making a great game.
Peter Molyneux: One thing, Godus will be one of the fastest games Ive ever done. If you go back and look at every single game Ive ever worked on, ever, other than Fable 3, theyve all taken longer than with the exception perhaps of the original Populous. Theyve all taken longer.
RPS: So why go to people who trust you and trust your reputation and ask them for half a million pounds and say youre going to finish the game in seven months, when you know youre not going to?
Peter Molyneux: Because I absolutely believe that and my team believe that. Thats what the creative process is.
RPS: How long should backers wait for you to deliver the game they paid for three years ago?
Peter Molyneux: I dont know. All I know is that there are people here that have been working on Godus, that we have worked on Godus for one hundred and twenty thousand man-hours. We have got three terabytes of documentary feature. Weve replied to 31,000 posts and tickets. Weve done 57 community videos. Do you know how many updates weve done on Steam?
RPS: I dont think anyone who paid for the game cares.
Peter Molyneux: How many updates have we done on Steam?
RPS: I dont think anyone who paid for the game cares. I think they want the game they paid for three years ago or their money back.
Peter Molyneux: Were trying as hard as we possibly can.
RPS: I dont think you are. Youve said yourself
Peter Molyneux: John, John, John
RPS: You said yourself, that you should not have gone and focused on the mobile version until the PC version was finished. This is all very disingenuous in light of you saying that.
Peter Molyneux: No, I actually said, I wish I hadnt focused on, I didnt say I shouldnt have done.
RPS: [Laughs]
RPS: But you said that the PC version doesnt have a publisher, but the publisher is the reason you had to take away the framework that allowed the multiplayer.
Peter Molyneux: Yeah, I know, but John, these things
RPS: No, Im asking you to explain
Peter Molyneux: Why do you Why dont you come here for a couple of days, and do your job, and see what goes on here?
RPS: Obviously thats
Peter Molyneux: Because what you must realise is that doing a game in todays world and a game thats live is a nightmare.
RPS: Just to clarify, five days ago Konrad wrote, From the minute I played the alpha, I could see the direction Godus was heading in and I didnt like it. It took half a year to develop contact with Peter personally before I was offered a design position, initially unpaid, and then another year working at 22cans to get a position there. So just to be clear he says that he played the alpha and didnt like it and then came to work for you guys.
RPS: No, but its frustrating. Lets go back to Bryan Henderson. The Eurogamer story revealed that you ignored him for nearly two years thats awful. And youve apologised, but how can that even have ever been a thing that happened?
Peter Molyneux: Youre right, John. Its wrong. Its one of those things where I thought someone else was handling it and they were. It was someone and these are excuses, its pointless me writing these excuses and I thought they were handling it. They left and I assumed incorrectly that they had handed their handling of Bryan off to someone else and they hadnt.
RPS: But it never crossed your mind to talk to him or anything like that? You were changing his life.
Peter Molyneux: Its terrible, its wrong, its bad of me, I shouldnt have, I should have checked on these things, but there is a million things to check on, John, and that one slipped through. There wasnt any intention not to use him, or not to incorporate him, but we needed the technology before doing and I am truly sorry and we are writing a letter of apology to him today.
RPS: OK, but only because Eurogamer chased after you.
Peter Molyneux: They, they, they actually did make me realise that I hadnt checked up on it, its true. I am a very flawed human being, as you are pointing out, and I totally accept that Im a flawed human being.
RPS: Everyones a flawed human being, thats not my point at all.
Peter Molyneux: And when there are thousands of things to check on, you try to rely on your team and this slipped through the net and, youre right, it shouldnt have done.
RPS: In 2012
Peter Molyneux: Why would I have ignored him? I mean, why did I do that? Its just incompetence.
RPS: OK. In Rezzed
Peter Molyneux: I mean, Im sure you are going to write, Peter Molyneuxs incompetent, and I am.
Peter Molyneux: I literally work sixteen hours a day. I literally work sixteen hours a day. I dont do that just to lie to people, I do it because I believe Im doing. I totally believe in what Im trying to make. Yeah, and you can rile the backers up and get them to ask for their money back and you can say, Oh, youve broken your promises, but Im still doing it. Im still working on it. Im still putting every ounce of my energy. Im still not going to my sons play because I had to work on Godus. Im still getting shouted at by my wife because Im not home. Do you know what time I got home last night? Two-thirty in the morning.
RPS: I dont
Peter Molyneux: Do you know what I was doing? I was dealing with the shit that all of this has come up, rather than working on Godus.
RPS: But
Peter Molyneux: Im someone, Im defined by what I do in this industry and I love it so much. And, you know, it emotionally hurts me to have someone like yourself be so angry with me and really all I want to do is make a great game. Thats all Ive ever wanted to do.
I've seen them be tough on games and developers before but never like this.Not familiar with RPS.
Do they get a lot of people to sit down and be subjected to this line of questioning normally?
RPS just shot themselves in the foot.
I dont know how much the rest of you know about industry culture (Im an expert), but honor and shame are huge parts of it. Its not like it is in political journalism where you can become successful by being an asshole. If you screw someone over in video games, you bring shame to yourself, and the only way to get rid of that shame is repentance.
What this means is the industry professionals, after hearing about this, are not going to want to give RPS any exposure to their latest games, nor permit any interviews. This is HUGE. You can laugh all you want, but RPS has alienated their entire source of news with this move.
RPS, publicly apologize and start kissing Molyneux's ass or you can kiss your business goodbye.
This is more the equivalent of a director being called a liar for a scene in the trial not being in the final cut of a movie than a politician being asked a tough question.
20 YEARS OF IT PETER. 20 FUCKING YEARS.
Is this post a parody I'm not sure?
I found it funny either way!
Ah I see.I was referring to "respecting" John Walker instead of Molyneux. It was in that context not in a "he can do whatever" meaning.
Of course a question like that is implying he is one. Are we taking everything literal now?
You don't ask someone if they are a pathological liar just out of curiosity. It's more of an accusation than a question.
Is this post a parody I'm not sure?
I found it funny either way!
Is this post a parody I'm not sure?
I found it funny either way!
RPS just shot themselves in the foot.
I dont know how much the rest of you know about industry culture (Im an expert), but honor and shame are huge parts of it. Its not like it is in political journalism where you can become successful by being an asshole. If you screw someone over in video games, you bring shame to yourself, and the only way to get rid of that shame is repentance.
What this means is the industry professionals, after hearing about this, are not going to want to give RPS any exposure to their latest games, nor permit any interviews. This is HUGE. You can laugh all you want, but RPS has alienated their entire source of news with this move.
RPS, publicly apologize and start kissing Molyneux's ass or you can kiss your business goodbye.
I can't believe that people respect someone that calls a developer a liar and a scam artist for under-delivering on games he made and treats him like the scum of the earth because of it.
The truth is that, even with all the promises, Molyneux created things more meaningful and important to the industry than anything John Walker has ever done. Because calling someone a liar and using third grade rhetorics is easier to do than anything Molyneux has ever done.
Are you being serious right now? He practically invented an entire genre of game (god games) with Populous. If he'd done nothing else since he'd still be an iconic figure.
Agreed!
Peter Molyneux: Well, I think if you talk to anyone, and this is the advice I have given to people about Kickstarter, is to not ask for too much.
RPS: You asked for less money on Kickstarter than you knew you were going to need because you didnt want to ask for too much money.
Peter Molyneux: No, I didnt say that.
I don't agree.
Keep in mind, Peter Molyneux is not just over selling his games. It isn't that his games come up short. He has been doing that for years and we all laugh and move on. Even when he directly lies about a game, such as Fable Journey not being on rails, we still have given him a pass. We've accepted that. However he has started directly screwing with people. Taking money via kickstarter and not delivering backer rewards, holding a contest to meet with someone and change their lives and only to not met with them and giving them a tshirt. This is another level. This didn't call for another soft ball interview.
RPS just shot themselves in the foot.
I don’t know how much the rest of you know about industry culture (I’m an expert), but honor and shame are huge parts of it. It’s not like it is in political journalism where you can become successful by being an asshole. If you screw someone over in video games, you bring shame to yourself, and the only way to get rid of that shame is repentance.
What this means is the industry professionals, after hearing about this, are not going to want to give RPS any exposure to their latest games, nor permit any interviews. This is HUGE. You can laugh all you want, but RPS has alienated their entire source of news with this move.
RPS, publicly apologize and start kissing Molyneux's ass or you can kiss your business goodbye.
Is this post a parody I'm not sure?
I found it funny either way!
Peter Molyneux: Let me just ask you one question. Do you think from the line of questioning youre giving me, that this industry would be better without me?
RPS: I think the industry would be better without your lying a lot.
Peter Molyneux: I dont think I lie.
This will probably hurt RPS in the long run. PR people will just avoid them when setting up interviews. If they were #1 gaming site it would be different but unfortunately not the case.
bamYou gotta love how after so many years of complaining about corporate ass-kissing in journalism, it turns out we like it that way.
This has less in common with Paxman and more in common with one of those talk radio hosts who barely let their interviewee get a word in edgeways because they aren't really interested in what they have to say, rather they just want to make themselves look like champions of truth and justice.
I read that interview and just imagined it in John Gaunt's voice.
You can be tough and assertive without being an arsehole.
Such as? What meaningful thing has molyneux done for the industry at all? Besides lying and not getting called out by it by journalists ever in his career.
I don't agree.
Keep in mind, Peter Molyneux is not just over selling his games. It isn't that his games come up short. He has been doing that for years and we all laugh and move on. Even when he directly lies about a game, such as Fable Journey not being on rails, we still have given him a pass.
RPS: My first question wasnt, Are you a Machiavellian and spiteful liar, it was Are you a pathological liar? It was, do you say stuff that isnt true without meaning to?
Peter Molyneux: Like anybody that is in the business of creating something that doesnt exist, I say things that I believe is true, that very often dont come true and sometimes do come true.