Every other week there is something in PC gaming that makes me scratch my head and ask stupid questions. Usually these questions are answered to my satisfaction so, to not look like an idiot, I don’t post stupid questions here on the blog. The last month has been nothing BUT stupid questions, personal and professional, so apologies for the silence.

But this week PC gaming UberBlog Rock, Paper, Shotgun published an interview with Peter Molyneux where the sub-lede is that he cried in the interview because he cares so much. And that is the one thing in the interview that did not interest me at all.

Let’s get one thing out of the way before you read the rest of this. If I could be trusted with a strategy game Hall of Fame, Peter Molyneux would have a shot at a first ballot entry. In the interview he speaks of playing Populous multiplayer, and how it sparks conversation with the GODUS development team – Populous was the multiplayer game of choice among many of my friends in college, and this was before there was any internet in the dorms, so multiplayer meant schlepping computers from one room to another and stringing cables. Populous was not simply ahead of its time – to play it properly demanded the future. Then you throw in Dungeon Keeper and, to a lesser extent, Black & White (a game punished more for Molyneux’s enthusiasm than its own sins, which would be a recurring pattern) and you recognize that for a time, Peter Molyneux was not the airy, talky dreamer so well parodied on Twitter – he made interesting, captivating and often brilliant games.

I’ve only met Molyneux once, and it was an E3 Fable II gathering at which I was one of dozens of press, but it proved impossible to not be captivated by his enthusiasm for the game, his excitement for the possibilities, etc. This was the Molyneux we had expected when we arrived to that session and the one now so firmly ingrained in the popular gaming consciousness – a man so in love with what gaming might be able to do that he sometimes loses track of what he is saying or promising. It’s been said that he has a childlike approach to what games can do, but the overpromising that brought him to tears in the RPS discussion with Nathan Grayson is almost childish – games can do anything, we just need to believe in them and ask and will other people into accepting our imagination.

But, for me, the most striking thing about the interview was how narrow Molyneux’s focus has become. It’s apparent in a lot of references to how no one else has picked up where Populous or Dungeon Keeper left off, etc, but a couple of sentences seem to capture the feel of the entire thing. [Read more →]