Molyneux on RPG Evolution: Translated Into Old-School Gamer English

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 9, 2010

The contention that mainstream games are “evolving” immediately raises my hackles. Not that I’m against change and true improvements – not at all – but contending that the newest games are the product of evolution in gaming from past efforts  is about like saying reality shows are a product of evolution in performance media  from Shakespeare. Yeah, sure, they certainly make more money and draw bigger audience than Shakespeare would have ever dreamed, but is that evolution?

No, I’m not saying old classic games were Shakespeare. But there’s a lot of marketing time and money being spent to convince us all that the direction the mainstream biz is taking us is The One True Way. In spite of evidence to the contrary. Call me a nutcase, but I tend to think more variety, experimentation, and open-mindedness is the key to any real evolution.  I have the bizarre belief that the existence of Mass Effect 2 doesn’t preclude my enjoyment of Eschalon: Book 2.

So my comment on Twitter was that this interview with Peter Molyneux brought up some good points, but it made me feel kinda greasy afterwords. I couldn’t figure out why, other than that “evolution” thing, until I ran the interview through a Marketingspeak-to-English translator. Tuned to the snarky old-school gamer dialect. Here are the results. Errors are the fault of the translator, not me. Really:

Gamasutra: Not only is Fable “evolving,” but we’re seeing the RPG genre as a whole changing.

Molyneux: It is, it really is. We feel like the entire industry’ s kind of evolving, itself. Assuming a definition of “evolving” meaning “chasing the most profitable fad.”

Suddenly, there’s a lot of money in social gaming, and we really want to make the kind of money that Zynga is making. The new motion controllers are great gimmicks that help people forget that they are mostly playing the same re-processed games that they’ve been playing for the last decade. I think that’s all evolution. And since much of the gaming media isn’t old enough to remember anything before the Playstation 2 anymore, they aren’t complaining about lack of innovation anymore. As far as they know, this is the way it’s always been!

You know, if you don’t suck up to the lowest-common denominator as much as possible, you won’t be able to sell your game in quantities that justify these gigantic development budgets that are needed to make lots of bloom effects and to pay my bar tab. And then you die.

So we need to push ourselves and change the RPG genre and the industry. Just like eating a fine meal at a fancy restaurant, it’ll be fascinating to see what comes out the other side.

Gamasutra: So is this change because of the kewl technology in today’s hardware?

Molyneux: I think everyone is beginning to understand that it’s not about fancy graphics or better gameplay – it’s about getting players to fork over three times as much dough online as they’d ever pay for a game by itself. With out last two games, we knocked ourselves out trying to figure out how to get every XBox 360 owner in the world to buy the game twice to justify our production costs, but now we’ve hit on the secret. Make ’em keep paying for the game they are already playing!

We’re calling this a “digital relationship.” You pay us money, and we’ll have a relationship with you. Yes, I know, there’s another word for people who do that kind of thing, but we’re calling it a “digital relationship.” The best part is that we don’t even have to make it all ourselves – we can let players create the content for each other, and pay us for the privilege!

This is all Evolution. Games aren’t even going to resemble games in a few years. We’re turning these consoles into Skinner Boxes that better allow us to treat our customers as wallets with legs.

Gamasutra: You are talking about things that sound complicated. Isn’t your goal to dumb down games more so they insult everybody’s intelligence?

Molyneux: Well, yeah. So we’re making room for all this new stuff by getting rid of complicated things like “gameplay” and control schemes. It’s all about getting people into the virtual shop to spend more money. They already know how to do that, at least.

Gamasutra: Oh, yeah, learning how to play a new game really sucks. Remember when we had to do that, back before all games were identical?

Molyneux: Totally! We’re working on a control scheme that’s pretty much, “Push button to do things. Push button faster to do things more quickly.” Anybody with a pulse can do that, although we’ll dumb it down more if that proves too complicated for the imbeciles who play our games.

Gamasutra: Good, because the industry has always assumed that “complexity equals depth.”

Molyneux: Hah! I spent a ridiculous number of years making classic games that have proven the test of time and garnered tons of praise for their depth and awesomeness. And now I finally realized that there’s not nearly as much money in making those games as the ones like this that basically amount to pushing a feeder bar over and over again. Silly me!

Gamasutra: This seems to be the direction a lot of mainstream games are taking right now.

Molyneux:  They all stole the idea from me – from my Fable games. But it’s Evolution!

Gamasutra: I love the changes that dumbed-down Final Fantasy XIII that fans and many critics are complaining about. Did you do the same thing?

Molyneux: Maybe. I used to love the old Final Fantasy games, but I hate them all now. I’ve evolved. I haven’t played the new one, though, so I couldn’t possibly be stealing any ideas from it.

Gamasutra: It’s extremely simplified. You can pretty much play it in your sleep. It’s all very Evolved, you see. Except the turn-based combat. Turn-based is not on the approved Evolution list. But they make up for it by doling out the gameplay at a lethargic rate.

Molyneux: Oh, you know, that’s interesting. That reminds me of World of Warcraft. Those guys make craploads of money, too, did you know that? I want to make craploads of money like them.  But in World of Warcraft, I discovered that gameplay didn’t matter – it’s all about that feeder bar of rewards.  That inspired me.

Gamasutra: You said, “I don’t care how tedious this is; I just want the reward.” Chris Hecker spoke about the fact that, that if we keep giving rewards for actually tedious gameplay, we’re going to create a situation where gamers expect rewards and slog through tedium to get to them.

Molyneux: Yeah. Grinding is good, but you have to disguise it so people won’t realize they are totally wasting their time with your game.

Gamasutra: Didja know that sometimes RPG fans like different things at different times? And, like, we RPG fans like to explore and see new stuff while we’re grinding, just to mix things up.

Molyneaux: Duh.

But, you know, we’ve just barely figured all that out. It’s New and Evolved. Back in the old days nobody understood those things. Really!

Gamasutra: It’s like … you need some dull parts to make the action more exciting. Like how good can’t exist without evil and stuff.

Molyneux:  Did I mention we have a really evil bad guy in Fable III? No shades of gray! But then we have a twist at the end. It’s cool. It’s Art.

Gamasutra: You talked about how dumbing down games makes you sound more commercial.

Molyneaux: Duh.

I want to sell more games. I want to make it easier for anybody to play ’em so they’ll buy more of ’em. What’s wrong with that?

Gamasutra: I think people have a knee-jerk negative reaction to commercial impetus.

Molyneux: People are stupid that way.

Gamasutra: Probably because much of the time being more commercial means pandering to the lowest common denominator and in so doing scrub out the very things that made games cool and unique and loved by gamers in the first place. But, uh…. we’re totally not doing that as an industy as we Evolve. No way.

Molyneux: Oh. Right. We’re totally not doing that. Because we’re Creative and stuff.

Gamasutra: Yeah. Creative is cool.

Molyneux: Um, yeah. We’re not totally governed by market research and trend following. That would suck, right? Heh. Heh.

Filed Under: Biz, Interviews, Mainstream Games - Comments: 8 Comments to Read



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