Peter Molyneux Leaves Lionhead and MS

[Telefrog]

Molyneux is exiting both his position as the leader of Lionhead and his role as the creative head of Microsoft Studios Europe, which primarily consisted of overseeing Lionhead and Rare. Lionhead will be run by studio co-founder Mark Webley. Microsoft is not immediately naming a new head of the European studios.

Microsoft wished Molyneux well, portraying the split as amicable and driven by the game creator.

Countdown until Lionhead gets absorbed into Rare?

[KevinC]

22 cans is sort of an apt name for the garbage he produces.

[Omniscia]

How long until somebody starts a rival studio, 20 Toucans?

[SuperAdventurer]

Really amazing and brave.

[Giaddon]

How long until somebody starts a rival studio, 20 Toucans?

*Applause*

[Dan_Theman]

Okay, but ... 22 Cans? I hope to someday hear the story behind that name. Considering it's Molyneux, I'm guessing we will .. at length ;)

[SuperAdventurer]

Company has 11 female employees.

[intruder]

Hopefully the name stands for 22 whacky game concepts canned by Microsoft.
Maybe Peter can work on them now and surprise us in a good way!

[BleedTheFreak]

How long until somebody starts a rival studio, 20 Toucans?

Brilliant.

[Angrycoder]

I used to love the stuff Bullfrog put out. Populous, Magic Carpet, & Dungeon Keeper were some of my favorite games. I was excited when Molyneux left to form Lionhead. Seeing how I haven't enjoyed a single game they have put out, I wonder who really was behind the magic at Bullfrog.

[Pogue Mahone]

I wonder if he was just tired of making Kinect games.

[Telefrog]

I wonder if he was just tired of making Kinect games.

Maybe.

I am just sick to death of having my hand clamped to this controller – of having to be forced to use my thumb in a certain way, and having my other hand clamped to the other side of the controller, and having games say ‘No, you will do it this way, and if you don’t do it this way then we will punish you.'

Sure enough, controllers are great, they give us exactly what we want, but that is so tedious and boring now. Kinect offers a feeling of discovery during play that controllers no longer offer. It’s time for a change.

Okay, core gamers are going to complain: ‘I want my thumb strapped to that controller’. But if we can give them a delightful experience, and if we can show them what it’s like to discover the gameplay again, I hope it’s going to be worth all the pain that it’s been to do it.

[CLWheeljack]

Surely we know by now never to trust anything Molyneux says.

[FieryBalrog]

Oh yeah. Time to free our thumbs and our minds from the controller. Incoming party minigames where you waggle your arms around.

FREE YOUR THUMBS (and mind).

[Midnight Son]

I demand hype and unfulfilled promises immediately!

[Ginger Yellow]

Presumably there will actually only be 21 cans. But there'll be a dog!

[SuperAdventurer]

Finally he is free to reach for his great dream of a game that plays itself, no user interaction required. Fable 2 came close enough for me but I still had to mash buttons occasionally.

[Telefrog]

Hmm. Sounds like something is afoot at Lionhead.

The co-founders of Big Blue Box and creators of the Fable franchise have formed a new development studio, Another Place Productions.

Dene and Simon Carter sold Big Blue Box to Lionhead and Microsoft, and led the award-winning Xbox franchise to more than 12 million sales.

The pair left Lionhead last year, and are now joined in the new venture by former Fable art director John McCormack, Lionhead's technical director Guillaume Portes and the studios' executive producer Jeremie Texier.

[TurinTur]

So an exodus in Lionhead, their ex-employees forming two studios, Another Place and 22 cans.

Hey do you remember my post the other day about the new Fable saying Lionhead was falling apart? :P

[Monsieur Eek!]

Maybe Microsoft wanted them to just make Fable games into perpetuity. Part of the rationale for Naughty Dog doing The Last of Us and presumably the company's history of jumping to a new franchise every three games or so was to keep their creative talent from getting restless.

[Relayer71]

Company has 11 female employees.

Awesome.

[Mark Asher]

Company has 11 female employees.

Wait, I always thought a "nice little can" referred to a woman's backside? Have I been wrong all these years?

[Mark Asher]

So what's Molyneux done lately? Black and White, The Movies, Fable? Anything else?

My guess is their employment contracts were up and forming a new studio is just a way of owning the IP again.

[Relayer71]

Wait, I always thought a "nice little can" referred to a woman's backside? Have I been wrong all these years?

Oh sure, there are birth defects, my aunt Lucy had a nipple on her knee, but the arrow sheared it right off.

[arctangent]

Wait, I always thought a "nice little can" referred to a woman's backside? Have I been wrong all these years?

I believe the rule is one can, two tatas.

[Timex]

Can is appropriate for either.

The specific meaning can be inferred from the plurality of the term when used in context. Can vs. Cans.

[DKDArtagnan]

He never made games - he made toys.

What's interesting, to me anyway, is that Lionhead/Bullfrog games were always technically AMAZING - and Molyneux used to have some brilliant and innovative notions. But he just didn't understand game design. It's like all his games were cooked up in 30 minutes of "what would be really cool" brainstorms - and then straight to development - with design being almost an afterthought.

My personal favorite Bullfrog game was Syndicate - and it's also the only game that wasn't basically a toy first and game second. Molyneux wasn't the lead on that one - so it figures.

You don't play a Molyneux game. You play WITH it.

[amandachen]

Cliffski talking about Molyneux and that Movies game:

actually the game was 90% sim for the first year and a half of its development. Then peter got excited at a press conference and claimed that you could make whole movies, rather than the automatically put together 2 or 3 clip trailers that the game was designed around. That meant trashing 90% of the code for the game, starting again, and basically meaning the game took way too long and no doubt cost too much.
Cool huh?

[Theodore Rex DX]

How long until somebody starts a rival studio, 20 Toucans?

Peter Molydeaux, you know what to do.

[Pogue Mahone]

Hello I am Peter Molybdenum and I hope you will buy games made at my company Twenty Toques And ... haven't thought past that but it'll be awesome!