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In One and One, Game|Life asks a member of the gaming industry two questions: one about gaming, and one about something completely random. *
Peter Molyneux is an outspoken designer who is perhaps best known for his work on god games such as Populous, Black & White, and Dungeon Keeper. His current project is the action-RPG Fable 2.
There is an unspoken agreement between game maker and game player: If the player is paying for the game, he or she can expect a fun experience and a game that works well. When, if ever, does that agreement end?
Molyneux: This is a very tricky question because as the developer you will always get the blame. To give you an idea of what we go through, at the moment I'm working on game called Fable 2. In this game you are able to earn money doing jobs as well as going out adventuring and being a hero. Players are free in Fable 2 to spend as much time as they like making money.
So there is the potential to amass huge fortunes of billions of gold over many hundreds of hours. But players would feel very aggrieved if they had worked hard to accumulate a massive fortune only to find there were not enough things in the world for them to spend it on.**
So we had to enable players to be able to anything they wanted within the game so that's clothes, weapons, furniture for their homes, houses, shops -- indeed, any structure from caverns to castles are buyable within Fable 2.
So in my opinion the contract never expires, players can never be too greedy because there is a philosophy which says if a player is playing your game, then they are talking about your game and them talking about your game will encourage other players to go out and buy your game -- so the customer is always right.
What was your favorite book as a child, and why?
The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton. Why I liked it is every time you climbed the tree, there was a different land for you to explore. There's a land where you can eat everything, a land filled with nursery rhyme characters. I must've been about six or seven at the time, but I can still remember the first time I read about Topsy-Turvy Land.
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