Molyneux: Industry must find new ways to work

One of the industry's most enduring game designers, Microsoft Game Studio's Peter Molyneux, has told GamesIndustry.biz that the current standard process for creating triple-A console games "has to change".

Speaking in an interview at this year's Develop conference in Brighton, UK, Molyneux - whose Lionhead team is currently hard at work finishing off Fable III in time for release later this year - explained that developers need to work in different ways if good quality games can continue to be delivered to consumers.

Referring to Fable III, he revealed that work on the project was currently "very, very tough," primarily because of the scope of the game.

"Because it is part-simulation, part-roleplaying game, part-action-adventure... it's got more voice acting, a bigger cast, more musical scores, a bigger, freer world - more so than any other game in the whole of Microsoft Game Studios' portfolio, full stop," he said.

"It's got more bugs, more active bugs, than any game that MGS has ever had in its history - and the team of over 100 people are working insanely long hours, and they're coming down. That's the way it is."

But that situation is common with many of the top game experiences out there - an unhealthy situation that isn't sustainable.

"Here's the issue which I hate, Phil - again, we're in the same position as many, many other developers, if you read the post mortems of Uncharted 2 or any game, they all say the same. We find our game so late on in the process, that it's very hard to pull it all together - and that has to change.

"We cannot do this - we can't keep turning up this late. A film analogy is me turning up with a camera on set and saying: 'Okay, I'm not sure what the story is, but let's turn the camera on anyway.'

"We've got to stop doing this, because one, it's too expensive, and two, our consumers, the people that play our games, are too demanding of the quality we have to deliver. We just have to work on a different way - it's got to be the case."

Quite how the industry finds new ways to work is unclear, given the sheer amount of data and technology that goes into each big retail product - but while the industry has mostly moved away from the practice of releasing a game before it's finished, simply waiting ever-longer or drafting in ever-more people also isn't the answer, says Molyneux.

"Well, it's not. It's very difficult - the huge supertanker that is the launch platform is very hard to switch off once you get past a certain point. You've got to book your TV adverts, your creatives have to get together and do your advertising campaign - that happens way, way before you know whether you're really going to get to the right quality bar.

"And again - I just feel that the way that we developed Fable I and Fable II - and a lot of our games - all of our tech reaches up to a certain line when we can actually play the game... and that line seems to be so late on, it's just frightening."

The full interview with Peter Molyneux will be published on GamesIndustry.biz in due course.