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I've read and reread the interview now, both the RPS and Guardian ones in both order of publication and chronological order. And... Well, it's all a little ugly, really, isn't it? There's no denying Molyneux had it coming, and it's right for Walker to hold him to account, but I feel uncomfortable with the particular phrasing of some questions and what comes across as often deliberately pushing someone to the absolute limits of their endurance to the point where the subsequent Guardian interview portrays a man that seems dangerously borderline on some kind of breakdown. I'm not making excuses for Molyneux - at the end of day it's about time someone took him to account for ten years of broken promises - but there's something ugly about kicking off with an accusation of mental illness and then pushing, and pushing and pushing in what, at times, felt almost like Walker was relishing every moment. At times, it feels a little like entrapment, seizing on ever comment, constant interjecting, little remarks like "I think the industry would better if you didnt lie so much", which feel deliberately engineered to throw the guy so severely off course that he comes across as some bumbling fool. And maybe he IS a fool, in fact at the most charitable end of the spectrum he could only be described as ridiculously out of his depth - but I can't help but think there could have been a slightly more tactful way to ask the same questions. Part of me is curious to see the supposed third interview that was conducted with another site; but at the same time, I think that at this point it's all become something of a witch trial. Edited by spamdangled at 01:09:25 14-02-2015 Edited by spamdangled at 03:25:46 14-02-2015 |
Peter Molyneux is a Cupcake • Page 10
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spamdangled 31,803 posts
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Dirtbox 92,600 posts
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spamdangled 31,803 posts
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Registered 13 years ago@H1ggyLTD
"systematic fraudulent activity"
That's taking it slightly too far, in my mind.
And as far as his reluctance to spend his own money, he self-funds the office space, the bills, the furniture, etc. Office space doesn't come cheap, never mind all the desks, computers, etc. He paid for all that out of his own pocket, and it's worth pointing out that he's essentially run the company as a not-for-profit. He's been pretty consistent that every penny raised has gone into development of the game and not towards things like bonuses or lining his pockets, and I've not seen any evidence to contradict that, even from Konrad - who I'm sure Molyneux probably regrets hiring at this point, seeing as it was his blog post that kickstarted this whole mess this week.
I'm not denying that he's fucked himself and his reputation beyond repair; but as one commenter on RPS put it, the Walker interview did little to shed new light on matters, while Wesley's interview with Bryan Henderson on EG genuinely gave new insight into the whole sorry saga.
There's shedding new light on something, and kicking sonmeone when they're down. I think Walker did what he set out to, and it's good to see Molyneux finally confronted with some hard questions; I just think it could have been done in such way that didn't feel like John Walker relished every second of it, from difficult beginning to the final, depressing end. At a couple of points I just had to walk away and take a break from the overwhelmingly negative, bordering on bullying in my mind, line of questioning.
Edited by spamdangled at 02:19:27 14-02-2015 -
Telepathic.Geometry 12,422 posts
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Registered 15 years agoI have hated listening to Peter Molyneux's bullshit for so many years now, so I have to admit that although I don't want to see a man personally destroyed, it IS about time he is called to task for all of his horseshit.
And for the record, I think that because he is a likable and personable guy, people want to see what I assume is technically fraud/racketeering as just an over-enthusiastic goof.
I mean, Molyneux is basically a conman right? He makes promises that he can not possibly keep in order to part investors/gamers/backers/consumers from their money. And he's made millions this way.
A long time ago, he was a legendary game developer, so as gamers I think we all want to give him a pass, but the ugly truth is that now he's just a shyster. -
spamdangled 31,803 posts
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Registered 13 years ago@dirtysteve
The weirdest thing is seeing it coming from Walker, who is a self-confessed Molyneux fan. It's like his passion and frustration as a fan often conflicted with his professional need to maintain distance from his subject, and I'm not convinced he succeecded in this case.
Remarks like "I think the the industry would better off without you lying a lot" seems unnecessarily antagonistic and designed to get a rise, the sort of pointless baiting which John himself loves to criticise when dealing with things like that incident around the COD bloke being threatened, or indeed the whole shit surrounding Gmergate (for the record, I am 100% NOT a supporter of those nutters). Which Molyneux - and you get a clear sense of his despair and frustration - did his utmost to weather, for better or worse.
The result was the subsequent interview with The Guardian, which read like the guy was about to top himself.
Molyneux's rep and career is in tatters, and he undoubtedly has noone to blame for that but himself; but dont kick a man when he's down. No-one benefits from public humiliation disguised as hard-hitting journalism or an attempt to channel the spirit of Jeremy Paxman. And while I was interesting to see the man confronted, it was just... well, what did we genuinely learn from it? Anything? At worst we saw a guy who is pathologically incapable of resisting the temptation to hype his own shit and makes promises he can't keep. At best, we saw someone whose passion for the industry far outweighs any practical business sense. Neither interpretation will be any kind of revelation to people who long ago made their mind up about him. So what did it accomplish, honestly?
The more I re-read it, the more uncomfortable I feel.
For the record, I've met and spoken to Molyneux a couple of times in person (he's norotoriously shite at replying to emails, by his own admission). Both times left me thinking that he was not only overly critical of his own accomplishments - he has effectively disowned The Movies to the point of pretending like it never happened - but he honestly does come across as someone who is utterly passionate about the medium. I find it hard to believe he's some machivellian genius.
It's far easier to accept the mundane truth - he's an INCREDIBLY naive bloke who let his mouth run away with him FAR too many times, a bloke who continuallly demonstrates that he is in desperate need of a good PR rep who can keep him in line, but a guy who arguably created an entire genre, who has found himself thrust into a situation where he has to adjust to an entirely new - and corportate - way of doing almost everything after c;pse tp 4 decades in the industry after making his name before gaming was dominated by massive glitzy PR events and multi billion ad campaigns, and finds his every comment transformed into a headline in some form or another. I don't think he ever wanted that level of "fame", or "notoriety" or whatever you want to call it. I think he just honestly wants to get on with making stuff.
(admittedly edited extensively because I kept thinking of stuff to add)
(yes, it has lots of run-on sentences. It's past 4am so I dont care)
Edited by spamdangled at 04:13:45 14-02-2015 -
twelveways 7,131 posts
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Registered 15 years agoI forgot he did the Movies, I thought that was Will Wright. -
spamdangled 31,803 posts
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Registered 13 years agotwelveways wrote:
The Movies was great, and many people hold it up as one of the games that Molyneux actually delivered on in the last decade.
I forgot he did the Movies, I thought that was Will Wright.
But he hates it. He says it focuses too much on actors' egos. That its movie making tools weren't flexible enough to deliver on his dream of what he describes as, as best as I can describe it, no less than the sort of customization afforded by top-end rendering software like what's used by Pixar (there's the old mind writing cheques the tech can't cash thing, I guess).
I first noticed it at EGX a few years ago when we was discussing Curiosity and his career, and utterly omitted The Movies despite spending a disproportionate amount of time complaning about how he fucked up Powermonger with the pigeon system (anyone remember that talk?)
I remember thinking "How can you spend so much time discussing a game no-one outside of the older gaming generation has heard of, while ignoring a game that gave players the chance to craft their own stories and deal with hollywood prima donnas, and by all accounts is one of the best things you delivered in a decade?"
But that's Molyneux for you. He's a neurotic mess of contradictions and insecurities and egos and everything elese. It's hard to tell sometimes where the neuroses end and the genius begins.
Then I got the chance to interview him about why he ignored The Movies, and he just went on and on about how much he hated it. It was weird. He was pretty eager to discuss what happened to BC though. So it wasn't a complete loss. But my God he rambles so much he makes me look concise. You can't stop him once he's latched on to something.
Edited by spamdangled at 05:30:01 14-02-2015
Edited by spamdangled at 05:33:33 14-02-2015 -
twelveways 7,131 posts
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Registered 15 years agoMovies was great but it did get a bit Sims-y (which is why I subconsciously credit Will Wright with it I guess).
I don't care that most of his games fail to live up to the hype that he creates because I really believe that he did do everything possible to create that vision.
Godus was a complete fuck up though. He should be ashamed and he should apologise and, if he really can't deliver, then he should refund people, if only to get back a few shreds of credibility.
I don't think he should leave the industry though, I think it will be a much poorer and blander place without him. -
Sorry if it's already been said, but there's some really good comments on the front page article by Stanton (I know! Non-retarded comments...who knew?), the most pertinent of which to me at least, is the one that asks if RPS and others will dare to be so aggressive to big publishers who they usually try and cosy up to.
Molyneux did have it coming, I'm afraid. The feeding frenzy however, is just that...frenzied. -
JoelStinty 9,530 posts
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Registered 8 years agodirtysteve wrote:
it is certainly a difficult question. I think it was warranted. I mean, Peter's reputation in the industry as that of a pathological liar - he is a dreamer, and due to the nature of his character, i think he over sells things. If you asked it in a different way, i.e what do you think about criticism of you that you are maybe untruthful? It changes the whole tone of the interview, peter can reply by going , well everyone is a critic aren't they?
@spamdangled Yeah, the start of that interview,
Do you think that you’re a pathological liar?
is pushing it.
Normally RPS is a hugbox, it seems they took Molyneaux's current woes as a greenlight to go buck-ape on him.
No doubt his profile has never been so tarnished, but it was still weird ot see the 'compassionate' RPS go for the throat like that.
I think it was needed for the interview to work, other wise it comes across as a standard PR chat. Walker gave him no room to move.
It certainly uncomfortable yeah, but.. i dunno! -
Not-a-reviewer 7,686 posts
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Registered 7 years agospamdangled wrote:
Income from the game funds the office, not him. He put in the initial capital, whatever profits are left after all the costs are/will be his. He hasn't set it up as some magical charity that you seem to be describing, it's a business that'll either be successful or it won't.
And as far as his reluctance to spend his own money, he self-funds the office space, the bills, the furniture, etc. Office space doesn't come cheap, never mind all the desks, computers, etc. He paid for all that out of his own pocket, and it's worth pointing out that he's essentially run the company as a not-for-profit. He's been pretty consistent that every penny raised has gone into development of the game and not towards things like bonuses or lining his pockets, and I've not seen any evidence to contradict that, even from Konrad - who I'm sure Molyneux probably regrets hiring at this point, seeing as it was his blog post that kickstarted this whole mess this week.
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spamdangled 31,803 posts
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Registered 13 years ago@reviewer
Oh I totally agree, business is business; but I read comments sometimes that paints it like he hasn't spent a dime of his own money on 22cans and Godus and all that. And however much Godus really generates in revenue (I doubt we'll ever know, as he doesn't have to make the company accounts public), a good chunk of that will be going on paying the wages of his workers and keeping the lights on.
It's not like 22cans is some kind of luxurious office space; you see it in pictures and its just a bog standard, no-frills office that if anything looks too cramped for purpose.
Edited by spamdangled at 11:15:12 14-02-2015 -
Youthist 14,724 posts
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Registered 16 years agoHilarious reading all this overblown bollocks being pushed on here about PM.
Dev project goes tits up and some people that backed it are pissed off. That's it.
Big fucking deal. It happens. How dumb must they be to not realise there is risk in complex SW development?
Stop whining and suck it up. No one cares. -
Rhaegyr 5,499 posts
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Registered 10 years agoTough interview, but some of those questions had to be asked.
My issue is why are some of the things PM's getting roasted for (missing features, missing pledge rewards etc.) not levelled at other game devs in interviews like Braben (missing features) or the Proteus team (missing pledge rewards). Can't see RPS using this tone with MS, EA et al either.
Is it simply that PM's accumulated too many mistakes?
Edited by Rhaegyr at 11:29:48 14-02-2015 -
Youthist 14,724 posts
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Registered 16 years agoApart from the fools. -
Not-a-reviewer 7,686 posts
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Registered 7 years agoYouthist wrote:
Project hasn't gone tits up.
Hilarious reading all this overblown bollocks being pushed on here about PM.
Dev project goes tits up and some people that backed it are pissed off. That's it.
Big fucking deal. It happens. How dumb must they be to not realise there is risk in complex SW development?
Stop whining and suck it up. No one cares. -
Youthist 14,724 posts
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Registered 16 years agoYeah? Lol course it hasn't. -
spamdangled wrote:
It reads to me like Walker was quite upset at the start of that interview. The biggest fanboys can be the most spurned at times, meaning he might ask overly direct, un-nuanced questions. I think Peter's reaction to that is the most telling thing, and acquits him quite well as a human, albeit going no way to justifying how he spent the Godus money.
The weirdest thing is seeing it coming from Walker, who is a self-confessed Molyneux fan. It's like his passion and frustration as a fan often conflicted with his professional need to maintain distance from his subject, and I'm not convinced he succeecded in this case.
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