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[starsrift]

It's hard to believe anyone would sit through that shellacking. I guess Molyneux felt he had to.

[knifeySpoonie]

I'd love to defend him but this time he took Kickstater money, with a pitch of "THIS IS WHAT WE ARE GOING TO MAKE" and delievered an average free to play game that most people wouldn't have backed without his name backing it.

Same thing happens with other devs. You make it sound like he is an exception.

No I don't think he's an exception. However.. Theres a big difference between a small team taking £30k and failing to deliver the game they intended and an industry vetran who called in tonnes of press coverage and backing to raise over half a million. I still think other good developers fuck up bad and deserve to held accountable, Double fine abondoning SpaceBase DF9 deserved more stick for example.

But the problem With Molenyuex is he's out there selling his vision, putting it in front of people, using his reputation to raise buzz, yet despite making half a million.. more than enough for a next gen populous in my opinion, they spent the money on a watered down free to play iOS game then abandoned the PC plans to deliever basically the iOS game on PC but for £20...

Add to this the promise "To change someones life" with the curiosity prize and how they totally cut out the winner and barely communicated with him.. I don't get why so many people jump to his defence. I'm kind of glad someone has had a pop rather than the usual Sanitised PR style interviews we've seen in the past where PM has "spun" what he wants to his interviewer for his own gain.

But it's cool, like I say I liked PM's games hell Black and white and fable 1 were great.. but that shouldn't exempt you from critisim.. If you use the media to your advantage to sell your message and big you up all the time you've got to expect the media to grill you if you repeatedly let people down by not delivering what you promise.

[jamesprimate]

and here is a MUCH MUCH BETTER article from ars that smacks of "actual journalism", discussing Molyneux, the RPS interview, etc., in a much broader context: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/02/on-kickstarter-everyone-is-peter-molyneux/

[Impmaster]

Yes, I agree that the article was very rough on Peter Molyneux, but it's because John was trying to portray him as a type of scammer. John was trying to reveal him as an incompetent dev, and he did that very well. I don't think that any of the points that John brought up were necessarily false. He simply pushed Molyneux into a position where readers could see that he was not someone to be trusted. All of the questions and all of the quotes were all chosen to push Molyneux into this position. So it may have been unfair to portray Molyneux in such a way, but it's still a perfectly valid way of looking at him. John is basically just repeating the fears of the backers.

[Dragonmaw]

John came across as overly pushy and hyperfocused on relatively insignificant details. While I appreciate that he was trying to get a clear answer from Molyneux, a man whose entire public persona is built around deflection, I do think he could've been less overtly hostile about it. That first question sums up the interview tone; lots of yelling. The laughter bits were also really jarring and rude.

Molyneux came across as, well, a liar. I don't think the interview was edited to make him look that way; he was constantly interrupting John, diverting into asinine bullshit (the Apple Find A Friend shit was cringeworthy), and generally avoiding talking frankly about the fuck-ups that were made in Godus' development. He outright ignores some of the questions, such as the ones on Godus' "PC publisher" and also how everyone hates the PC version of the game.

Felix is absolutely right, this is a kicking Molyneux definitely did not need. He's already on his last legs and this just seems like beating a dead horse, and could very well lead to his company being shuttered. That said, the interview tries desperately to get a straight answer, and Molyneaux does his best to never give one. I can totally understand John's frustration and directness, having dealt with slippery interviewees myself.

Nobody comes out of this interview looking good, and it's really indicative of the dysfunction and disconnect between game critics and writers and their developer counterparts.

[valrus]

I don't really like that Ars Technica article any more than the RPS article; I think it's too careless with the difference between projects going over budget/deadline and even failing (which is a normal part of business) and fraudulent misconduct (which is not).  Some of the things Molyneux is being accused of -- hell, some of the stuff he's ADMITTING lately -- seem to be edging the line into the latter.

Investors need to know the difference between failure and misconduct; journalists conflating the two deals us a double whammy.  We need investors to understand that delays, cost overruns, etc. are a natural part of business and don't mean that the developers are liars and fraudsters.  We also absolutely need investors to trust that we're not knowingly misleading them or withholding critical information when we pitch the investment to them.

[Eigen]

That article really devolved into something ... not very pleasant to read

[MeshGearFox]

Everything Molyneux has done since like 1997 has been complete garbage.

I'm not sure what people were expecting

"OH HEY GUYS LET'S GIVE A MILLION BUCKS TO THIS GUY THAT HAS LIKE A TWO DECADE HISTORY OF OVER-PROMISING, UNDER DELIVERING, AND ALL AROUND NOT MAKING FUN GAMES. Wait why does his new games suck?"

[Superb Joe]

i played syndicate on the mega drive

[DavidCaruso]

God damn...

Absolutely depressing and brutal read. I feel so sorry for Molyneux, and I don't even particularly like the guy (never played any of his games). Not only is he working on a game that he isn't going to be able to make, 16 hours a day, he's constantly being harassed for not being able to make it.

I think valrus's posts in this thread are generally on point.

[gimymblert]

The guy did lie, caught red handed in the interview if you follow, he downgraded the team of godus to two actual dev and then say that the whole team work on it. Maybe it's brutal but hey, here is a secret, there is rampant molyneux-ism in the industry, people that outright lie about things to sell themselves.

[DJFloppyFish]

like with gamergate, the molyneux hate in most cases is more of a justification to vent frustrations than an actual cause taken up to fight injustice. although, this recent kickstarter stuff is probably the most heinous thing molyneux has ever done. idk, none of this feels constructive.

[citizen5]

I think it's a tough but fair interview.

There are obviously a LOT of angry Godus backers out there who feel they have been lied to and John's job was to get some answers.

Maybe Molyneux is just bad at planning, and makes honest promises in the heat of the moment, I don't know, but I think it had got to the point where many people felt otherwise, and it was time for the press to give him a bit more scrutiny.

Even within that interview, Molyneux implies things which aren't true and evades/obfuscates throughout. 

Having said all this, I do respect Molyneux for sticking with the interview.

[DavidCaruso]

The guy did lie, caught red handed in the interview if you follow, he downgraded the team of godus to two actual dev and then say that the whole team work on it. Maybe it's brutal but hey, here is a secret, there is rampant molyneux-ism in the industry, people that outright lie about things to sell themselves.

He did lie, but the depressing part to me is Molyneux's tone throughout the entire interview. It smacks of someone going through a mid-life crisis and desperately trying to stay relevant ("we're going to make a great game and no one will care about this in 20 years, I swear" while the game they actually have is terrible and broken, and they're too understaffed and disorganized to actually turn it into a great game). Reminds me of the movie Birdman.

It's true that people lie about things to sell themselves, in every industry, and in fact Kickstarter as a business model even kind of encourages this (as Molyneux points out).* But the interview isn't about that. It isn't some expose of corruption in the videogame industry, it's a public humiliation of one specific person. Granted, I'm maybe not the target audience of the interview because I didn't back Godus and I don't really have any interest in it, but it seems kind of unnecessary to me?

* does not apply to me

[JWK5]

Wanting provides the shovel, impatience digs the hole, denial shoves you in, and reality buries you.

[Torchkas]

I think this is a terrible interview. The entire conversation is basically about one topic. This doesn't give me any insight into what Peter Molyneux's stance is on game development or what the status of his current game is.
It was all about how he allegedly fucked people by running out of money and then they both went into a hissy-fit about it.

[starsrift]

Honestly the more I think about it, the more I believe this is deliberately to appeal to the "ethics in videogame journalism" crowd.
I mean, RPS basically torched their relationship with Molyneux. He's not going to talk to them again, ever, even if he does talk to the press later on. Godus is just one game, good or bad. He's going to make more. And later down the line, he's going to pull out another Populous or Fable or Dungeon Keeper. As an Idea Guy, Molyneux is pretty fantastic.

[valrus]

John Walker + the "ethics in videogame journalism" crowd would be the strangest set of bedfellows every to fellow a bed.

[JWK5]

There is nothing ethical about character assassination.

[s0]

Honestly the more I think about it, the more I believe this is deliberately to appeal to the "ethics in videogame journalism" crowd.

yep

the whole thing just comes off as extremely tryhard (on john walker's part) to me. "Hello I am a Serious Investigative Journalist Asking The Hard Questions(tm) are you a pathological liar?"

this is one of the demands ive seen from the part of the gamergate crowd that actually cares about "ethics in game journalism". they basically want game journalism to be the same thing as "regular" news journalism, with the game industry being the government and game devs and publishers being public officials and "gamers" being the general public. like i said, if molyneux was a politician this line of questioning would be understandable (even if a little overblown).