Yesterday, as part of Gamescom Opening Night Live, the nothingburger-est of Geoff Keighley’s annual trio of too-long trailer extravaganzas, the host trotted out Peter Molyneux. If you’re over 35, you likely remember him as the big talker behind Dungeon Keeper, Black & White, Fable and regrettably, other games after the 1990s and early 2000s. If you’re not, you probably saw him on stage today and asked “Who?” Which really gets to the heart of the matter: Molyneux hasn’t been relevant in years. Why does the industry keep facilitating his attempts at a redemption arc?
For the uninitiated, Molyneux fell off precipitously following his heyday, in which he helped pioneer the god game genre. For his influence on countless modern games, he deserves to be recognized better among younger people than he is now, but that's a failure of institutional memory rather than a testament to the broader arc of Molyneux's career. The Fable series – though enjoyable on its own merits – was the beginning of a slide, with Molyneux breathlessly hyping up living, breathing worlds that would explore life, the passage of time, and politics like nothing before, only to deliver serviable action RPGs that let you fart on people.
After that, the 2010s saw him take this tendency to farcical levels with his own independent studio, 22 Cans, which released a “life-changing” social experiment that ended up being nothing more than a big cube for people to tap on (and which ended up leaving its winner high and dry), a crowdfunded mobile god game called Godus that failed to deliver on features outlined in its campaign, and a spinoff called Godus Wars that never left early access and was eventually removed from sale on Steam. Molyneux became so infamous for ambitious-yet-substanceless ideas that a parody Twitter account, Peter Molydeux, inspired a series of annual game jams around the world.
Amid all this, Molyneux made himself the subject of multiple press-centric apology tours, during which he shed tears and dodged accusations that he had knowingly taken advantage of fans. Then he released a Web3 game. Players reportedly spent over $50 million on “Land NFTs” two years before the game, Legacy, came out, only for the NFT bubble to burst before it launched in 2023.
All of which brings us to the present. At Gamescom, Molyneux stood on stage flanked by a reverent Geoff Keighley and gave the world a glimpse at yet another game that promises to cherry pick all the best elements from his glory days while also somehow Revolutionizing The Genre(s). Masters of Albion, which apparently isn’t set in the same world as the Microsoft-owned Fable series despite sharing the same setting name, looks fine – like a low-rent mashup of Black & White, Fable, and Manor Lords. It also shares some clear DNA with the aforementioned Web3 game, including a similar city-building interface and the ability to “design anything,” including weapons, food, and mashups of the two like a bread sword, which is at least kind of funny.
But here’s the thing: Out of curiosity and a sense of journalistic duty, the two things that will most assuredly lead me to an early grave, I tried Legacy today, and the ability to customize and sell my own burger monstrosity – no buns, three olives on a toothpick, pickles placed precariously atop it, and a slab of cheese for good measure – did not stop the game from being a glacially slow, soulless slog clearly designed to funnel me into a real-money-based ecosystem. The experience felt, in all ways that mattered, as barebones as my bunless burger. I cannot begrudge Molyneux and company for trying to iterate on their own ideas, but maybe pick a better starting point.
Despite all of this, the Molyneux media machine is once again in full swing. Around the same time Molyneux did the 1,000th iteration of the same old song and dance on stage, sites like Eurogamer, IGN, and GamesIndustry.biz dropped interviews centered around how the now 65-year-old game designer is once again seeking redemption, perhaps for the final time. These pieces, though skeptical in places, largely give Molyneux ample space to wax philosophical, to spellbind with high-minded talk of legacy, what makes a truly great game, and “creating something which is not quite like anything else that has existed.”
This has always been Molyneux’s great trick: For however much his design skills have atrophied, he remains a captivating interview. He speaks softly, but with conviction. He knows how to sound reflective, like he’s really, truly got it all figured out this time. In service of that, he loves a good self-deprecating joke about the last time he had it all figured out. And he knows just how to tug at heartstrings. "What happened in the press was, for me, terrible," he told GI.biz of the period after Godus’ launch a decade ago. "I developed a whole load of stress-related conditions that are forever life-changing. ... I’ll be in my late 60s when this game is finished, and if I start another one, I'll be in my mid-70s. My life expectancy is measured in days rather than years because of my lifestyle. I smoke and drink and don’t sleep enough."
These are compelling threads to tug at, and Molyneux has always been a master of dangling them such that journalists can’t help but be tantalized. But focusing on Molyneux’s own emotional and physical fragility elides a more salient point: He garnered negative press because of his own actions, and even after that, the same press repeatedly helped him rehabilitate his image. He’s gotten more chances than just about anybody in this industry, and he has yet to demonstrate that he deserved them.
Even this latest round of interviews is illustrative: Both Keighly and journalists have parroted the line that Masters of Albion is entirely “self-funded,” except that Molyneux has admitted that much of the money came from Legacy’s in-game land sales, something which sure gives Legacy, only just released in October of last year, the appearance of a cash grab. This from a man who has spent the past decade and change alienating fans by taking their money and then, at best, failing to accurately predict how it would be used. Perhaps accountability should be the central focus of these stories from major sites, rather than the more sympathetic angle of Molyneux’s millionth run at redemption.
There’s also an argument to be made that said pieces – and Molyneux’s Gamescom ONL appearance – need not exist at all. Molyneux is a product of a bygone era of gaming, and his story has already been told more times than anybody can count. Those telling it now, the Keighleys of the world, are only doing so because Molyneux was a main character back when they were on the come up. They still, to some extent, see the myth and the legend, rather than the man. But Molyneux was never larger than life – just a little bigger than an industry in its infancy – and these days, he is decidedly small: someone whose actions have repeatedly squandered goodwill and whose words have failed to win support from a new generation. The dwindling few who remember him as more are all that he has left.
