lionhead-studios posts

Our audience loves demos for games. They get excited when they learn that a demo of their upcoming favorite game is going to be released and are disappointed and even angry when it's announced a demo for an upcoming title won't be released.

But don't tell that to Lionhead Studios founder and game design legend Peter Molyneux. In a new interview with Edge, he states, "Now, I hate demos. I think demos are the death knell of experiences." He feels that previous demos for his own games "completely ruined the game, given too much to the player, or they've confused people." His preferred method is to "give away the very first 45 minutes of the game, completely free."

And in fact that is exactly what he is doing on the Xbox 360 console as their most recently game, the RPG Fable II, is being re-released as a series of downloadable episodes with the first one being released this week for free. Certainly other PC games have offered gamers to play the first few levels for free but should that be the only method for giving a taste of the final version?

There have been rumors for months that Lionhead Studios was planning to release a PC port of their acclaimed Xbox 360 fantasy RPG Fable II. The original Fable did indeed get a PC version about a year after the original Xbox version came out.

But it looks like a PC version for Fable II is still just a rumor for now. According to a post on the game's official message board by Lionhead's community manager "Woody", "We're not working on a PC version of Fable II... If this changes we'll make sure you know about it on our website(s)" While that statement doesn't rule out such a port in the future it does seem to say that it's not currently in active development.

[Via Shacknews]

Before Lionhead Studios was purchased by Microsoft, Peter Molyneux made games for a number of different publishers. One of them was Electronic Arts and in October of 2005 EA released Lionhead's "god game" sequel Black and White 2. Now UK based Feral Interactive has announced that over three years later they will release a native Mac version of the game.

The game itself will ship from the company on January 6 around the time of the annual (and perhaps last?) MacWorld Expo. Feral will also include the game's expansion pack, Battle of the Gods, along with the main game so at least we won't have to wait another 3 1/2 years for that to happen. There's no word if there will be a free Mac demo of the game released.

It's Thanksgiving so what the heck? Time for another rumor story. This one comes from IGN who state that a German gaming web site have posted up claims that Fable II, the Xbox 360 "exclusive" fantasy RPG from developer Lionhead Studios, will be coming to the PC platform as soon as February 2009.

This isn't a huge stretch to imagine since the original Fable debuted on the original Xbox console and then was released on the PC with new content a year later. Fable II has gotten solid reviews since its October release and more importantly massive sales. It was the best selling console title in the US for the month of October according to the NPD Group. So far the game's publisher Microsoft has been mum on any plans of a PC version.

It looks like the PC Gaming Alliance has has enough of the PC game industry getting slammed by developers. Earlier this week Lionhead head man Peter Molyneux said the state of the PC game industry was, in his opinion, in "tatters". Now the PC Gaming Alliance has sent over a response from its president Randy Stude that takes on Molyneux's comment's head on. Here is the statement:

We respect Peter Molyneux as one of the legends in the industry, but we think he is way off-base with his assessment of the PC gaming industry. In fact, the PC Gaming Alliance just released the findings of our Horizons research report in August and it shows that the industry is stronger than ever. An industry with 10.7 billion in revenue during 2007 is hardly in tatters. Beyond the financial aspect of this, the PC is still the world's leading platform for gaming. There are plenty of AAA titles like Conan, Warhammer Online and Spore, as well as smaller games that appeal to people beyond the console audience. And even though there are many AAA titles in the pipeline for PC, the success of an industry can't be measured in AAA titles alone.

Ahh, the tyranny of the blank page. For a writer, there is nothing more daunting than staring at an empty space with a deadline looming. Yet that's what wordsmiths do every day -- dig deep to find the content, the signal amidst the noise. However, it's one thing to sit and write a novel, where it's just the writer and the story, with the audience taking a static, non-participatory role. When one writes for a video game, the audience becomes an active part of the experience, and the writer must take that into account.

Yet often, the player merely sits through the story portion of a game, frequently told through cutscenes. Even those games which tout branching storylines with multiple endings do little more than offer closed choices, offering only the illusion of audience control. Are there any real choices to be had to affect a game's plot? Do narratives merely interrupt gameplay? What exactly is the role of story in video games?