Peter Molyneux, creator and director of the Fable trilogy, has weighed in on the AI debate, claiming that the current environment of gaming is very skeptical of AI while at the same time not really allowing developers to work without AI.
In a recent interview with PC Gamer, where he discusses his new “god sim” Masters of Albion, Molyneux talks about the insurmountable difficulty of making games nowadays without resorting to AI-related tools, and how at least 12% of Steam users will immediately write off any game that used AI at any point during its development.
I agree that trying to use only “tools untarnished by AI” these days proves more irritating than it should, even outside the game development scene. Sadly, he continued, “This is very controversial. It is the most, the biggest advance in creativity for smaller studios, for medium studios and bigger studios. The biggest step forward in creativity.”
Huh, Molyneux’s optimism towards AI sure reads a lot like he might be more worried about losing a piece of the market pie than about the inevitable creation of AI slop.
And like, this man is responsible for the creation of bangers such as Dungeon Keeper, Populous, Theme Park, Fable, and Black & White. His career isn’t a fluke. However, anyone who’s been following his work through the years knows that every single one of his games, regardless of how great they eventually turned out, has always paled in comparison to the completely impossible vision he’d originally promised. Did you know that the entire world and vegetation of Fable was once supposed to age, grow, and change as we progressed through the story? On Xbox 360 hardware?
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Molyneux’s tales of overpromising are so legendary in the industry that in 2015, Rock Paper Shotgun once simply asked him if he thought he was a pathological liar. This spawned a long interview where Molyneux vehemently dismissed the accusation by telling another lie with each new answer. He created the kind of comedy I wish I could create on purpose, but not even that was enough for him.
In 2019, Molyneux announced Legacy, a game that would make use of revolutionary tech that many just knew would soon be as inescapable as revolutionary: the NFT. It cost some believers a lot of money.
Oh, and Molyneux is also responsible for Project Milo, a fake AI that supposedly would’ve made use of all of Kinect’s impressive tech to create the most immersive controller-free game ever. I sometimes wonder about the titular Milo. That kid has been trapped in a lonely Kinect purgatory matrix ever since Project Milo’s announcement back in ’09. I wonder how well that AI would treat Molyneux if it were ever to breach containment.
With all that, it’s very hard not to take anything coming out of Molyneux’s dreamy mind with a grain of salt, but who’s to say if this is the time when he’s totally right.
