Fable creator Peter Molyneux believes that the current indie game craze won’t last as he says these things go in cycles. Molyneux advises gamers to enjoy the thriving indie scene for the time being, but says that all you need to do is look at the music industry to see how quickly these things change.
“These things go in cycles. What I’d say is, enjoy this time, because it won’t last.”
“Don’t think we’re going to be all indies for the next five years – these things go in cycles, just like in the music business. You have a time where punk is big, and then you have times like now where everything is manufactured.”
“Enjoy this time, because inevitably it will only last a short period.”
“Here’s the thing: walk through any hotel lobby at GDC and look at people’s name badges. This morning at breakfast I saw three angel investors talking to indies. They’re saying, ‘take my money! I want to invest in your company!’
“But what those indie companies don’t realise is that they’ll then have to have board meetings, and in those meetings they’ll be told, ‘no, you shouldn’t do that – look at this game that’s making money’.”
Peter Molyneux is a douche and full of lies.
Peter Molyneux is a fucking whore!!! A dirty ass skank who allows the media to plant their “seeds” into this anus
I mean I get what he thinks he is talking about, but he can never keep promises to his own games. Also those indie companies….every company started indie befor it got big. Even Disney started in a garage (as the commercial.says)
second when Xbox and Nintendo are making it easier for any one to develop and self publish, and its only going to get easer as technology gets better, then he is a fool to think indie is going away…..and his comparison to the music industry was dumb to say, besides the video game industry is closer to film then music…..he may be right when he said “dont underestimate Nintendo”
but his reasoning for saying that was probably wrong
Peter Molyneux you are irrelevant. You and your disgusting lever spotted body…
He´s just jealousy of indie producers continued success.
…. Peter… you haven’t been relative since Theme Park…
His career went to shit long a go! He thinks he’s a fucking god of gaming lol. He has nothing relevant to say about the Indie Game industry
Yeah, I used to respect him but now…. I couldn’t be bothered.
John Carmack and Will Wright are my only video game ideals left and are the true gaming gods, next to Miyamoto
total dumbass that’s just jealous of the fame a lot of indy games are capable of. a lot even beat high budget games and that pisses people off.
so basically what he say: Indie companies will make a lot of money and will become successful to the point they will become more professional studio. But then one can argue that as long as the technology is there to allow people to program and make game then it won’t happen. IN fact the market will then become more competitive and creation will blossom.
What he meant was that investors will become more and more interested into indie studios, give them money to produce their stuff and then refrain their indie pulsions by suggesting/asking them to turn their games into more… generic ones.
But then again, as you said, I doubt it will end up filling the market up, there will always be indie devs, and Kickstarter is here to support them.
The only thing that could stop indie games from flowing on Steam would be the players getting bored of them, and I doubt it will happen anytime soon, as Steam and big companies like Nintendo/Sony invest a lot to promote them.
Short translation, EA will buy them up.
LoL
but just when they are good :-)
I like the way you think
Ooooooor! You could just not worry about meetings and market research, spend less money on making a game, while you create a game that you enjoy, put a cheap price tag on it and make millions on every sale on Steam because you will make a huge profit anyway.
Fable sucks.
Who?
Go and play Knack.
It’s funny because the only series that Peter is truly famous for is Fable, and they all pretty much suck. I have played so many indie games lately and I would gladly play every single one over playing Fable 3 again. Plus, why does the opinion of this lying sack of crap belong on a Nintendo news site? Last I checked he didn’t have many, if any, projects for Nintendo. Granted he is talking about indie games, but he isn’t the person I expect to hear news about multiple days in a row on a Nintendo news site… Must be a slow news day.
Have you ever played the original dungeon keeper games?
Only Kojima !! :D
Wonder if he’s just bitter that both of his Indie games with 22 cans released to scathing reviews. Seriously, they were a joke.
I think this guy is missing something obvious, which is the reasons for why there are so many indie games. People have grown up with video-game creators telling kids what to imagine. The fact is that there is a whole generation coming to the age to show their own imagination through their own video games, and it is completely new. We have a lot of people learning how to create video games, but who are not in any large corporation. These people are creating indie games, and the fact is, there are many of them. The numbers are only going to grow.
Hey Peter, Eat A D….
You have no idea what is trending and how long something will last… If you did then you would have made another game that was hit. Dude you are just one big hater.
I see Indie Devs being the future of games, you AAA are the death of the industry and guess what, One AAA game that flops for most studies, it means time to lay people off or go bankrupt…
So Peter Eat a D….
I dont hope Indie games die out but I do hope its scaled back a bit. I didnt buy a 300-500 dollar video game console just to play a punch of 2 hr long games with pixel art.
I think Molyneux suffers from mental illness (episodes of mania). Best to keep the microphone away from his mouth.
What an idiotic old man, he’s equaling indie games and indie music, when they basically have nothing to do.
Someones butthurt.
People in this industry are so stupid.
Indies will probably be the future.
Probably. No, they ARE he future.
Someone clearly has no idea about the music industry. To compare and generalize two different media industries just because there are small and bigger companies is idiotic. Punk was big and now everything is manufactured? Arguably the biggest punk band, The Sex Pistols, were completely manufactured. Plus, genres don’t really equal companies and tastes don’t really equal business trends.
Exactly. Comparing Music to Video Games is like comparing the Earth to the Sun… they are completely different and their only similarities are that they are both masses of matter that occupy space in a spherical form.
Until video game developers walk down the same red carpet as Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Bruno Mars they will never be similar. Fame changes an industry… it really does.
Would the same go with AAA scene?
We have already started seeing AAA game studios closing because sales werent there.
It is a “survival of the fittest” thing. Right now the world’s economy is in turmoil and the same thing is happening to the video game market. Those who scrape by and survive the economic downfall over the next bunch of years will come out stronger than ever once/if everything clears up.
Right now we are seeing the true colors of some companies. Those that go out of business clearly weren’t making enough money to begin with and hid behind a relatively easy economy. As soon as it went bad they started to tank and had to ride the bankruptcy wave for a bunch of years with only the hope that economically, the world would get better…
but it didn’t. So they perished.
Good thing he is always wrong or lying.
Indie games are making not only Molyneux but many guys from other companies to have a freakout! They (indie games) are becoming a menace to their super productions.
Well I don’t think indies are taking away any game sales. I think they coexist fine enough together. That doesn’t mean they won’t “ever” become a threat, however.
I don’t see that happening for a few more years though. Once some of the indie devs we see coming out of the shadows now become larger and more independent studios.
Mojang is notable example, release Minecraft, in under a year, bam, instant AAA company.
I REALLY HOPE SO, U DONT HAVE IDEA HOW BAD I WANT THIS TO BE TRUE. I HATE THOSE AMATEUR GAMES AND THOSE WHO ASK FOR MONEY TO MAKE EM
YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW THE WORLD WORKS DO YOU!? This is going to sound quite cliche and perhaps a little douchey, but Drake’s lyrics “Started From the Bottom Now We’re Here”(as much as it pains me to say) sums up what indies are going through nicely.
You don’t go start a company and all of a sudden you’re making expensive, time consuming AAA games. You start out small and work your way big. You know what? Sometimes you fail and those people stop or continue to push harder to one day succeed. Well all those who succeeds and continue to see success move up in their profession until they are finally where they want to be (and where “you” want them to be…).
It’s a process. You can’t strike someone down before they even get a chance! As for asking for money, you see that kind of thing in EVERY PROFESSION. Haven’t you ever seen Shark Tank? That show is LITERALLY what Kickstarter is only you ask for money from every day people and not professional investors.
To be fair he has a point but he’s forgetting that the in die companies can just say no and go back to their roots as small developers, or join up with different investors who will allow them more freedom. Plus I doubt we won’t be seeing new indie developers in the future.
He took a single point and fit it into a puzzle that has WAY more pieces than he is giving credit for. He didn’t come nearly close enough to finishing that puzzle. Just because “it makes sense” doesn’t mean it will come true and in his case, I can think of a contradictory point to his argument that makes just as much sense as his, so clearly the argument is very flawed.
The reason the indie scene is strong now though is because it’s got so much easier to make and publish games. That is not going away. The music industry is a terrible analogy.
The indie scene is pretty poor anyway these days. Most indie games are just rip-offs now. You have to dig really hard to find the original gems which used to be the trademark of indie gaming.
The difference between the music scene and the indie video game scene is video game developers are more BEHIND the scenes (unlike singer songwriters) and so they never become pop superstars(Miyamoto and a few others being an exception). Because video game developers never hit that level of superstardom, gamers are more likely to pick up games for being “good” and not necessarily by a specific dev team.
Sure we see it with Sony fans, Nintendo fans, Platinum Games fans, etc, etc, but as much as people like to have a favorite developer, people are always looking for that new game with the new experience, the new artstyle, the new EVERYTHING! Whereas in music you constantly look for the same things, same sounds, same artists, same kind of lyrics ect.
Are you kidding!? If anything, indies will take over lol! The video game market is slowly losing control and big companies are finding it hard to make a profit off of big budget games. Smaller budgets and smaller teams are the MOST LIKELY to survive…
Wait, with how short fable 3 was, I was under the impression that it was a really expensive indie game -_-
Nothing less to expext from an Electron…
*expect…
There’s an indie craze? I never noticed.
He makes a good point, but I don’t think it’s fair to compare the gaming industry to the music industry. Music is universal. It’s something everybody loves. So it’s fair to say that most trends are shared as well. However, the gaming industry is still growing, and I think that’s why indies have become so popular. As gamers grow, so have our options, and indies are a result of that. Gaming is not as universal, so there are many different types of gamers. Some only like shooters, and some only like platformers, and some only like indies, or a mix of different genres. We need all these different options to sustain our industry. Indies may stop becoming so prominent, but I don’t think they’ll ever go away in any significant way. I doubt even Molyneux thinks indies will be gone completely, and for good. If he believes in his own logic, there will always be people making music that isn’t mainstream, just like there will always be people making indie games.
He’s comparing two completely different formats. Games are games. Honestly some indie games are far better than the big-budget titles. Despite the fact that this game is by an indie developer and that one is by a bigger developer doesn’t matter. If a game is good it’s good. I really doubt indie games are a “fad” like he’s suggesting. I really don’t know why he’s comparing music to it, indie music has never been big, it’s indie, it’s not as well known, that’s what indie is. It’s never been popular because then it wouldn’t be indie. Indie games are cheap to buy and are generally easily accessible. I do have to wonder if the sales of Fable Anniversary were bad and he’s just being crotchety over an indie game selling more. I hate when developers of good games say stuff that make them seem like complete douches, kinda turns you off to their games.
He’s just pissed off cause he USED to be edgy and cool but now he’s a micro$oft drone, and what is cool……. Well it’s not being a drone, let’s put it that way.
Dam why dose everyone hate this guy I played all 3 fable game’s and liked them all I think his rpgs are way better than skyrim think skyrim is pretty dam boring fable has awesome music cool combat and kick ass magic spells skyrim combat is slow and lame and the soundtrack only has 3 songs which put me to sleep people just like to bitch that’s all this guy is very talented you are all just jealous because he makes some of the funniest rpgs ever and comes up with cool ideas than most rpgs game developers I dont get why he left lionhead if I was him I would be like fuck you haters I am staying I make cool games I don’t care what some of you think of me
The first Fable was great, even if it felt short from what we were promised. The 2nd was just decent, the 3rd was just bad, short, and it treated the gamer like a moron.
Mr. Molyneux problem is that he was born a loooooong time ago, you know what I mean.
Hey! punk’s still alive and kicking in my house pete
if indie devs are bought out then there will be new indie devs taking their place
the funny thing is that there’ll always be a market for these types of games.. unconventional games that like to take risks
and it won’t be the big investors who’ll serve that market
Again, much like with his argument on EA not being the most evil company in the world, i respect Molyneux’s opinion completely, but yet again, i have to make a counter-argument, in that indie games will never truly disappear. Why? Because today, with the AAA industry on the brink of losing the courage to take risks and innovate, we need them now more than ever. With companies and their developers being too afraid to throw a curveball and instead churning out the same games over and over, the AAAs are actually dooming themselves because the gamers are starting to grow wiser; they don’t want to play a game they know they’ve played before. They want innovation. They want new fun. And playing a repeat of another game that you most likely payed double the amount for is NOT fun (unless you’re having extremely strong feelings of nostalgia, but the point still remains). Without indie games, the next videogame crash would’ve happened years ago. This is the reason why indie games will never truly be forgotten.
*cue mic drop*
Indie games will have a lot harder of a time being bastardized than Triple A devs will. The indie audience is as hardcore as it gets, they won’t fall nearly as easily as the mass market audiences. I don’t even buy most triple A games anymore because there are too many shitty practices being used these days.
Yeah, but the indie devs will drown themselves out and flood the market at this rate. At least on consoles. The people who are into indies are really into them, but even they can only buy so many, and it’ll end up being that the only ones who can really continue making games are the ones who break mass market. But that’s probably a few years out, when multiple indie games are released basically weekly. A flooded market drowns the weak and leaves only the strong to survive. Survival of the fittest a la business, it happens
Hi Mynintendonews just dropping by to say I am old and senile. Every time I see something I didnt create I get insanely jelly of it and say stupid stuff like my brother Michael Pratcher. Our Mom was promiscuous…. gbh… but any way. Im old and just need to retire mt mouth. Even I admit most of my games are terrible. Blah blah blah… oh hi itsa me Marilynuexuio…
I’ve never heard of this guy until two weeks ago when he said something about NIntendo, then he said something else, and now this.
Since when it’s so important that a game developer that HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH NINTENDO ‘CAUSE HIS GAME FABLE IS AN XBOX EXCLUSIVE SAYS!?
Seriously, like when did this person became more important than the other developers and now we have to hear news about what this Xbot developer says every week IN A NINTENDO RELATED WEBSITE!
Like, his biggest game is an Xbox exclusive and that’s it! And he hasn’t developed shit for Nintendo and we have to give importance to every opinion he gives.
Anyway, this guy is just mad that now people are playing indie games like Flappy Bird and not his multi-million dollar Fable Xbot games!
He’s not wrong. These guys are just guys who love games and won’t always realize what people investing in them means. They’ll sign off partial ownership of their company without realizing how it affects them, and then they’ll become something more than indie, though less than a big studio, in all likelihood, or they’ll die out. The indie craze will last maybe a couple years, but it’ll die down on gaming platforms (probably not smart phones cause they’re cheap) and only the best ones will survive. Something you might be able to relate this too, but on a much quicker scale, would be abridged series on YouTube, where people used to make millions of them, but now only the best are really doing it, small teams, not individuals. A similar scenario is likely to occur with indie games. They’ll flood the market over the next few years, and only the best will be really profitable and the companies that aren’t will go under and the few who are will continue on and likely end up making fewer but more high quality games that’ll really get people’s attention. It’s business
lol @ comparing music to video games..
Punk happened 30 years ago. As did an indy surge of programmers and games in the eighties and throughout video game history one way or another since. What he has basically just said is nothing lasts forever….as if its so insightful and prophetic…..