”These things go in cycles,” he remarked. Already he’s seeing investor capitalists circling the waters looking to ‘corporatize’ indie developers; creativity will stifle.
That cash surge leads to ”board meetings, and in those meetings they’ll be told, ‘no, you shouldn’t do that - look at this game that’s making money’.”
Molyneux has nothing but praise for the accomplishments of today’s indie scene of developers, but he’s been here before and this creative fever burning throughout the industry is likely to ‘go away’ for a while before returning eventually for another cycle - it’s a boom and bust of independent game development, if you will.
”What I’d say is, enjoy this time, because it won’t last,” Molyneux said. ”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.”
Molyneux is himself an independent developer once again as he now leads 22Cans, developer of Curiosity and Godus.
”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’.”
The creator of Dungeon Keeper, Theme Park, Theme Hospital and Populous knows well the poison chalice of investment. With success comes the inevitable flood of outside forces looking to see what the fuss is about.
”It’s very much like the 80s,” he said. ”Back then anybody could create a game that could be hugely successful. There were no formulas or anything cast in stone. A few years ago it was all about fear; huge budgets and ‘my franchise is bigger than your franchise’. It was all about ‘who’s going to create the new Call of Duty?’”
”Now it’s all about invention, creativity and not having any fear.”
”Personally, if I was still working at Microsoft I would be self-harming,” declared Molyneux. ”It would be a horrible experience. I now feel like I’m back in an industry that’s truly fascinating and marvellous, and I can say crazy things like, ‘let’s create a game that connects 70 million people together!’”
”We used to have these very defined ways to create a game, which resulted in Halo, Call of Duty and all of that stuff, but now we’ve thrown all of that away. The games that we’re celebrating now are stuff like Papers, Please - which is brilliant.”
Peter Molyneux’s Bullfrog went to EA and Lionhead Studios went to Microsoft, so where - following the logic of these cycles - will 22Cans end up? Recently Molyneux’s indie studio released their Beta 2.0 milestone for Godus.
