Love 2.0 Part 1

Part 1 - Emotional Communication in Digital Games and Project Natal

There is no lack of quotes from Peter Molyneux and other Lionhead employees regarding their aspirations for the emotional involvement of their games, in creating this blog I have found it to be their primary focus as a company. In order to keep this post relevant to my case study's four main areas of focus (social, cultural, ethical and economic) I have found a few recent examples, and an look into to how Lionhead hope to make progress in this field with the arrival of Project Natal.

Peter Molyneux recently talked to GAMES TM magazine[1] about Fable III[8] after the official announcement at Gamescom.[2] Here he spoke a lot about the Lionhead team's aims in creating a virtual world that players really connect with.

"We have this fantastic game mechanic - which I can't tell you anything about - but it allows you to be personally involved in judgements of what is good and bad. Just like the rulers of old, some of those are very personal judgements and heart rendering situations."[1]

"Once you are king you realise what is going on in the world, and that makes some of the promises you made on your journey really hard to deliver."[1]



After being asked if they were planning to build on the existing gesture system Molyneux reveals "In a way, and with an ambition that is going to completely surprise and shock you. Wow, I could get in so much trouble for that line."[1]

Some of these quotes start sounding very suggestive of Project Natal being implemented in Fable III, but of course when approached Molyneux only says "That's very, very, very much 'no comment'".[1]

If Fable III did use Project Natal technology it would be drawing on the dependency of fans, a big marketing hook for the release of Project Natal. As far as speculation goes on how emotionally involving Natal will make the gaming experience, there is certainly huge potential in Natal's motion sensing, voice recognition, controller free system of interaction for something ground-breaking. Although at the moment, so little is known about how Natal will fair as a physical input controller replacement that it is undoubtedly a huge risk for a game from a successful series if proven unpopular.



After watching the Milo and Kate demo and Project Natal Announcement trailer[3] I found it more useful to my investigation to look at the social and cultural responses to the technology rather than the technical specifications, I found comments from industry professionals and designers and the public in another issue of GAMES TM magazine[4]:

"If the auto industry made a hands-free car I would still prefer to buy one with a real steering wheel." - Trip Hawkins, Digital Chocolate[5]

"As a designer and a player, I'm not particularly interested in moving my body a lot to control a game or talking to a machine… I want the controls to disappear, and while Natal seems to do just that, in practice it turns the entire television set into a controller… Milo is actually a good illustration of the weakness of Natal, because Milo is very much about a boy who lives in a television set.

Current game controllers are indeed too intimidating and too complicated, but jumping up and down in front of a television is not the solution. It restricts us to our physical existence rather than freed from our limitations." - Michael Samyn, Tale of Tales[6]

"I think it'll be a huge device. We developed No More Heroes with the Wii Remote in mind, but now I want to think about games with Natal in mind." - Suda51, Grasshopper Interactive[7]

"Let's say that Lionhead really did have a digital boy whose AI would not be broken by unexpected questions. What would that mean? We would be able to enter a caring relationship with a realistic, virtual boy! That sounds amazing, until we realise that there are millions of REAL boys out there in the world who would benefit greatly from a relationship with a caring adult… Games are interesting in so far as they present insightful abstractions of reality, not because they can flawlessly mimic reality." - Jason Rohrer, creator of Passage[9] and Gravitation[10]

Controversial issues are imminent for Natal technology, replacing human interaction with computers has ethical concerns and 'The uncanny valley' is something I expect to hear mentioned in times to come. Many people are sceptical that Natal will be popular because of all the player participation, physical activity isn't something all gamers are looking for but it has been praised too for this breaking down of the 4th wall.


[1] Games TM, issue 87, Imagine Publishing, September 09
[2] http://www.gamescom-cologne.com/, Jan 10
[3] http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/projectnatal/, Jan 10
[4] Games TM, issue 86, Imagine Publishing, August 09
[5] http://www.digitalchocolate.com/, Jan 10
[6] http://tale-of-tales.com/, Jan 10
[7] http://www.grasshopper.co.jp/en, Jan 10
[8] Fable III, 2010, Lionhead Studios/Microsoft Game Studios, Xbox 360
[9] http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/, Jan 2010
[10] http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/gravitation/, Jan 2010

Made in Britain: Cultural Prominence

Lionhead are a British game company and more often than not this is reflected in their games, as well as their public identity. In this post I will be looking at how Lionhead use cultural references to build unique worlds and create fan-bases in Britain and overseas.

Almost all of their games are set in the UK or in fictional worlds resembling Britain's varying stages of development. Theme park[10] was set in the UK[1] in the present, presumably 1994 when it was made. As the game progresses and once enough money has been made the player can move on to newer plots. Plots are located all over the world and have many different factors that affect gameplay.[1] A later DS version of the game by EA Japan included area-specific shops and amusements "For example, we have traditional castle-looking attraction for Japan, a café that looks like a double-decker bus for England, etc. I am especially fond of the Coffee-Cup attraction that you will encounter in Brazil, which has a very Brazilian, carnival look to it." said Game Designer Toshiyuki Nagahara,[2] something I find only charmingly stereotypical and would personally enhance my gameplay experience. When playing Theme Park World[11] (a later spin off, mentioned in the post covering Bullfrog, also set in the UK) my favourite part was unlocking new features and I always liked the idea that my theme park was somewhere in the UK when so many other games didn't attempt to ground any realism, let alone something so close to home. I found this comforting and quite special, at this age most of the other games films that created engaging worlds to me were set in the US or in fictional worlds, made by US based companies. Even the annoying park advisor of Theme Park World would have been more annoying in anything other than his rather calming Scottish drone.



I remember feeling this again when playing Black & White[9], 2001, the voice acting was a surprise when I first began the game - I wasn't expecting such heavy British accents. After playing the game a while I liked it, a lot! I felt I could connect more, and the starter Norse villages I made felt more... local. It was as if I were playing with a toy of an old Saxon village I had visited on a school trip, but I got to plan it from the ground up, also there was a massive cow or tiger... Another touch I loved was that every civilian in the game was named, to my understanding with the name of someone who worked on the game and their families (including Peter Molyneux), a creative way of showing the credits as well as equality among the Lionhead team. I personally found the cultural references very appealing and, as I stated before, in these games I found something most popular children's entertainment did not satisfy.



In an attempt to make Black & White even more immersive you could set the weather conditions of the game to 'localised' which matched the weather conditions of the post code or zip code you provided. Although fascinated by this I opted out of the feature in fear that it would always be dull and I would never see conditions such as snow in the game.

The Fable[12] series is set in a land named Albion, an archaic name for Great Britian.[3] Although all of the villages and names are entirely fictional the world heavily resembles Britian's varying stages of development.



This time the voice acting is taken a step further than Black & White and (as briefly covered in earlier posts) a cast of contemporary British actors and comedians provide an intertextual level of popular culture. This is extremely popular among British audiences, and from web communities and online reviews seems to be popular overseas. The Observer[4] said the original Fable had a "very British sense of humour, in the style of Monty Python[5] or Douglas Adams.[6]"[7] and it at least achieved commercial success in North America, selling 375,000 copies during its first week.[8]



I already suspected that British cultural prominence helps form the Lionhead company identity and is a huge part of their appeal as a company and for their games. I had not expected to find that my personal experience of Lionhead and Bullfrog games was so affected by this.


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_Park_%28computer_game%29, Dec 2009
[2] http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=156590, Dec 2009
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion, Dec 2009
[4] http://observer.guardian.co.uk/, Dec 2009
[5] http://pythonline.com/, Dec 2009
[6] http://www.douglasadams.com/, Dec 2009
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fable_%28video_game%29, Dec 2009
[8] http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/microsofts-fable-sells-375000-units/, Dec 2009
[9] Black & White, 2001, Lionhead Studios/Electronic Arts/Feral Interactive, PC/Mac
[10] Theme Park, 1994, Bullfrog Electronic Arts, PC
[11] Theme Park World, 1999, Bullfrog/Electronic Arts/Feral Interactive, PC/Mac/Playstation 2
[12] Fable, 2004, Lionhead Studios/Microsoft Game Studios/Feral Interactive, PC/Mac/Xbox

What a Twit: Company Policy on Publicity and Privacy 2

Part 2 - Social Networking and PR

On March 11th this year Jonathan Ross posted this to his Twitter, appearing to 'accidentally announce' Fable III[11] to the internet masses before any official words from Lionhead and Microsoft. Ross originally said:
[1]

Followers immediately began to ask questions, he quickly followed up with:
[2]

The next morning, Ross tweeted this:
[3]
and then:
[4]

A Microsoft representative later told GameSpot "We have no agreement in place with Ross to work on forthcoming projects," but he continued, "We are working on additional content for Fable II[10]. That's all we can say for now. We will have more to share soon!"[5]

The fact that this made front page news on many games websites within hours, such as IGN[6], was as much to do with it being a celebrity slip-up as it was because of the actual announcement, but gained a reaction nonetheless...

As for official words from Lionhead Studios, Peter Molyneux has since announced Fable III[6]
and spoken about his own restrictions when talking to journalists and concerning announcements;

"With Fable[12] and with Black & White[13], I really was just actually being a designer at this point, saying 'imagine we’re going to have this game feature, and it’s going to do this and this is why we’re going to have it and why it’s important,'" continued Molyneux. "And of course the poor games journalist writes down all these things and it comes across as 'oh my god, it’s going to be amazing' but really they were just words because a lot of the time with Fable and with Black & White I was actually talking, I wasn’t really demoing."[6]

The way Peter Molyneux talks is extremely honest. He receives a lot of bad press about over hyping projects, which although he is guilty of I find it really easy to empathise with his positive intentions. I personally think it is essential for a good developer to appear human to their audiences, and at least Molyneux is passionate about his work.

Lionhead maintain Twitter[7], Myspace and Facebook pages (although it is unclear who actually posts to them) I found the Twitter account especially interesting and also useful in the production of this blog. With posts from several employees at Lionhead it appeared to be the most well kept of the sites, although this may just be a case of passing trends and that the other sites have merely passed their prime... This has made me consider whether Twitter is superior to other social networking sites in connecting with fans effectively, but obviously the above example of Jonathan Ross has shown its risks as a public broadcasting medium.

Quite relevantly, I found Henry Jenkins has commented on his blog[8] about Twitter as a broadcasting medium;

"Broadcast? Not Really
Twitter works on a number of different scales. For some users, most I'd assume, Twitter represents a relatively narrow cast medium, a kind of social network which allows them to communicate with people they already know… For others, companies for example, it may do the opposite, helping them to move from communications at an impossibly large scale, to something much closer to the ground. They can start to see their consumers as individuals or at least as a community of people who have a broad range of responses to what they are producing. They can sample public response to their products. They can discover groups of users they didn't know existed."[9]

This is exactly what I have found to be true for the way Lionhead 'tweets' and applies a theory to their success in reaching fans so effectively. Lionhead seem to be very well adapted to social networking and have really embraced web 2.0 and new technologies as they develop. I look forward to finding out more about what they have planned for the future...

[1] http://twitter.com/Wossy/status/1308386483, Dec 2009
[2] http://twitter.com/Wossy/status/1308394651, Dec 2009
[3] http://twitter.com/Wossy/status/1309853562, Dec 2009
[4] http://twitter.com/Wossy/status/1309864044, Dec 2009
[5] http://uk.gamespot.com/news/6205890.html, Dec 2009
[6] http://www.bravenewgamer.com/2009/12/career-lessons-learned-and-fable-iii-molyneux-speaks-out/, Dec 2009
[7] http://twitter.com/lionheadstudios, Dec 2009
[8] http://henryjenkins.org/index.html, Dec 2009
[9] http://henryjenkins.org/2009/08/the_message_of_twitter.html, Dec 2009
[10] Fable II, 2009, Lionhead Studios/Microsoft Game Studios, Xbox 360
[11] Fable III, 2010, Lionhead Studios/Microsoft Game Studios, Xbox 360
[12] Fable, 2004, Lionhead Studios/Microsoft Game Studios/Feral Interactive, PC/Mac/Xbox
[13] Black & White, 2001, Lionhead Studios/Electronic Arts/Feral Interactive, PC/Mac

Sharing: Company Policy on Publicity and Privacy 1

Part 1 - Official Information Supplied by Lionhead

Lionhead are extremely keen on connecting with fans and 'the community', especially online. They are also unusual in the amount they are willing to share about their workplace/work habits, their main site hosts a blog section[1], a video blog section[2], a selection of webcams[3] placed around the studio, and an IRC function with its own terms of use[4] . This has amazed me as their affiliation with Microsoft is so strong, since being acquired by the mega-corporation in April 2006, and Microsoft's incredibly strict privacy reputation when regarding projects and releases. Lionhead seem to be more casual about 'sharing' with the public, and I respect this. I think it helps them keep their individuality as a studio and forms their identity. They promote the philosophy that working this openly with the community is good for production, something Peter Molyneux has promoted from day one.

As for Microsoft's involvement, the site still looks independent but the copyright sign and Microsoft name is everywhere. All videos are run on Silverlight software (which I had to download to watch them) and the community forum uses a Windows Live ID system. The Microsoft terms of use[7] is extremely extensive and strict.

The blog page opens with; "Everyone with something to say here at Lionhead gets the chance to share it on our website in one of our Blogs. Information about the development of our games, what's going on in the online community and what is Sam up to?"[1] After some investigation I found Sam to be of the Lionhead development team[4] and moderator of the Lionhead community forum.[6]

Its clear Lionhead promote equality amongst employees regarding roles and development; each department feature on the video diaries as equal, integral parts of the development process and end product. Each employee can have a blog or a live webcam, and I have been able to see, for example, how an individual's input has changed the development of Fable II[9]. Microsoft have overall control over Lionhead, but they still have an independent identity of their own as a British company with a history behind them, which I think is essential to their work ethic.


[1] http://www.lionhead.com/LatestBlogs.aspx, Dec 2009
[2] http://www.lionhead.com/Diaries/Default.aspx, Dec 2009
[3] http://www.lionhead.com/News/Webcams.aspx, Dec 2009
[4] http://www.lionhead.com/News/ircinfo.aspx, Dec 2009
[5] http://community.lionhead.com/user/Profile.aspx?UserID=2397, Dec 2009
[6] https://registration.lionhead.com/GatewayPage.aspx, Dec 2009
[7] http://www.microsoftgamesinsider.com/MGSTermsOfUse.htm, Dec 2009
[8] http://www.lionhead.com/News/Archive.aspx, Dec 2009
[9] Fable II, 2009, Lionhead Studios/Microsoft Game Studios, Xbox 360

Out of the swamp: Bullfrog and Molyneux on Economics

Bullfrog was founded in 1987 in Guildford, Surrey, England, by Peter Molyneux and his then business partner Les Edgar.[2] This was not Molyneux's first attempt at game design and production, in 1984 he created The Entrepreneur[3], a text-based simulation game about starting and running a company[1] Molyneux produced and advertising the game entirely by himself, duplicating hundreds of tapes of the game on two Tandy Corporation recorders. He was so convinced the game would sell that he even cut himself a larger letterbox to cope with all of the orders[1] Only 2 orders were ever recieved, one of which he suspects is from his mother. Following this failure to break into the industry alone, Molyneux retreated from game design, and started Taurus Impact Systems with Les Edgar, designing office databases. Commodore International[4] mistook it for TORUS, a more established company that produced networking software, and offered to provide Molyneux with eight free Amiga systems to help in porting "his" networking software[1] Molyneux was aware of the misunderstanding from day one of the offer, but decided to take the risk. Taurus redesigned the database system for the Amiga, and after clearing up the misunderstanding with Commodore, the program was released and became a moderate success.[1]

With the money earned from this, the pair set up Bullfrog with the aim of creating original computer games which brought something challenging to home computers. After 2 years of hard work Bullfrog released Populous[9], regarded by many as the first God game for PC.[6] Populous received incredible success for Bullfrog, spanning a series of games and porting to various formats such as the Nintendo GameBoy[8]. Peter Molyneux has said recently that he would be interested in making a net-generation Populous sequel.[5]



Another huge hit for Bullfrog was Theme Park[10], selling over 3.5 million copies[2], and its descendant Theme Park World[11] (SimTheme Park in the US). A further shot at a business management simulator, and later with Theme Hospital[12], Bullfrog was proving itself in the interactive entertainment industry as a small British company and had begun literally building the God game genre.

Molyneux had always dreamed big. From his ambitious early days of self sustained, vertically integrated game production he had by now formed a moderately successful company, but this was about to change. In 1997 three developers of Bullfrog left to form Mucky Foot Productions[6]. With little success and only three titles ever released, the company was closed in 2003.[6] Meanwhile Molyneux sold Bullfrog to the world’s largest computer games publisher, Electronic Arts[2] and set out to form Lionhead Studios with three like-minded Bullfrog colleges. The first was Mark Webley, who had previously been head of Bullfrog’s highly efficient conversions department before producing, designing and programming Theme Hospital. Two other directors also joined Lionhead, Steve Jackson who had co founded Games Workshop and had a great deal of success with the Fighting Fantasy series of books and Tim Rance, one of the Cities most highly regarded systems analysts.[2] With a highly motivated team Lionhead had experience from multiple areas of the entertainment and media industry. The company has maintained its innovative outlook on what makes a good game from day one, currently supporting a large team of creative individuals working together to create continually highly acclaimed games.


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Molyneux#Bullfrog_Productions, Dec 2009
[2] http://www.lionhead.com/History.aspx, Dec 2009
[3] The Entrepreneur, 1984, Peter Molyneux, PC
[4] http://www.commodore-evolution.com/index.html, Dec 2009
[5] http://www.amiga.com, Dec 2009
[6] http://www.jolt.co.uk/news/28071/molyneux-wants-to-do-a-populous-sequel/, Dec 2009
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mucky_Foot_Productions, Dec 2009
[8] http://www.nintendo.com/, Dec 09
[9] Populous, 1989, Bullfrog Electronic Arts, PC
[10] Theme Park, 1994, Bullfrog Electronic Arts, PC
[11] Theme Park World, 1999, Bullfrog/Electronic Arts/Feral Interactive, PC/Mac/Playstation 2
[12] Theme Hospital, 1997, Bullfrog/Electronic Arts, PC/Playstation/Playstation Network

Study Proposal

For this unit I will be contextually investigating the games industry by producing a focused case study of Lionhead studios. This will cover past to present development and history, founder Sir Peter Molyneux and his relationship with the media when representing the company, and Lionhead as a team, the inside workings as well as their public relations.

I will look at the development and release of titles under the name Bullfrog, Lionhead and Microsoft but I will not be focusing on a particular game or series of games produced. Instead I will be commenting specifically on the social, cultural, ethical and economic contexts within the company and its appearance from the outside. This investigation will include personal analysis and primary research methods as well as secondary, leading to a critical evaluation at the end where my views on the company and what I have learned will be assessed, as well as the efficiency of my research methods and the project as a whole.

At the moment, I regard the studio quite highly. At least 2 of their games were my favourites when growing up, and I respect the work they have produced since. As a company I know that they aim to push what people expect from digital game experiences and always have, but I know very little about what they have planned for the future and look forward to finding out more about Project Natal. I will be commenting on how my opinions change throughout this project.