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
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