I spent yesterday afternoon working on the new blog I’m going to launch here in a few days. It’s nothing big, just a place for me to post my thoughts on pro wrestling. So if that’s your thing, I’ll be talking more about it in the coming days. Anyway, the point is, I was fucking with that all day, and then ended up taking the night off to spend with my girlfriend. So that’s why there was a shortage of posts yesterday. But today is another day, as they say.
Before I checked out for the night last night, I read an interview that has pretty much everyone buzzing. It was by John Walker of Rock, Paper, Shotgun, and he was interviewing Peter Molyneux, the guy behind Black & White, the Fable franchise, Populous, and several other well known efforts. I realize that he’s become the object of derision in some quarters. You don’t have to tell me about his track record of over-promising. I’m a veteran Fable guy, beat all three. I remember some of the big ideas he talked about very well. Many times, they didn’t show up at all, or were stripped down when they did make the cut. This would piss me off greatly, because these ideas were almost always cool as fuck.
Still, he’s far from the only developer to be guilty of this. I took it as him having a huge imagination and a large mouth, not as something to hate him over. Also, I enjoyed all three Fables. None were perfect, but they were all pretty solid, 8-9-rated games (85, 89, 80 on Metacritic). So I didn’t hold anything against Molyneux. I realize that the Godus situation is more complex, and that there’s Kickstarter money involved. But I don’t see him as a “pathological liar,” which is the term RPS’s John Walker used. How can you denigrate a man who has done so much for the industry like that? It boggles the mind. Ask him tough questions? Sure. But don’t make him out to be something he’s not.
Especially when these are the same people who take Anita Sarkeesian’s bullshit arguments as an article of faith. Ms. Sarkeesian has been years late on her Kickstarter promises as well (among other things). Where’s the outrage there? I guess it’s easier to pick on a white male like Molyneux. You might step on a couple of toes if you asked Anita the tough questions. Of course she would probably just refuse to answer them anyway…but at least she would be on record avoiding them.
That’s the modern media, though: they love to kick someone when they’re down. They’re jackals with no conscience. Walker is far from the only one to go after Molynuex. We’ve seen one of the classic feeding frenzies the last week or so. It’s almost like they’re trying to drive this guy out of the industry. I’m hoping he can put a salid PC version of Godus out to spite these bastards. The double standards at work make me sick.
