16 ms·

Bullfrog After Populous

321 points by doppp 6y ago

corysama 6y ago
There's also the "Populous Classic Game Postmortem" from GDC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIaK6y5kdro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIaK6y5kdro Tons more vids like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/
Causality1 6y ago
There's a little too much hero worship in this article for my taste. Molyneux is not some wide-eyed dreamer whose hopes keep getting dashed by the mean nasty world. He's a serial liar who may have started out simply being too hopeful but has spent the last fifteen years lying to gain investors and happily screwing as many people on the back end as he can get away with. For example, he built the entire premise and hype over his Cube mobile game about having one single winner who could share or keep the prize. Bryan Henderson won it and the prize turned out to be a major role in Molyneux's next game Godus. Except giving out prizes doesn't make Peter any money so he told Henderson to go fuck himself and never contacted him again.
- sumtechguy 6y ago
  What was interesting was the cube game was actually kinda fun to play in a odd way. They could have kept that going for awhile. Like reset the cube every few months or something. Different shapes etc. Godus started of interesting but went sideways quickly and tried to turn itself into a pay to play game. No whales showed up for that because that is not what people bought. Then the resets of game progress every few weeks and people gave up on it.
  - DonHopkins 6y ago
    His Cube game was the epitome of dopamine addiction games, all that was wrong with Zynga/Facebook games, the rage at the time. Nothing at all original about that: a total cop-out of game design. When Peter Molyneux gave his insufferably vainglorious keynote presentation of Cube at the Unity3D Unite conference at Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam, I chatted him up afterwards and attempted to troll him by guessing that the big surprise in the box was a cow. I don't think he got the point that I was trying to make an ironic reference to Ian Bogost's Cow Clicker, which is a parody of and social commentary on dopamine games. I tried to explain the joke to him, and he still didn't get it. At least Ian Bogost had the self awareness to design Cow Clicker in the service of making a critical statement about game design, and the capacity of shame to be embarrassed when it was an accidental run-away success. Unite 2012 : Keynote - Founders & Peter Molyneux (The BS starts at 1h 8m 21s -- It's been 8 years since I saw this live, and it's much worse than I remembered, especially now knowing how it turned out!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24AY4fJ66xA&t=1h08m21s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24AY4fJ66xA&t=1h08m21s >1h 48m 06s, with arms spread out like Jesus H Christ on a crucifix: "Because we can dynamically put on ANY surface of the cube ANY image we like. So THAT's how we're going to surprise the world, is by giving clues about what's in the middle later on." http://www.cowclicker.com/ http://www.cowclicker.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Clicker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Clicker >In the wake of a controversial speech by Zynga's president at the Game Developers Choice Awards in 2010, Bogost developed Cow Clicker for a presentation at a New York University seminar on social gaming in July 2010. The game was created to demonstrate what Bogost felt were the most commonly abused mechanics of social games, such as the promotion of social interaction and monetization rather than the artistic aspects of the medium. As the game unexpectedly began to grow in popularity, Bogost also used Cow Clicker to parody other recent gaming trends, such as gamification, educational apps, and alternate reality games. >Some critics praised Cow Clicker for its dissection of the common mechanics of social network games and viewed it as a commentary on how social games affect people. https://qz.com/34024/life-really-is-a-game-with-a-lot-of-clicks-and-then-you-die/ https://qz.com/34024/life-really-is-a-game-with-a-lot-of-cli... >Life really is a game—with a lot of clicks—and then you die >Curiosity is just the latest in a series of social experiments that rely on user interactions with seemingly no point. Of course, Zynga is the king of this phenomenon, providing games full of sticky and addictive action that encourage more clicks for the sake of clicks. Arbitrary value becomes real value, even when it’s not meant to. Just ask Ian Bogost, who created the satirical social game Cow Clicker that went on to such absurd popularity that he felt compelled to continue developing it, trapping himself in an ironic loop that refuses to end. In Cow Clicker, you literally click one cow every six hours to collect Mooney, which lets you buy other cows to click on.
- yreg 6y ago
  Henderson didn't receive money since Godus was not profitable — which is not surprising, since it wasn't that good. I don't think it's fair to call a developer a `serial liar` when they say they are working on a great game and then fail. Failing is commonplace.
  - Causality1 6y ago
    That is not true. Henderson was promised a role as "God of gods" and one percent of revenue during his tenure. Molyneux simply decided not to implement the role of God of gods in the game and gave Henderson nothing. In his BAFTA acceptance speech he admitted he "makes up game features on the spot to keep game journalists from falling asleep". Peter Molyneux is so full of shit his eyes are brown.
  - DonHopkins 6y ago
    It's totally fair, and Causality1's GP comment is spot on and unfairly downvoted. See the links in my other post. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24380281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24380281
- LoSboccacc 6y ago
  yeah, he had great ideas and vision, but delivery was often shoddy, inconsistent or resulted in outright annoying mechanics/sections (guildmaster combat multiplier suggestions on repeat) I wouldn't outright call them lies tho, probably more like he was asking a little too much from that age technology.
- whereistimbo 6y ago
  I read the interview in rockpaperscissors and he seemed like a good faith person. The Godus game, well he put it in Kickstarter, and he actually filled most of the promises, but as you should expect from Kickstarter, any pledge should be viewed as bet. People that know Molyneux better won't give pledges as he loves overestimating and overhyping things. Nevertheless, the interview teached him to be more careful when making estimates and promises.
  - DonHopkins 6y ago
    Nope, he didn't learn a thing. >Feb 3, 2016: Serial over-promiser Peter Molyneux promises to stop over-promising. Designer breaks a year of self-imposed press exile with reflective interview. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/02/serial-over-promiser-peter-molyneux-promises-to-stop-over-promising/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/02/serial-over-promiser-... He should have kept his earlier promise from a year earlier, and never spoken to the press again: >Feb 13, 2015: Peter Molyneux interview: 'It's over, I will not speak to the press again'. The veteran game designer is at the centre of a raging controversy over his new game Godus. He says he is finished with the press. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/13/peter-molyneux-game-designer-interview-godus https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/13/peter-mol...
- b0rsuk 6y ago
  He's completely right about hero worship. The article is titled "Bullfrog after Populous", but it leaves an impression Bullfrog was one person. Literally not a single other employee is mentioned by name! There are around 36 paragraphs in the article* and 9 do not contain the word Molyneux. Sure the guy was talented, but quite possibly a credit-hogging narcissist too. And an effective one. * not counting blockquotes by you-know-who
ricardo81 6y ago
Powermonger was a cracking game, played it on the Amiga. Definitely unique graphics of the time, decent gameplay. I remember that and Mega lo Mania being great games of that time and genre. Populous I never got into that much, seemed like Elite in the procedurally generated sense but with Elite it was less obvious.
- stOneskull 6y ago
  oh man, megalomania.. like nuclear war, so simple but so fun..
billpg 6y ago
"How do you play this game?" "The area shown has lots of hills and valleys. Your first job is to raise and lower the land to make it flat." "That's the game?" "Just for the first few minutes."
jslakro 6y ago
Just one piece of art that I miss in the article https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullfrog_Productions#/media/Fichier%3ABullfrog_Productions_Logo.jpeg https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullfrog_Productions#/media/...
richardjdare 6y ago
When people ask me what game developer I'd like to work for I used to say either Lucasfilm Games in 1987 or Bullfrog in 1990. Bullfrog had a huge amount of prestige amongst Amiga gamers. It might not look like it now, but everything they did appeared original and innovative at the time. Peter Molyneux was seemingly up there with Sid Meier as one of the great designers of the era. It was only later that he soured his reputation. I remember Bullfrog's programming tutorials in Amiga format [0]. If that was all you had (it was all i had) then it wasn't enough to let you write your own games or learn enough to get a job. I got my parents to buy me a book on 68000 assembly to go with it, only to find that the Devpac assembler from the tutorial didn't come with any of the OS include files, so I couldn't get past the second chapter. These kinds of setbacks were typical. When I think back to those days, I loved the Amiga community and magazines, I loved the seemingly accessible, informal world of game development, but it was so damn hard to just climb the first step and learn to code if you didn't have much money. [0] https://archive.org/details/AmigaFormatIssue039199210_201901/page/n61/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/AmigaFormatIssue039199210_201901...
- mikorym 6y ago
  > Bullfrog had a huge amount of prestige amongst Amiga gamers. It might not look like it now, but everything they did appeared original and innovative at the time. To me, Bullfrog equaled Syndicate Wars, and even just that is reason enough to praise them. I never played the other games, and I'm sure they were great too.
- paloaltokid 6y ago
  Almost all my favorite games as a kid were from Bullfrog. They had so many great titles back in those days. Dungeon Keeper, Theme Park, Theme Hospital, Syndicate. Many hours spent!
- joper90 6y ago
  That was exactly the same process including devpac (On a cover disk) that I went thru. Flashbacks...
- bartread 6y ago
  When I was 15 I actually spoke to Peter Molyneux on the phone a couple of times. In year 11 we had to organise our own work experience, and I decided I wanted to try to do mine at Bullfrog - this would have been 1991. My friend Chris and I had started fiddling around with building games using STOS and AMOS on the Atari ST and Amiga, and so I asked him if he wanted to try to get in as well. We talked to our form tutor about it. He was very supportive, got the deputy head involved, and they let us make some phone calls (a big deal for schoolkids at the time) to try to get in touch with Bullfrog. We didn't get anywhere with Electronic Arts, their publisher at the time, who flatly refused to give us Bullfrog's contact details, but then I decided to phone up Amiga Format, explained what we were trying to do, and we ended up speaking to one of their staff writers or editors who gave us Bullfrog's number straight away. A totally surreal experience then occurred as I rang the number for Bullfrog, asked to speak to Peter Molyneux, somebody gave him the phone and we ended up talking. After explaning to him that Chris and I were looking for work experience, I handed the phone to my form tutor who verified the whole story and, long and the short of it, Peter Molyneux was totally up for us coming on board for a couple of weeks. Absolutely unbelievable and therefore, in my eyes, regardless of what has happened since, the guy is and will always remain a legend. Here's where the story gets a little sad though, at least for me. I hadn't mentioned this scheme to my parents because I thought they'd poo-poo the idea before I'd even started, and I just didn't want to deal with the argument and the discouragement. I thought it would be better to see if we could get anywhere with it, and then talk to them about it if it worked out. So I did talk to them and, long story short, they wouldn't let me go and stay up in Guildford (I grew up in Dorset). But Chris's parents did let him go, so my final conversation with Peter Molyneux was to thank him very much for the opportunity, apologise that I couldn't come after all, but let him know that Chris was still going to come. So at least one of us had a great time at Bullfrog, and I think it was probably the coolest piece of work experience anyone in our year group did. For my placement I was instead a teaching assistant in a local middle school, which was still pretty fun, but not as much as working at Bullfrog! --- EDIT: I've added the below in response to a reply on this comment, but I thought worth including it here as well to round out the story because I don't want to give an unbalanced view of the situation. This whole idea of work experience at Bullfrog was always a long shot. I grew up poor. So I was disappointed that my folks said no, but there is no way they could have afforded to pay for a couple of weeks' accommodation for me in Guildford (and I obviously didn't have the money). In my heart of hearts, I knew that all along. Really I think I just wanted to see if it could possibly work[0]. It's also worth pointing out that whilst they didn't let me do that - and disagreements between stroppy teenagers and their parents are hardly unique - they did help me in a lot of other ways, and made plenty of sacrifices for my benefit, for which I will always be grateful. [0] Of course, if I'd really had some hustle about me I'd have taken a more bullish approach to the setback and gone on some sort of fundraising drive.
kaidon 6y ago
If this caught your interest, I highly recommend the Kim Justice youtube series on Molyneux. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAuvaAGnqQw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAuvaAGnqQw
- zantana 6y ago
  I was just watching another mostly Molyneux centered documentary: 30 Years of God Game History | Populous, Dungeon Keeper, Black & White, Spore and more https://youtu.be/gt4-tBFIcsI https://youtu.be/gt4-tBFIcsI
lubesGordi 6y ago
The flamethrower in Syndicate was the best. I can still hear the screams. Also being able to 'persuade' large groups of people to form a human-crowd shield was quite delightful.
- sharken 6y ago
  Indeed, and while it sounds very violent, Syndicate is an awesome game that still holds up extremely well.
- dddw 6y ago
  Also the music was great
bratsche 6y ago
I really loved Powermonger when I was a kid. I'm surprised it didn't take off to be more popular than it was.
- zantana 6y ago
  Yes, there were so many little details like looking for pigeons leaving to see if there is a spy in your town.
seanwilson 6y ago
> For all the changes it evinced over what had come before, Syndicate was a typical Peter Molyneux game in other ways. It started out thoroughly entrancing, but went on way too long, with only a handful of fixed mission types on offer as you slowly — very slowly — took over the world. By the mid-game, you had discovered most of the cool gear and cybernetic enhancements, and what had started out fresh and exciting had begun to turn into a bit of a grind. Thus Syndicate became another Molyneux game that far more players started than finished. I'm not following this part, and a similar comment with Magic Carpet. I completed both games and never had this feeling at the time. There's enough new stuff and variety in the missions to keep it interesting until the end. > At bottom, Theme Park is a nasty, cynical little game, amoral if not actively immoral — a game where your concern isn’t with the happiness of your guests at all, but strictly with the amount of money you can extract from them; a profitable theme park with miserable patrons is not only possible but the only practical road to success. This is the kind of game where you over-salt the patrons’ fries to get them to buy more soda, which cups you stuff to the brim with ice to… well, you get the picture. I just took it as silly fun as opposed to some kind of social commentary.
- dleslie 6y ago
  > I just took it as silly fun as opposed to some kind of social commentary. But capitalism bad! Seriously, though, I wonder about folks who are incapable of imagining a duality of goals: both earning profit and maximizing guest happiness. It's not nasty or cynical to earn a profit if doing so involves improving the well being of others.
  - seanwilson 6y ago
    The game is famous though for the trick of adding lots of salt to food to make the visitors spend more on drinks, which isn't improving well being. I'd bet on the designers adding this because it was a fun and amusing gameplay mechanic over them trying to say something about capitalism however. Similarly, people would build parks that were super dangerous, or create areas that set off chain reactions of visitors throwing up everywhere. It's a fun sandbox.
shawnz 6y ago
No mention of my favourite game of all time Theme Hospital, or project lead Mark Webley :( Nor the company he and Molyneux started which lead to the widely popular game Fable
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  Barf cascades! ;)
dleslie 6y ago
Hi-Octane remains one of my favourite racers, and Syndicate Wars (yes, post-EA purchase) is still a fantastically fun game.
- dividuum 6y ago
  Hi-Octane was great. And it was built in just 6 weeks[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi-Octane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi-Octane
untog 6y ago
I have to say, I loved Theme Park more than the author did. Even at the age of 12 (I think?) when I got it I understood the cynical take it took on the whole industry and found it endlessly entertaining. I haven’t replayed it since (and judging by the article, won’t!) but I’ve got a lot of happy memories. By comparison Rollercoaster Tycoon never grabbed me, despite the fact that I enjoyed Transport Tycoon a lot. It just didn’t have the spark Theme Park had.
- adanto6840 6y ago
  Same here. I tried to replicate the experience when developing SimAirport; I'm happy with the way the game turned out overall, though there will always be lots of things I want to tweak/change/improve. That said, Theme Park was and still is probably the most memorable & engaging gameplay experience I've ever had. I can still vividly recall building the "water slide" around my park to improve guest happiness, etc. Many prefer Theme Hospital or similar, but Theme Park will always be the game that really had an impact on me far more than any other game ever has.
  - wolco 6y ago
    Love SimAirport
  - LoSboccacc 6y ago
    I knew it must have been a man of culture behind it, sim airport strikes that nostalgic cord of mine like few other modern tycoons
  - jon-wood 6y ago
    I hadn’t heard of SimAirport, but you’ve just made a customer, very much looking forward to playing it this evening.
nfoz 6y ago
I played a bunch of Populous on Amiga as a young child, thinking a lot about ideas of God and civilization. It was a very unique experience for me to play that game; an awesome and terrifying feeling. It didn't explain anything. You push a button, sometimes it does nothing (not enough mana or whatever), sometimes the whole earth would shake and lives are destroyed. The feeling of satisfaction when castles are formed. I remember the launcher desktop icon would be a hut. But when you double-click it turns into the castle. So friggin cool. Just the sense of mystery behind it all.
- zantana 6y ago
  The early EA games on the Amiga really had some magic about them, down to the box designs and the tone of their ads. It really felt like a whole new era with new possibilities was on the horizon.
- agumonkey 6y ago
  > mystery a concept that is probably comatose in the current era
pixelpoet 6y ago
Peter Molyneux cut my hair once at a Friday meeting in 2003 while I was interning at Lionhead on Black and White 2. It was a very interesting company, full of brilliant people. Demis Hassabis wasn't there anymore, but Alex Evans was, and he was my demoscene programming idol at the time. I didn't hesitate to get both their autographs before going back home!
- lubonay 6y ago
  ...cut your hair?
  - sdenton4 6y ago
    I'm envisioning something like the hair cut scene in 'Russian Doll.'
  - pixelpoet 6y ago
    There were a bunch of internal mailing lists including the "water cooler" lhsocial, and one day (I was 19, please forgive me) I wrote that I had no idea where to get a hairdresser and anyone with scissors is welcome to have a go. So he called me out in the middle of a Friday all hands meeting and, well, kept his side of the deal :)
    - bovermyer 6y ago
      That is so cool. I love serendipitous stuff like this.
- DrPhish 6y ago
  Alex Evans is statix/acme? As I never was able to go to a democompo (rural west-coast Canadian upbringing), I have trouble picturing all these demoscene heroes of my youth as actual people... Acme's 303 is one of my favourite demos of all time. Legend It must have been amazing to intern with him!
  - pixelpoet 6y ago
Krasnol 6y ago
I used to hear Magic Carpet sounds in TV shows and movies quite often once. Not anymore though.
- MontagFTB 6y ago
  Yes - the speeding "whoosh" sound reminds me of it every time: https://youtu.be/m3zsPl4Ampw?t=607 https://youtu.be/m3zsPl4Ampw?t=607
  - Krasnol 6y ago
    Yes. That was it! I always wondered how that happened. No copyright?
    - corey_moncure 6y ago
      There were sound effect samplers that went around on CD back in those days. Presumably purchasing the CD came with a license to use the effects in your projects. There was also a wind noise sound that found its way into many different game and motion picture productions that I always instantly recognized.
      - arprocter 6y ago
        I remember the pig noise (farm?) from Warcraft 2 would crop up in all sorts of random places
    - fredoralive 6y ago
      There are various sound effects libraries that offer premade effects clearable with simple terms. So it’s simply different teams taking the same sound off a library CD / website.
    - egypturnash 6y ago
      The life of sound effects is a strange thing, with its own semi-commercial ecosystem. Read about The Wilheim Scream (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_scream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_scream) for a glimpse into how they move from one production to another.
djsumdog 6y ago
> new genre which the media labelled the “god game” I haven't picked up PC Gamer in a while, but I remember a few years back, all the "Sim" and "Tycoon" type games were under the genre: Management
- LoSboccacc 6y ago
  iirc populous was in the strategy genre at review time
- myself248 6y ago
  From now on, I shall think of "prayer" as "speaking to the manager".
- svachalek 6y ago
  Yeah, like a lot of genres it didn't end up collecting enough memorable entries to stay a distinct genre over the decades. Was definitely a thing for a while though.
mothsonasloth 6y ago
I wish they had gone into to talk about Dungeon Keeper. "Micro piglets stalk your dungeon, beware!"
kebman 6y ago
For me, Syndicate really changed my life. I had a Commodore 486 SLC, with 2 Mb RAM. But I'd seen the game at my friend's house, so I knew that I needed this game in my life. There was only one thing to do, and that was to kill sweet pink piggy, and off to the store I went to buy 2 more megs of RAM. And then... Minigun-toting cyborgs!
marcus_holmes 6y ago
Populous, Powermonger, Magic Carpet, loved them all. Dungeon Keeper (which the article doesn't mention) is still one of my top 10 games. Black and White... OK, yeah, I enjoyed them, but it always felt like the full experience wasn't developed. It talked the talk but never walked the walk. then... Godus. Yeah. Good concept, I played > 50 hours on it. but it never delivered at all. It's like the more able the hardware and software was to deliver Molyneux's vision, the less deliverable his vision was.
- Traster 6y ago
  I'm not sure it's to do with more capable software or hardware. Instead it was far more about economic incentives. When Molyneux was earlier in his career he had strong constraints from his bosses and from his publishers. This forced the compromises needed to actually deliver achievable visions. As his reputation grew and he had more and more power in those relationships he was less and less constrained to adhere to an achievable vision. By the time of Black and White core parts of the game were just unbalanced and the economics of the game were broken because it was busy with the creature gimick. By the time you got to 22 cans he owned the company, he didn't need a publisher, hell he could just kickstarter the games. So suddenly all bets were off, he could make any promise he wanted and there was no one around to actually force him to deliver something. I don't think Molyneux would've created Populous if he had had the reputation he has today. He would, and did, create Godus instead.
- zantana 6y ago
  I feel his strength was being an endless fountain of interesting ideas combined with ability to inspire lots of hard work from his development team. I forget if it was Dungeon Keeper or Black and White where they talked to the development team while he was on a junket and they had no idea about of a bunch of the features he was promising. Ultimately I think he had a really talented team at Bullfrog who slowly burned out and over time people were less willing to kill themselves on death marches trying to carry out his whims.
- detritus 6y ago
  > Godus. Yeah. Good concept, I played > 50 hours on it. but it never delivered at all. That was a painful year or so. So many restarts and hopeful explorations only for it to.. never in any useful way ever give the game it promised. A shame, as the basic mechanics were seemingly all there - I never could wrap my head around what went wrong. The worst of it though is I now can't stand to listen to a childhood hero's bullshit. It's ok, I still have Populous II and Syndicate on WinUAE
AndrewDucker 6y ago
It astounds me that there isn't a mobile version of Populous. It seems like the perfect interface for it, and I can't understand why there wouldn't be a market for it.
- detritus 6y ago
  I think this is what they really intended Godus to become - a sort of idle clicky grind game with pleasing, but essentially shallow, interaction, and no more. Unfortunately, some of us were caught up in Molyneaux's breathless inflatory hype and thought it was going to be Populous X. - ed
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  Because it would be too tempting to shake the phone and brutally kill all your minions.
boomskats 6y ago
Ahh I've gotta find my buddy Glenn and tell him the game he did the artwork for, artwork which Royal Mail then minted _on a stamp_, is top of HN!
boomskats 6y ago
So, I don't have much else to add to the discussion, apart from that my company is located in a co-working space in Guildford, in an office one floor directly below where the Bullfrog offices moved after Populous. We do have their original floormat [0], and a lot of stories, courtesy of the original Glenn Corpes who worked on the artwork for that game. [0] https://imgur.com/a/YBzp0tc https://imgur.com/a/YBzp0tc
29athrowaway 6y ago
Peter made such great games: Populous, Dungeon Keeper, Black and White.
coderholic 6y ago
When I was 16 I beta-tested Black & White at Lionhead Studios, and met Peter Molyneux and his team. They were my heroes at the time, as I dreamt of one day being a game developer. I stayed by myself in a B&B, testing the game all day, reading my coding books and copies of EDGE magazine :) I remember Peter telling his team that if the game went well he'd take the whole team (around 40 people, IIRC) on a big yacht. It was all very exciting! Peter came and chatted with me and the other tests (most of who were about 10, and friends of the kids of the other developers), and asked about my interest in programming. I told him I'd been working on a snakes like game, and he said he'd love to look at the code, which sadly I didn't have (no laptops back in those days, and I didn't bring a floppy). I never ended up becoming a game developer. I discovered web development, and startups, and never looked back :)
Vaslo 6y ago
Have there been any recent games as good as populous? I was thinking about this and how good the game Dungeon Keeper were
- stevenicr 6y ago
  Empire Earth II (and I guess one as well) - is a similar experience that I have enjoyed for many hours since retiring the Amiga.. not so modern these days sadly. I found one of the cdroms for it not long ago. If someone would please make Empire Earth III happen, it would be greatly appreciated.
  - brnt 6y ago
    Empire Earth III did happen. But even the studio who made it tried to bury any trace of it. It was huge flop.
    - stevenicr 6y ago
      So we need an EE 4 then! EE 1 and 2 were really good and I'd prefer to play them over most games I've looked into since. Wonder what similar / modern current RTS would be close?
pm90 6y ago
I expected to see Dungeon Keeper on that list. A remarkably cheeky, dark and funny game which I played way too much as a kid.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- xtracto 6y ago
  Yeah! Dungeon Keeper is the first game I played from bullfrog
- seanwilson 6y ago
  I liked a lot about Dungeon Keeper but there was just zero strategy or challenge to it. The combat ruined it for me - if someone invaded your dungeon, all you had to do was pick up 20 odd high-level monsters and drop them on top of the invader. All the monster stats, spells, special abilities etc. became meaningless. Not sure how it would work with RTS style movement or even turn based combat but being able to instantly teleport your units to where you needed them didn't make any sense to me in terms of game design.
  - b0rsuk 6y ago
    Yeah, the combat was pretty much an afterthought. They didn't even bother to rework it in the sequel, they just added a token nuisance in the form of monster dropping stun.
DonHopkins 6y ago
I love his earlier games (especially DK), and his games deeply influenced The Sims (especially Theme Hospital, which I stayed late at work playing obsessively into the night while working on The Sims architectural tools), but how Peter Molyneux neglected that poor kid who he promised to make a god was unnecessarily and unforgivably cruel. How hard would have it been for him to simply pick up the phone and apologize? >The Game Designer Who Promised to Make a Man God. It's not going so well. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nze9gg/the-game-designer-who-promised-to-make-players-gods https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nze9gg/the-game-designer-... >The God who Peter Molyneux forgot. For Curiosity winner Bryan Henderson, the prize inside the cube has been anything but life-changing. https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-02-11-the-god-who-peter-molyneux-forgot https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-02-11-the-god-who-pe... >The god who Peter Molyneux forgot wants his cut of a new game bundle to go to charity instead. "It felt very bizarre to me." https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-02-26-bryan-henderson-the-god-who-peter-molyneux-forgot-wants-his-cut-of-a-new-game-bundle-to-go-to-charity-instead https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-02-26-bryan-henderso... >The Man Who Promised Too Much https://kotaku.com/the-man-who-promised-too-much-1537352493 https://kotaku.com/the-man-who-promised-too-much-1537352493 >Serial over-promiser Peter Molyneux promises to stop over-promising. Designer breaks a year of self-imposed press exile with reflective interview. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/02/serial-over-promiser-peter-molyneux-promises-to-stop-over-promising/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/02/serial-over-promiser-... >Peter Molyneux's God Game Is Looking Like Yet Another Disappointment https://www.wired.com/2015/02/molyneux-godus-kickstarter/ https://www.wired.com/2015/02/molyneux-godus-kickstarter/ >Peter Molyneux interview: 'It's over, I will not speak to the press again'. The veteran game designer is at the centre of a raging controversy over his new game Godus. He says he is finished with the press. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/13/peter-molyneux-game-designer-interview-godus https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/13/peter-mol... >The Lesson of Peter Molyneux. “Sooner or later the bullshit has to stop.” https://techcrunch.com/2015/02/15/the-lesson-of-peter-molyneux/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/02/15/the-lesson-of-peter-molyne... >Why Peter Molyneux's Godus is Such a Disaster https://www.techspot.com/article/964-peter-molyneux-godus-disaster/ https://www.techspot.com/article/964-peter-molyneux-godus-di...
sien 6y ago
Flood is treated unfairly. It has a nice difficulty increase and is an enjoyable platformer with a few twists. Water fills the levels gradually and you can stick on most of the walls. It has a really neat aesthetic too. I've actually gone back and played the game and it's held up surprisingly well. Long play video of the game : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EbGjm_x808 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EbGjm_x808
Quarrelsome 6y ago
Speaking of weird old and unique games, does anyone remember Lords of Chaos? Its a 1v1 Wizard game where you spend the early game summoning creatures, exploring the map and picking up ingredients before brewing potions and fighting your enemy before the map explodes around you.
- Malcx 6y ago
  Loved that as a kid on the spectrum, a great sequel to chaos. Iirc you could actually hot seat 4 players on some maps? Check out chaos reborn on steam for a reasonable modern update.
Smerity 6y ago
A random fun note about how Peter Molyneux was able to start Bullfrog, sourced from Wikipedia[0] and mentioned in this blog's previous post[1]: Molyneux tried to sell a game years earlier but failed so instead started a baked bean export company called Taurus Impex Limited. Commodore International mistook it for Torus, an established networking software company, and offered to provide Molyneux with ten free (still unreleased) Amiga systems. Taurus then designed a database system for the Amiga and the profits let Molyneux and Les Edgar found Bullfrog Productions. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Molyneux#Early_career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Molyneux#Early_career [1]: https://www.filfre.net/2016/06/peter-molyneuxs-kingdom-in-a-box/ https://www.filfre.net/2016/06/peter-molyneuxs-kingdom-in-a-...
ekianjo 6y ago
I don't understand why the article claims that Theme Park's view on such parks is cynical, as if "theme parks did not focus on user experience". They don't. Every single theme park out there has hours of waiting lines to do just anything. How is that even a good experience to begin with?
- koheripbal 6y ago
  This comment is such a broad generalization that it boarders on useless.
bovermyer 6y ago
Populous II was one of the first video games I remember loving wholeheartedly. Molyneux rolled big dice and often lost. When he won, though, he won big.
DonHopkins 6y ago
Peter Molydeux: https://twitter.com/petermolydeux https://twitter.com/petermolydeux https://twitter.com/PeterMolydeux/status/1287527427355410439 https://twitter.com/PeterMolydeux/status/1287527427355410439 @PeterMolydeux: Imagine a dating sim where you answer questions about yourself but then find you’re playing as the love interest. You discover that ‘you’ are actually an amazing and wonderful person and fall in love with yourself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Molydeux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Molydeux Peter Molydeux is a Twitter account presented as a parody of the game designer Peter Molyneux. Created by game artist Adam Capone in 2009, it posts audacious game design ideas in the style of Molyneux. The account presents Molyneux as a tragicomic character with unrelenting, creative ideas that are continually received by an apathetic audience. Over time, the account evolved from a Molyneux-based persona into a list of potential game concepts. A common theme of the tweets is the untapped potential of emotional game experiences. Molyneux came to appreciate the parody, and has since met Capone in person. I imagined him going through the supermarket with a digital recorder and coming up with ideas while shopping ... And over dinner, he's rearranging his peas and saying. 'Is this giving me a game idea?' And his wife is saying, 'Shut up, Peter. Just eat your food.' –Capone (Molydeux) on Molyneux Some of the parody account's proposals include: A racing game in which the player controls the road instead of the vehicle A Kinect game in which the player must cry to open a gate An eight-person online multiplayer game in which each player controls one leg of an octopus The final segment of a war game, in which the player pauses in silence at the tombstone of each KIA recruit A 3D adventure game in which the amnesiac player awakens in a museum with a room dedicated to each year of the character's life The player holds a radioactive baby, which acts as a torch in a dark environment; rocking the baby increases its luminescence The player pretends to be blind and must walk into objects to avoid suspicion A bear must hug people in order to live, but crushes the people he hugs A pigeon carries sentimental objects to businessmen to persuade them not to kill themselves A divorced father sneaks into his family house to help with chores without alerting them When the player kills henchmen in one game, the player sees recurring images of those henchmen's crying children in an unrelated sports video game A version of Street Fighter in which streets fight other streets
- toast0 6y ago
  > An eight-person online multiplayer game in which each player controls one leg of an octopus This could be fun. Depends on the controls and lag. Offline mode please!
dep_b 6y ago
Nobody liked Flood? I loved it! Dropping tons of bouncing grenades into a shaft was fun!
godot 6y ago
Theme Park was one of my favorite games as a child. I enjoyed it immensely building out a theme park at first, for a long time. I constantly didn't do well though and always end up pretty much bankrupting on my first park, let alone expanding to other cities. One day I read some sort of cheat/guide that to have a profitable park, you build Duck Shoots, and make the prizes worth less than the cost for each play, and make the winning percentages 100%. I put the Duck Shoot right at the entrance of the park and build the rest of the park around it. Every guest who comes in plays the Duck Shoot first and is happy they won, and I make a profit from every guest, and everyone is happy with a balloon prize. This was my first lesson about its immorality. Strangely, the game became less fun after that. I was able to make profitable parks and expand to other cities. Then I stopped playing; and over the years, every time I tried to pick back up the game again, I find myself going through the motions of setting up that Duck Shoot trick because it was the only way I know to make money running a park, and then I quickly lose interest after that because all the researches and stuff were just a lot of work and it was boring having the same 4 rides until researches complete. It was a little bit like real life...
snicky 6y ago
As little kids we used to play Theme Park with a friend of mine. After we got bored with the game we used to create parks called sth like "Filthy sh*tter" and try to make them the most hideous places ever. No cleaning service, garbage lying all around, kids throwing up on the pathways and so on. For some reason this felt as rewarding as building a fully functional park...
locusm 6y ago
Syndicate was their best game - thanks Sean Cooper
DonHopkins 6y ago
Where is Project Milo? We may have Final Fantasy 15 and The Last Guardian, but who cares when mankind's greatest achievement is still nowhere to be found? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czcSxnBlW0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czcSxnBlW0A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Milo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Milo
amai 6y ago
I still remember beating Zeus in Level 999 of Populous II by spreading the plague to all his followers. This memory feels strangely up-to-date in our days of a world wide pandemic.

321 points by doppp 6y ago

There's also the "Populous Classic Game Postmortem" from GDC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIaK6y5kdro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIaK6y5kdro Tons more vids like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/

Causality1 6y ago

There's a little too much hero worship in this article for my taste. Molyneux is not some wide-eyed dreamer whose hopes keep getting dashed by the mean nasty world. He's a serial liar who may have started out simply being too hopeful but has spent the last fifteen years lying to gain investors and happily screwing as many people on the back end as he can get away with. For example, he built the entire premise and hype over his Cube mobile game about having one single winner who could share or keep the prize. Bryan Henderson won it and the prize turned out to be a major role in Molyneux's next game Godus. Except giving out prizes doesn't make Peter any money so he told Henderson to go fuck himself and never contacted him again.

sumtechguy 6y ago
What was interesting was the cube game was actually kinda fun to play in a odd way. They could have kept that going for awhile. Like reset the cube every few months or something. Different shapes etc. Godus started of interesting but went sideways quickly and tried to turn itself into a pay to play game. No whales showed up for that because that is not what people bought. Then the resets of game progress every few weeks and people gave up on it.
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  His Cube game was the epitome of dopamine addiction games, all that was wrong with Zynga/Facebook games, the rage at the time. Nothing at all original about that: a total cop-out of game design. When Peter Molyneux gave his insufferably vainglorious keynote presentation of Cube at the Unity3D Unite conference at Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam, I chatted him up afterwards and attempted to troll him by guessing that the big surprise in the box was a cow. I don't think he got the point that I was trying to make an ironic reference to Ian Bogost's Cow Clicker, which is a parody of and social commentary on dopamine games. I tried to explain the joke to him, and he still didn't get it. At least Ian Bogost had the self awareness to design Cow Clicker in the service of making a critical statement about game design, and the capacity of shame to be embarrassed when it was an accidental run-away success. Unite 2012 : Keynote - Founders & Peter Molyneux (The BS starts at 1h 8m 21s -- It's been 8 years since I saw this live, and it's much worse than I remembered, especially now knowing how it turned out!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24AY4fJ66xA&t=1h08m21s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24AY4fJ66xA&t=1h08m21s >1h 48m 06s, with arms spread out like Jesus H Christ on a crucifix: "Because we can dynamically put on ANY surface of the cube ANY image we like. So THAT's how we're going to surprise the world, is by giving clues about what's in the middle later on." http://www.cowclicker.com/ http://www.cowclicker.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Clicker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Clicker >In the wake of a controversial speech by Zynga's president at the Game Developers Choice Awards in 2010, Bogost developed Cow Clicker for a presentation at a New York University seminar on social gaming in July 2010. The game was created to demonstrate what Bogost felt were the most commonly abused mechanics of social games, such as the promotion of social interaction and monetization rather than the artistic aspects of the medium. As the game unexpectedly began to grow in popularity, Bogost also used Cow Clicker to parody other recent gaming trends, such as gamification, educational apps, and alternate reality games. >Some critics praised Cow Clicker for its dissection of the common mechanics of social network games and viewed it as a commentary on how social games affect people. https://qz.com/34024/life-really-is-a-game-with-a-lot-of-clicks-and-then-you-die/ https://qz.com/34024/life-really-is-a-game-with-a-lot-of-cli... >Life really is a game—with a lot of clicks—and then you die >Curiosity is just the latest in a series of social experiments that rely on user interactions with seemingly no point. Of course, Zynga is the king of this phenomenon, providing games full of sticky and addictive action that encourage more clicks for the sake of clicks. Arbitrary value becomes real value, even when it’s not meant to. Just ask Ian Bogost, who created the satirical social game Cow Clicker that went on to such absurd popularity that he felt compelled to continue developing it, trapping himself in an ironic loop that refuses to end. In Cow Clicker, you literally click one cow every six hours to collect Mooney, which lets you buy other cows to click on.
yreg 6y ago
Henderson didn't receive money since Godus was not profitable — which is not surprising, since it wasn't that good. I don't think it's fair to call a developer a `serial liar` when they say they are working on a great game and then fail. Failing is commonplace.
- Causality1 6y ago
  That is not true. Henderson was promised a role as "God of gods" and one percent of revenue during his tenure. Molyneux simply decided not to implement the role of God of gods in the game and gave Henderson nothing. In his BAFTA acceptance speech he admitted he "makes up game features on the spot to keep game journalists from falling asleep". Peter Molyneux is so full of shit his eyes are brown.
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  It's totally fair, and Causality1's GP comment is spot on and unfairly downvoted. See the links in my other post. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24380281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24380281
LoSboccacc 6y ago
yeah, he had great ideas and vision, but delivery was often shoddy, inconsistent or resulted in outright annoying mechanics/sections (guildmaster combat multiplier suggestions on repeat) I wouldn't outright call them lies tho, probably more like he was asking a little too much from that age technology.
whereistimbo 6y ago
I read the interview in rockpaperscissors and he seemed like a good faith person. The Godus game, well he put it in Kickstarter, and he actually filled most of the promises, but as you should expect from Kickstarter, any pledge should be viewed as bet. People that know Molyneux better won't give pledges as he loves overestimating and overhyping things. Nevertheless, the interview teached him to be more careful when making estimates and promises.
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  Nope, he didn't learn a thing. >Feb 3, 2016: Serial over-promiser Peter Molyneux promises to stop over-promising. Designer breaks a year of self-imposed press exile with reflective interview. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/02/serial-over-promiser-peter-molyneux-promises-to-stop-over-promising/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/02/serial-over-promiser-... He should have kept his earlier promise from a year earlier, and never spoken to the press again: >Feb 13, 2015: Peter Molyneux interview: 'It's over, I will not speak to the press again'. The veteran game designer is at the centre of a raging controversy over his new game Godus. He says he is finished with the press. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/13/peter-molyneux-game-designer-interview-godus https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/13/peter-mol...
b0rsuk 6y ago
He's completely right about hero worship. The article is titled "Bullfrog after Populous", but it leaves an impression Bullfrog was one person. Literally not a single other employee is mentioned by name! There are around 36 paragraphs in the article* and 9 do not contain the word Molyneux. Sure the guy was talented, but quite possibly a credit-hogging narcissist too. And an effective one. * not counting blockquotes by you-know-who

ricardo81 6y ago

Powermonger was a cracking game, played it on the Amiga. Definitely unique graphics of the time, decent gameplay. I remember that and Mega lo Mania being great games of that time and genre. Populous I never got into that much, seemed like Elite in the procedurally generated sense but with Elite it was less obvious.

stOneskull 6y ago
oh man, megalomania.. like nuclear war, so simple but so fun..

billpg 6y ago

"How do you play this game?" "The area shown has lots of hills and valleys. Your first job is to raise and lower the land to make it flat." "That's the game?" "Just for the first few minutes."

jslakro 6y ago

Just one piece of art that I miss in the article https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullfrog_Productions#/media/Fichier%3ABullfrog_Productions_Logo.jpeg https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullfrog_Productions#/media/...

richardjdare 6y ago

When people ask me what game developer I'd like to work for I used to say either Lucasfilm Games in 1987 or Bullfrog in 1990. Bullfrog had a huge amount of prestige amongst Amiga gamers. It might not look like it now, but everything they did appeared original and innovative at the time. Peter Molyneux was seemingly up there with Sid Meier as one of the great designers of the era. It was only later that he soured his reputation. I remember Bullfrog's programming tutorials in Amiga format [0]. If that was all you had (it was all i had) then it wasn't enough to let you write your own games or learn enough to get a job. I got my parents to buy me a book on 68000 assembly to go with it, only to find that the Devpac assembler from the tutorial didn't come with any of the OS include files, so I couldn't get past the second chapter. These kinds of setbacks were typical. When I think back to those days, I loved the Amiga community and magazines, I loved the seemingly accessible, informal world of game development, but it was so damn hard to just climb the first step and learn to code if you didn't have much money. [0] https://archive.org/details/AmigaFormatIssue039199210_201901/page/n61/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/AmigaFormatIssue039199210_201901...

mikorym 6y ago
> Bullfrog had a huge amount of prestige amongst Amiga gamers. It might not look like it now, but everything they did appeared original and innovative at the time. To me, Bullfrog equaled Syndicate Wars, and even just that is reason enough to praise them. I never played the other games, and I'm sure they were great too.
paloaltokid 6y ago
Almost all my favorite games as a kid were from Bullfrog. They had so many great titles back in those days. Dungeon Keeper, Theme Park, Theme Hospital, Syndicate. Many hours spent!
joper90 6y ago
That was exactly the same process including devpac (On a cover disk) that I went thru. Flashbacks...
bartread 6y ago
When I was 15 I actually spoke to Peter Molyneux on the phone a couple of times. In year 11 we had to organise our own work experience, and I decided I wanted to try to do mine at Bullfrog - this would have been 1991. My friend Chris and I had started fiddling around with building games using STOS and AMOS on the Atari ST and Amiga, and so I asked him if he wanted to try to get in as well. We talked to our form tutor about it. He was very supportive, got the deputy head involved, and they let us make some phone calls (a big deal for schoolkids at the time) to try to get in touch with Bullfrog. We didn't get anywhere with Electronic Arts, their publisher at the time, who flatly refused to give us Bullfrog's contact details, but then I decided to phone up Amiga Format, explained what we were trying to do, and we ended up speaking to one of their staff writers or editors who gave us Bullfrog's number straight away. A totally surreal experience then occurred as I rang the number for Bullfrog, asked to speak to Peter Molyneux, somebody gave him the phone and we ended up talking. After explaning to him that Chris and I were looking for work experience, I handed the phone to my form tutor who verified the whole story and, long and the short of it, Peter Molyneux was totally up for us coming on board for a couple of weeks. Absolutely unbelievable and therefore, in my eyes, regardless of what has happened since, the guy is and will always remain a legend. Here's where the story gets a little sad though, at least for me. I hadn't mentioned this scheme to my parents because I thought they'd poo-poo the idea before I'd even started, and I just didn't want to deal with the argument and the discouragement. I thought it would be better to see if we could get anywhere with it, and then talk to them about it if it worked out. So I did talk to them and, long story short, they wouldn't let me go and stay up in Guildford (I grew up in Dorset). But Chris's parents did let him go, so my final conversation with Peter Molyneux was to thank him very much for the opportunity, apologise that I couldn't come after all, but let him know that Chris was still going to come. So at least one of us had a great time at Bullfrog, and I think it was probably the coolest piece of work experience anyone in our year group did. For my placement I was instead a teaching assistant in a local middle school, which was still pretty fun, but not as much as working at Bullfrog! --- EDIT: I've added the below in response to a reply on this comment, but I thought worth including it here as well to round out the story because I don't want to give an unbalanced view of the situation. This whole idea of work experience at Bullfrog was always a long shot. I grew up poor. So I was disappointed that my folks said no, but there is no way they could have afforded to pay for a couple of weeks' accommodation for me in Guildford (and I obviously didn't have the money). In my heart of hearts, I knew that all along. Really I think I just wanted to see if it could possibly work[0]. It's also worth pointing out that whilst they didn't let me do that - and disagreements between stroppy teenagers and their parents are hardly unique - they did help me in a lot of other ways, and made plenty of sacrifices for my benefit, for which I will always be grateful. [0] Of course, if I'd really had some hustle about me I'd have taken a more bullish approach to the setback and gone on some sort of fundraising drive.

kaidon 6y ago

If this caught your interest, I highly recommend the Kim Justice youtube series on Molyneux. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAuvaAGnqQw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAuvaAGnqQw

zantana 6y ago
I was just watching another mostly Molyneux centered documentary: 30 Years of God Game History | Populous, Dungeon Keeper, Black & White, Spore and more https://youtu.be/gt4-tBFIcsI https://youtu.be/gt4-tBFIcsI

lubesGordi 6y ago

The flamethrower in Syndicate was the best. I can still hear the screams. Also being able to 'persuade' large groups of people to form a human-crowd shield was quite delightful.

sharken 6y ago
Indeed, and while it sounds very violent, Syndicate is an awesome game that still holds up extremely well.
dddw 6y ago
Also the music was great

bratsche 6y ago

I really loved Powermonger when I was a kid. I'm surprised it didn't take off to be more popular than it was.

zantana 6y ago
Yes, there were so many little details like looking for pigeons leaving to see if there is a spy in your town.

seanwilson 6y ago

> For all the changes it evinced over what had come before, Syndicate was a typical Peter Molyneux game in other ways. It started out thoroughly entrancing, but went on way too long, with only a handful of fixed mission types on offer as you slowly — very slowly — took over the world. By the mid-game, you had discovered most of the cool gear and cybernetic enhancements, and what had started out fresh and exciting had begun to turn into a bit of a grind. Thus Syndicate became another Molyneux game that far more players started than finished. I'm not following this part, and a similar comment with Magic Carpet. I completed both games and never had this feeling at the time. There's enough new stuff and variety in the missions to keep it interesting until the end. > At bottom, Theme Park is a nasty, cynical little game, amoral if not actively immoral — a game where your concern isn’t with the happiness of your guests at all, but strictly with the amount of money you can extract from them; a profitable theme park with miserable patrons is not only possible but the only practical road to success. This is the kind of game where you over-salt the patrons’ fries to get them to buy more soda, which cups you stuff to the brim with ice to… well, you get the picture. I just took it as silly fun as opposed to some kind of social commentary.

dleslie 6y ago
> I just took it as silly fun as opposed to some kind of social commentary. But capitalism bad! Seriously, though, I wonder about folks who are incapable of imagining a duality of goals: both earning profit and maximizing guest happiness. It's not nasty or cynical to earn a profit if doing so involves improving the well being of others.
- seanwilson 6y ago
  The game is famous though for the trick of adding lots of salt to food to make the visitors spend more on drinks, which isn't improving well being. I'd bet on the designers adding this because it was a fun and amusing gameplay mechanic over them trying to say something about capitalism however. Similarly, people would build parks that were super dangerous, or create areas that set off chain reactions of visitors throwing up everywhere. It's a fun sandbox.

shawnz 6y ago

No mention of my favourite game of all time Theme Hospital, or project lead Mark Webley :( Nor the company he and Molyneux started which lead to the widely popular game Fable

DonHopkins 6y ago
Barf cascades! ;)

dleslie 6y ago

Hi-Octane remains one of my favourite racers, and Syndicate Wars (yes, post-EA purchase) is still a fantastically fun game.

dividuum 6y ago
Hi-Octane was great. And it was built in just 6 weeks[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi-Octane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi-Octane

untog 6y ago

I have to say, I loved Theme Park more than the author did. Even at the age of 12 (I think?) when I got it I understood the cynical take it took on the whole industry and found it endlessly entertaining. I haven’t replayed it since (and judging by the article, won’t!) but I’ve got a lot of happy memories. By comparison Rollercoaster Tycoon never grabbed me, despite the fact that I enjoyed Transport Tycoon a lot. It just didn’t have the spark Theme Park had.

adanto6840 6y ago
Same here. I tried to replicate the experience when developing SimAirport; I'm happy with the way the game turned out overall, though there will always be lots of things I want to tweak/change/improve. That said, Theme Park was and still is probably the most memorable & engaging gameplay experience I've ever had. I can still vividly recall building the "water slide" around my park to improve guest happiness, etc. Many prefer Theme Hospital or similar, but Theme Park will always be the game that really had an impact on me far more than any other game ever has.
- wolco 6y ago
  Love SimAirport
- LoSboccacc 6y ago
  I knew it must have been a man of culture behind it, sim airport strikes that nostalgic cord of mine like few other modern tycoons
- jon-wood 6y ago
  I hadn’t heard of SimAirport, but you’ve just made a customer, very much looking forward to playing it this evening.

nfoz 6y ago

I played a bunch of Populous on Amiga as a young child, thinking a lot about ideas of God and civilization. It was a very unique experience for me to play that game; an awesome and terrifying feeling. It didn't explain anything. You push a button, sometimes it does nothing (not enough mana or whatever), sometimes the whole earth would shake and lives are destroyed. The feeling of satisfaction when castles are formed. I remember the launcher desktop icon would be a hut. But when you double-click it turns into the castle. So friggin cool. Just the sense of mystery behind it all.

zantana 6y ago
The early EA games on the Amiga really had some magic about them, down to the box designs and the tone of their ads. It really felt like a whole new era with new possibilities was on the horizon.
agumonkey 6y ago
> mystery a concept that is probably comatose in the current era

pixelpoet 6y ago

Peter Molyneux cut my hair once at a Friday meeting in 2003 while I was interning at Lionhead on Black and White 2. It was a very interesting company, full of brilliant people. Demis Hassabis wasn't there anymore, but Alex Evans was, and he was my demoscene programming idol at the time. I didn't hesitate to get both their autographs before going back home!

lubonay 6y ago
...cut your hair?
- sdenton4 6y ago
  I'm envisioning something like the hair cut scene in 'Russian Doll.'
- pixelpoet 6y ago
  There were a bunch of internal mailing lists including the "water cooler" lhsocial, and one day (I was 19, please forgive me) I wrote that I had no idea where to get a hairdresser and anyone with scissors is welcome to have a go. So he called me out in the middle of a Friday all hands meeting and, well, kept his side of the deal :)
  - bovermyer 6y ago
    That is so cool. I love serendipitous stuff like this.
DrPhish 6y ago
Alex Evans is statix/acme? As I never was able to go to a democompo (rural west-coast Canadian upbringing), I have trouble picturing all these demoscene heroes of my youth as actual people... Acme's 303 is one of my favourite demos of all time. Legend It must have been amazing to intern with him!
- pixelpoet 6y ago

Krasnol 6y ago

I used to hear Magic Carpet sounds in TV shows and movies quite often once. Not anymore though.

MontagFTB 6y ago
Yes - the speeding "whoosh" sound reminds me of it every time: https://youtu.be/m3zsPl4Ampw?t=607 https://youtu.be/m3zsPl4Ampw?t=607
- Krasnol 6y ago
  Yes. That was it! I always wondered how that happened. No copyright?
  - corey_moncure 6y ago
    There were sound effect samplers that went around on CD back in those days. Presumably purchasing the CD came with a license to use the effects in your projects. There was also a wind noise sound that found its way into many different game and motion picture productions that I always instantly recognized.
    - arprocter 6y ago
      I remember the pig noise (farm?) from Warcraft 2 would crop up in all sorts of random places
  - fredoralive 6y ago
    There are various sound effects libraries that offer premade effects clearable with simple terms. So it’s simply different teams taking the same sound off a library CD / website.
  - egypturnash 6y ago
    The life of sound effects is a strange thing, with its own semi-commercial ecosystem. Read about The Wilheim Scream (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_scream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_scream) for a glimpse into how they move from one production to another.

djsumdog 6y ago

> new genre which the media labelled the “god game” I haven't picked up PC Gamer in a while, but I remember a few years back, all the "Sim" and "Tycoon" type games were under the genre: Management

LoSboccacc 6y ago
iirc populous was in the strategy genre at review time
myself248 6y ago
From now on, I shall think of "prayer" as "speaking to the manager".
svachalek 6y ago
Yeah, like a lot of genres it didn't end up collecting enough memorable entries to stay a distinct genre over the decades. Was definitely a thing for a while though.

mothsonasloth 6y ago

I wish they had gone into to talk about Dungeon Keeper. "Micro piglets stalk your dungeon, beware!"

kebman 6y ago

For me, Syndicate really changed my life. I had a Commodore 486 SLC, with 2 Mb RAM. But I'd seen the game at my friend's house, so I knew that I needed this game in my life. There was only one thing to do, and that was to kill sweet pink piggy, and off to the store I went to buy 2 more megs of RAM. And then... Minigun-toting cyborgs!

marcus_holmes 6y ago

Populous, Powermonger, Magic Carpet, loved them all. Dungeon Keeper (which the article doesn't mention) is still one of my top 10 games. Black and White... OK, yeah, I enjoyed them, but it always felt like the full experience wasn't developed. It talked the talk but never walked the walk. then... Godus. Yeah. Good concept, I played > 50 hours on it. but it never delivered at all. It's like the more able the hardware and software was to deliver Molyneux's vision, the less deliverable his vision was.

Traster 6y ago
I'm not sure it's to do with more capable software or hardware. Instead it was far more about economic incentives. When Molyneux was earlier in his career he had strong constraints from his bosses and from his publishers. This forced the compromises needed to actually deliver achievable visions. As his reputation grew and he had more and more power in those relationships he was less and less constrained to adhere to an achievable vision. By the time of Black and White core parts of the game were just unbalanced and the economics of the game were broken because it was busy with the creature gimick. By the time you got to 22 cans he owned the company, he didn't need a publisher, hell he could just kickstarter the games. So suddenly all bets were off, he could make any promise he wanted and there was no one around to actually force him to deliver something. I don't think Molyneux would've created Populous if he had had the reputation he has today. He would, and did, create Godus instead.
zantana 6y ago
I feel his strength was being an endless fountain of interesting ideas combined with ability to inspire lots of hard work from his development team. I forget if it was Dungeon Keeper or Black and White where they talked to the development team while he was on a junket and they had no idea about of a bunch of the features he was promising. Ultimately I think he had a really talented team at Bullfrog who slowly burned out and over time people were less willing to kill themselves on death marches trying to carry out his whims.
detritus 6y ago
> Godus. Yeah. Good concept, I played > 50 hours on it. but it never delivered at all. That was a painful year or so. So many restarts and hopeful explorations only for it to.. never in any useful way ever give the game it promised. A shame, as the basic mechanics were seemingly all there - I never could wrap my head around what went wrong. The worst of it though is I now can't stand to listen to a childhood hero's bullshit. It's ok, I still have Populous II and Syndicate on WinUAE

AndrewDucker 6y ago

It astounds me that there isn't a mobile version of Populous. It seems like the perfect interface for it, and I can't understand why there wouldn't be a market for it.

detritus 6y ago
I think this is what they really intended Godus to become - a sort of idle clicky grind game with pleasing, but essentially shallow, interaction, and no more. Unfortunately, some of us were caught up in Molyneaux's breathless inflatory hype and thought it was going to be Populous X. - ed
DonHopkins 6y ago
Because it would be too tempting to shake the phone and brutally kill all your minions.

boomskats 6y ago

Ahh I've gotta find my buddy Glenn and tell him the game he did the artwork for, artwork which Royal Mail then minted _on a stamp_, is top of HN!

boomskats 6y ago

So, I don't have much else to add to the discussion, apart from that my company is located in a co-working space in Guildford, in an office one floor directly below where the Bullfrog offices moved after Populous. We do have their original floormat [0], and a lot of stories, courtesy of the original Glenn Corpes who worked on the artwork for that game. [0] https://imgur.com/a/YBzp0tc https://imgur.com/a/YBzp0tc

29athrowaway 6y ago

Peter made such great games: Populous, Dungeon Keeper, Black and White.

coderholic 6y ago

When I was 16 I beta-tested Black & White at Lionhead Studios, and met Peter Molyneux and his team. They were my heroes at the time, as I dreamt of one day being a game developer. I stayed by myself in a B&B, testing the game all day, reading my coding books and copies of EDGE magazine :) I remember Peter telling his team that if the game went well he'd take the whole team (around 40 people, IIRC) on a big yacht. It was all very exciting! Peter came and chatted with me and the other tests (most of who were about 10, and friends of the kids of the other developers), and asked about my interest in programming. I told him I'd been working on a snakes like game, and he said he'd love to look at the code, which sadly I didn't have (no laptops back in those days, and I didn't bring a floppy). I never ended up becoming a game developer. I discovered web development, and startups, and never looked back :)

Vaslo 6y ago

Have there been any recent games as good as populous? I was thinking about this and how good the game Dungeon Keeper were

stevenicr 6y ago
Empire Earth II (and I guess one as well) - is a similar experience that I have enjoyed for many hours since retiring the Amiga.. not so modern these days sadly. I found one of the cdroms for it not long ago. If someone would please make Empire Earth III happen, it would be greatly appreciated.
- brnt 6y ago
  Empire Earth III did happen. But even the studio who made it tried to bury any trace of it. It was huge flop.
  - stevenicr 6y ago
    So we need an EE 4 then! EE 1 and 2 were really good and I'd prefer to play them over most games I've looked into since. Wonder what similar / modern current RTS would be close?

pm90 6y ago

I expected to see Dungeon Keeper on that list. A remarkably cheeky, dark and funny game which I played way too much as a kid.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
xtracto 6y ago
Yeah! Dungeon Keeper is the first game I played from bullfrog
seanwilson 6y ago
I liked a lot about Dungeon Keeper but there was just zero strategy or challenge to it. The combat ruined it for me - if someone invaded your dungeon, all you had to do was pick up 20 odd high-level monsters and drop them on top of the invader. All the monster stats, spells, special abilities etc. became meaningless. Not sure how it would work with RTS style movement or even turn based combat but being able to instantly teleport your units to where you needed them didn't make any sense to me in terms of game design.
- b0rsuk 6y ago
  Yeah, the combat was pretty much an afterthought. They didn't even bother to rework it in the sequel, they just added a token nuisance in the form of monster dropping stun.

DonHopkins 6y ago

I love his earlier games (especially DK), and his games deeply influenced The Sims (especially Theme Hospital, which I stayed late at work playing obsessively into the night while working on The Sims architectural tools), but how Peter Molyneux neglected that poor kid who he promised to make a god was unnecessarily and unforgivably cruel. How hard would have it been for him to simply pick up the phone and apologize? >The Game Designer Who Promised to Make a Man God. It's not going so well. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nze9gg/the-game-designer-who-promised-to-make-players-gods https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nze9gg/the-game-designer-... >The God who Peter Molyneux forgot. For Curiosity winner Bryan Henderson, the prize inside the cube has been anything but life-changing. https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-02-11-the-god-who-peter-molyneux-forgot https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-02-11-the-god-who-pe... >The god who Peter Molyneux forgot wants his cut of a new game bundle to go to charity instead. "It felt very bizarre to me." https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-02-26-bryan-henderson-the-god-who-peter-molyneux-forgot-wants-his-cut-of-a-new-game-bundle-to-go-to-charity-instead https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-02-26-bryan-henderso... >The Man Who Promised Too Much https://kotaku.com/the-man-who-promised-too-much-1537352493 https://kotaku.com/the-man-who-promised-too-much-1537352493 >Serial over-promiser Peter Molyneux promises to stop over-promising. Designer breaks a year of self-imposed press exile with reflective interview. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/02/serial-over-promiser-peter-molyneux-promises-to-stop-over-promising/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/02/serial-over-promiser-... >Peter Molyneux's God Game Is Looking Like Yet Another Disappointment https://www.wired.com/2015/02/molyneux-godus-kickstarter/ https://www.wired.com/2015/02/molyneux-godus-kickstarter/ >Peter Molyneux interview: 'It's over, I will not speak to the press again'. The veteran game designer is at the centre of a raging controversy over his new game Godus. He says he is finished with the press. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/13/peter-molyneux-game-designer-interview-godus https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/13/peter-mol... >The Lesson of Peter Molyneux. “Sooner or later the bullshit has to stop.” https://techcrunch.com/2015/02/15/the-lesson-of-peter-molyneux/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/02/15/the-lesson-of-peter-molyne... >Why Peter Molyneux's Godus is Such a Disaster https://www.techspot.com/article/964-peter-molyneux-godus-disaster/ https://www.techspot.com/article/964-peter-molyneux-godus-di...

sien 6y ago

Flood is treated unfairly. It has a nice difficulty increase and is an enjoyable platformer with a few twists. Water fills the levels gradually and you can stick on most of the walls. It has a really neat aesthetic too. I've actually gone back and played the game and it's held up surprisingly well. Long play video of the game : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EbGjm_x808 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EbGjm_x808

Quarrelsome 6y ago

Speaking of weird old and unique games, does anyone remember Lords of Chaos? Its a 1v1 Wizard game where you spend the early game summoning creatures, exploring the map and picking up ingredients before brewing potions and fighting your enemy before the map explodes around you.

Malcx 6y ago
Loved that as a kid on the spectrum, a great sequel to chaos. Iirc you could actually hot seat 4 players on some maps? Check out chaos reborn on steam for a reasonable modern update.

Smerity 6y ago

A random fun note about how Peter Molyneux was able to start Bullfrog, sourced from Wikipedia[0] and mentioned in this blog's previous post[1]: Molyneux tried to sell a game years earlier but failed so instead started a baked bean export company called Taurus Impex Limited. Commodore International mistook it for Torus, an established networking software company, and offered to provide Molyneux with ten free (still unreleased) Amiga systems. Taurus then designed a database system for the Amiga and the profits let Molyneux and Les Edgar found Bullfrog Productions. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Molyneux#Early_career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Molyneux#Early_career [1]: https://www.filfre.net/2016/06/peter-molyneuxs-kingdom-in-a-box/ https://www.filfre.net/2016/06/peter-molyneuxs-kingdom-in-a-...

ekianjo 6y ago

I don't understand why the article claims that Theme Park's view on such parks is cynical, as if "theme parks did not focus on user experience". They don't. Every single theme park out there has hours of waiting lines to do just anything. How is that even a good experience to begin with?

koheripbal 6y ago
This comment is such a broad generalization that it boarders on useless.

bovermyer 6y ago

Populous II was one of the first video games I remember loving wholeheartedly. Molyneux rolled big dice and often lost. When he won, though, he won big.

DonHopkins 6y ago

Peter Molydeux: https://twitter.com/petermolydeux https://twitter.com/petermolydeux https://twitter.com/PeterMolydeux/status/1287527427355410439 https://twitter.com/PeterMolydeux/status/1287527427355410439 @PeterMolydeux: Imagine a dating sim where you answer questions about yourself but then find you’re playing as the love interest. You discover that ‘you’ are actually an amazing and wonderful person and fall in love with yourself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Molydeux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Molydeux Peter Molydeux is a Twitter account presented as a parody of the game designer Peter Molyneux. Created by game artist Adam Capone in 2009, it posts audacious game design ideas in the style of Molyneux. The account presents Molyneux as a tragicomic character with unrelenting, creative ideas that are continually received by an apathetic audience. Over time, the account evolved from a Molyneux-based persona into a list of potential game concepts. A common theme of the tweets is the untapped potential of emotional game experiences. Molyneux came to appreciate the parody, and has since met Capone in person. I imagined him going through the supermarket with a digital recorder and coming up with ideas while shopping ... And over dinner, he's rearranging his peas and saying. 'Is this giving me a game idea?' And his wife is saying, 'Shut up, Peter. Just eat your food.' –Capone (Molydeux) on Molyneux Some of the parody account's proposals include: A racing game in which the player controls the road instead of the vehicle A Kinect game in which the player must cry to open a gate An eight-person online multiplayer game in which each player controls one leg of an octopus The final segment of a war game, in which the player pauses in silence at the tombstone of each KIA recruit A 3D adventure game in which the amnesiac player awakens in a museum with a room dedicated to each year of the character's life The player holds a radioactive baby, which acts as a torch in a dark environment; rocking the baby increases its luminescence The player pretends to be blind and must walk into objects to avoid suspicion A bear must hug people in order to live, but crushes the people he hugs A pigeon carries sentimental objects to businessmen to persuade them not to kill themselves A divorced father sneaks into his family house to help with chores without alerting them When the player kills henchmen in one game, the player sees recurring images of those henchmen's crying children in an unrelated sports video game A version of Street Fighter in which streets fight other streets

toast0 6y ago
> An eight-person online multiplayer game in which each player controls one leg of an octopus This could be fun. Depends on the controls and lag. Offline mode please!

dep_b 6y ago

Nobody liked Flood? I loved it! Dropping tons of bouncing grenades into a shaft was fun!

godot 6y ago

Theme Park was one of my favorite games as a child. I enjoyed it immensely building out a theme park at first, for a long time. I constantly didn't do well though and always end up pretty much bankrupting on my first park, let alone expanding to other cities. One day I read some sort of cheat/guide that to have a profitable park, you build Duck Shoots, and make the prizes worth less than the cost for each play, and make the winning percentages 100%. I put the Duck Shoot right at the entrance of the park and build the rest of the park around it. Every guest who comes in plays the Duck Shoot first and is happy they won, and I make a profit from every guest, and everyone is happy with a balloon prize. This was my first lesson about its immorality. Strangely, the game became less fun after that. I was able to make profitable parks and expand to other cities. Then I stopped playing; and over the years, every time I tried to pick back up the game again, I find myself going through the motions of setting up that Duck Shoot trick because it was the only way I know to make money running a park, and then I quickly lose interest after that because all the researches and stuff were just a lot of work and it was boring having the same 4 rides until researches complete. It was a little bit like real life...

snicky 6y ago

As little kids we used to play Theme Park with a friend of mine. After we got bored with the game we used to create parks called sth like "Filthy sh*tter" and try to make them the most hideous places ever. No cleaning service, garbage lying all around, kids throwing up on the pathways and so on. For some reason this felt as rewarding as building a fully functional park...

locusm 6y ago

Syndicate was their best game - thanks Sean Cooper

DonHopkins 6y ago

Where is Project Milo? We may have Final Fantasy 15 and The Last Guardian, but who cares when mankind's greatest achievement is still nowhere to be found? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czcSxnBlW0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czcSxnBlW0A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Milo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Milo

amai 6y ago

I still remember beating Zeus in Level 999 of Populous II by spreading the plague to all his followers. This memory feels strangely up-to-date in our days of a world wide pandemic.