At Gamescom this week, Fable creator Peter Molyneux revealed his next game–Masters of Albion–and he now says it could be his last. In an interview, Molyneux said he expects to be in his late ’60s when Masters of Albion is done, and if he were to make another game, he would be in his mid-70s.
Molyneux told GI.biz he’s not guaranteed to live that long. “My life expectancy is measured in days rather than years because of my lifestyle. I smoke and drink and don’t sleep enough,” he said. “So if this is going to be my last game, what should it be? And the first thing that occurred to me is that I wanted to go home. I wanted to come back to PC and console, and make a game for gamers.”
Molyneux runs the independent studio 22cans, which created mobile games like The Trail and Godus. He said he “got disillusioned with mobile,” in part because of how mobile game development requires developers to stick to a specific formula to make money, according to Molyneux.
“I started to ask… what should I focus on? I was 60 at the time and this realization came to me that this next game could be my last. I am not announcing I’m retiring. I’ll be found dead one morning with my head pressed against the keyboard,” he said.
In a separate interview with IGN, Molyneux talked about how he’s able to use Albion in his game, saying it’s in reference to a historical term for Great Britain. It is not, as Molyneux sees it, owned by Microsoft via the Fable series.
“[It’s] like saying if you set a game in America, you can’t set any other game in America,” he said. “So Albion can’t be copyrighted. It’s the name for England and Wales and that’s how we get away with it.”
Molyneux went on to say he honestly doesn’t know if Albion can be trademarked. “I mean you would think that the responsible person I should be, I would’ve spent the last six months in lawyers’ offices,” he said.
Microsoft owns the Fable series, and the company previously granted the rights to Flaming Fowl Studios for its CCG Fable Fortune years ago (the game has since shut down).
If there are legal consequences, that will come in time. For now, Molyneux said he’s excited about Masters of Albion because it “extends and expands” the worlds he made in the Fable series.
“But it’s not actually Fable 5 or anything like that,” he said. “If you’ve played Fable, then definitely Masters of Albion will be familiar to you. One of the things that we have got and we absolutely wanted a nail was the humour. I think in the Fable games, it’s not so much about telling jokes, it’s more about giving you, the player, the ability to do ridiculous and funny things. And we’ve got that in Masters of Albion in absolute spades. I think we’re really nailing that.”
In a different interview with PCGamesN, Molyneux addressed his history of overpromising and underdelivering. He said he is “so, so, so sorry” about how he has “sold games by overpromising” and discussing features that didn’t exist as if they did. “I apologize to anyone that got excited and got disappointed,” he said.
“I’m really sincerely sorry to those people. I wasn’t doing it because I had a plan. I was doing it out of ignorance really, and now I’m really obsessive about only talking about things I can show,” he said.
Molyneux and 22cans also generated controversy over the game Curiosity: What’s inside the Cube? The winner was promised a “life-changing” reward but ended up receiving nothing.
