Peter Molyneux: Passionate Visionary But Poor Leader

Did any of you read Rock Paper Shotgun's interview with Peter Molyneux? It felt terrible to read to me. If you haven't read it, here's the link.

http://www.rockpapershotgun...

I have to say that it was a thoroughly depressing read.

Full Disclosure: I haven't played a single game ever made by Peter Molyneux. Not one. So take everything I'm about to say as someone who has had no interest in the man's career before now, nor really much interest in his career in the future.

When you read these interviews, depending on the side of the fence you're likely to lean towards, it's very easy to hate on the interviewer for goading, or attacking, or aggressively pushing the interviewee. This happened a few times with me when I read this interview as I felt the interviewer was acting as though he had backed a horse in the Godus race himself, or that he was some kind of close personal friend of Bryan Henderson (whoever that is) and fighting on his behalf. Not going into the irony of a site like Rock Paper Shotgun trying to be a defender of the people after the events of GamerGate, I found it personally distasteful to start off an interview asking someone if they are a pathological liar. That sets the tone of the entire interview and makes the interviewee understand that they are about to be attacked.

Moving passed what I felt was wrong about the interview based on how the interviewer was acting, I felt something about Peter Molyneux that I'm sure many others have felt and probably more if you followed his work.

We can see in this interview that Peter has a severe case of verbal diarrhea as he always does. We also see that he becomes quite flustered when he feels he is being attacked and that he volunteers so much information people aren't looking for or don't care about. He is not good at interacting with the Press at all.

More than that though, when we see him talk about Godus and game development, it's very clear that Peter is an idea man, not a lead designer, not the head of a studio, not an executive. He talks about how to run a business and develop a game, but he has very poor business skills and his ability to plan development leaves a lot to be desired. This is very evident in just how he talks about the development of Godus, let alone all the other games he talks about and has worked on.

I am of the belief that Peter Molyneux is the kind of person that should more be a consultant than a designer. He has many great ideas for games and ideas about what should be in those games, but seems to have absolutely no concept of the logistics and planning involved in trying to bring all of those ideas to fruition, and because of his inability to properly handle Press events and the aforementioned verbal diarrhea, he then puts his teams in precarious positions to start working on things he promised but no one else knew about.

Anyone with any sense of what it takes for a team to take on any kind of creative endeavor knows that the whole team has to be in on it from the start. If just one person knows the direction the endeavor will take and the shape it's meant to become, there will be no cohesion and the final result will be a mess.

I'm not a psychologist, but it also seems as though Peter has a few personality disorders to me. I could be way off, but his manner of speaking and the way he describes things comes off as... well I digress.

Anyway, what is very clear about Peter Molyneux is that he definitely has a passion for what he does, but it also seems that that passion is a bit too great for him to handle in a realistic way in his current capacity. What needs to happen is that Peter needs a partner. Peter needs someone with a level business head, a person with a talent for organization who knows how to deal with the Press and can reign in Peter's imagination when it goes too far.

I read a survey once that posed various questions to the world's most successful billionaires. One of the questions was "What do you credit your success to the most?" And they all answered the same way. They said that having a good partner (in this case they meant their significant other) when they were building up their fortune is what really drove their success. Someone to keep them grounded, someone to vent to, someone to bounce ideas off of really helped them out. Peter is a married man but that doesn't seem to be helping him in these endeavors because he's always away from his family so the next best thing would be for Peter to kind of hire his own equal who has different responsibilities. Let Peter do what he does best, come up with the ideas, and then the partner can plan out the timeframe and budget required to make that happen.

But on a related note to the interview, there's one thing I need to say to the interviewer of RPS. Kickstarter is a glorified donation website, it's not an Angel Investor. Absolutely no one is entitled to a refund to a donation in any capacity, let alone Kickstarter. If Peter hasn't made good on promises or stretch goal rewards yet, that definitely sucks, but it's all a case of "Too bad; so sad" for those that contributed to the Kickstarter campaign. These are donations, not investments. The rewards are enticements. Clearly RPS needs to study up on what Kickstarter really is and look into the guy that successfully Kickstarted a frickin' sandwich.

So, to summarize, Peter Molyneux is in his best element when he's coming up with ideas for games, but he fails miserably when it comes to the more business oriented aspects of development. He doesn't have the sense for it and I personally think that if he really wants to turn that around, he needs to hire someone whose only experience and motivation is business strategy and making 22Cans a successful business. Peter's problem is that he's too loose with timetables and other aspects that require being firm if only to motivate you to completing the project. Say what you will about publishers, but deadlines do have their upsides and Peter needs to remember that and be held to those deadlines.

What do you think? Am I completely off about Peter, or is there merit in what I've said? Do you think Peter needs a Hannah to his Barbera, or is he good like he is now and just needs to shut up?