Molyneux to be honoured at GDC

By Fred Dutton Published 19 January, 2011

Lifetime achievement gong for Fable man.

Lionhead Studios boss and all-round industry chatterbox Peter Molyneux is to receive a lifetime achievement award at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco next month.

The Fable creator is due to pick up his new paperweight at the awards ceremony on 2nd March which will be hosted by Double Fine boss Tim Schafer.

"Peter is a remarkable asset to the games industry, and truly embodies everything that the Lifetime Achievement Award represents," commented GDC director, Megan Scavio.

"We're proud to honor someone who has had such a profound impact on the industry, through his boundless enthusiasm and profound talent in creating games about choice and interactivity that the entire world loves to play."

Molyneux got his start in the industry way back in 1982 selling floppy discs for Atari, before co-founding Bullfrog Productions in 1987 where he helped develop ground-breaking god game Populous and Theme Park.

Bullfrog was eventually bought out by EA in 1995, shortly after which Molyneux left to set up Lionhead Studios. Its first title, ambitious PC strategy effort Black & White, came out in 2001.

Since then Molyneux has mainly focussed on the Fable franchise, which began life on Xbox in 2004, briefly getting sidetracked in 2009 by nebulous Kinect concept Milo & Kate.

Picture of Fred.

About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (24) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • kinky_mong #1 1 year ago

    I thought I'd reached my peak of indignant rage today after seeing the 3DS page, and then this article appears!

    Jesus wept.

  • darkmorgado #2 1 year ago

    Maybe he's getting an award for effectively inventing the God-Game, Syndicate, Dungeon Keeper, Magic Carpet, Black and White, Populous, Fable, etc?

    Theres a lot more to his career than Fable and Milo you know.

    And Fable wasn't shit.
    Edited by darkmorgado at 19/01/11 @ 17:27

  • evild_edd #3 1 year ago

    Well deserved IMHO. He's made some cracking games, and let's hope that we see more from him in the future!

  • SAMagic #4 1 year ago

    A man with brilliant ideas, but in the last decade there's been nothing less than sub-par execution.

  • metalangel #5 1 year ago

    Bullfrog was almost universally great (and even the stuff that was a bit ho-hum like Hi-Octane, was still pretty good).

    Lionhead meanwhile have become little more than a vehicle for his raging ego, churning out titles that sound great on paper but fall far, far short in actual execution.

    I'm not quite sure what it's going to take for games journos to accept that his reputation was built entirely in the 20th century and he's done nothing worthy of it since?

  • sneetch #6 1 year ago

    @SheepCat
    Oh and all he's done of late is the Fable series and the Milo bullshit.

    The clue's in the award name: "Lifetime Achievement Award" not the "Of Late Achievement Award".

    For all he did he's as entitled to it as anyone else I can think of.

    And Fable was very good, Fable II was better, dunno about Fable III yet waiting for PC version.

  • Bleemo #7 1 year ago

    "and let's hope that we see more from him in the future!"

    Hello Pete welcome to the boards. In true Molyneux spirit by the time the GDC awards comes around he'll end up being given a coffee mug with GDC written on and a kick up the arse. Then a month later the board will apologise and promise to give him a lifetime achievement award next year.

  • dirtysteve #8 1 year ago

    I imagine his lifetime award will be like conical in shape, tapering off towards the end
    Edited by dirtysteve at 19/01/11 @ 18:03

  • nomadman #9 1 year ago

    Populous series
    Syndicate series
    Theme Park (other ...Theme games)
    Magic Carpet
    Dungeon Keeper,
    Black & White,
    Fable

    he truly is a genius. The recipient was chosen by his peers, his colleagues - it is much more relevant than some fan-boys "yells" ...

  • Kamata #10 1 year ago

    It's a shame, i think he talks the talk well. But in reality his games are nothing to write home about.
    Black & White always started with premise but kinda dropped off half way through, the same could be said for Fable 1, 2 and 3.
    They look good but just lack any real wow factor.

    Note to Peter, dont do another Eurogamer conference unless you have something remotely interesting to tell the audience.

  • Bremenacht #11 1 year ago

    Hurrah for Peter, hurrah! I think he should get a nice gong for services to the UK gaming industry.

    Hard to decide which was better really - Bullfrog or Ultimate.

  • SpaceMidget75 Verified Senior Software Developer, Minerva Computer Services #12 1 year ago

    "Started off meh, then got considerably worse with each installment."

    And yet you decided to play each installment?

    Fucking dickhead.

  • RodHull #13 1 year ago

    Thoroughly deserving this lifetime achiement award. My Amiga years were defined by Populous, Powermonger and the awesome Syndicate. Then came the great Magic Carpet on the PC, one of those early"wow" CD-ROM games (played to death by the Kennedy family on Neighbours) and the brilliant Theme games (Hospital and Parks). Oh and then he tried to ruin my chances of not getting a degree by making Dungeon Master and Black & White.

    Whilst folks seem to dislike him because of Fable, of which each installment I have thoroughly enjoyed, this is to celebrate the career of a man who has been a welcome and permanent visionary and spouter of hyperbole of the UK games industry for four decades.

  • Patrick.Canney #14 1 year ago

    Post deleted at 15:13:13 09-05-2012

  • Peter_LIAR_Molyneux #15 1 year ago

    Peter has been putting out depressingly average games for the past decade. Charming the industry "journalists" into scoring the Fable games highly based on how much they like him as opposed to what the games actually did is his one true skill. Peter was great in the past but like Warren Spector, they haven't done anything great (or even good) for a very, very long time.

  • MadSnip #16 1 year ago

    Bullfrog. Man that name was always associated with great games. Then it quietly disappeared from the gaming market.

  • Syrette #17 1 year ago

    The vitriol the minority have towards this man is utterly bemusing and incredibly pathetic.

    Why do you get so offensive?

    All he is guilty of is being passionate and excited about games he's worked on. He's done absolutely nothing - and nor has anyone in the industry - to deserve the level of immature, hysterical criticism he occasionally attracts from anonymous keyboard warriors on sites like this. You seem to have problems realising that he doesn't actually equal Lionhead. If you think a Lionhead game is average, it's not just his fault.

    Some of you really think his first game was Black & White 2 or Fable don't you? Grow up. There are loads of us who like these games, stop acting like your opinion is in any way an objective one.
    Edited by Syrette at 19/01/11 @ 21:57

  • MrChuckles #18 1 year ago

    I wish he wasn't always called the 'Fable guy' when the Carter brothers invented it and he (thankfully) bailed out their studio. Mr Fable is Dene Carter to most people who know someone who worked on it like one of my ex workmate's did.

  • FuzzyDuck #19 1 year ago

    Only played the first Fable, found it to be a bit "meh", but as darkmorgado so correctly pointed out, this franchise isn't what he's all about.

    Dungeon Keeper? Do mind if i do! Probably one of the very, very few games i actually enjoyed watching, hilarious at times too.

  • Bibbo #20 1 year ago

    The hate for this guy is unreal. I hope one of you haters get in the games industry. So we can all slag you off with your ideas.

    Tossers.
    Edited by Bibbo at 20/01/11 @ 01:20

  • SpaceMidget75 Verified Senior Software Developer, Minerva Computer Services #21 1 year ago

    "maybe he got an award for being able to hype up his steaming piles of shit more and more as time goes by? or perhaps its for looking like a fucking chimp?

    what a turd-faced cunt molytwat is, fucking hate the guy and hope he shuffles off this mortal coil rapidly. fucking dick. "

    How has this comment received a +7?

    And no, he's not being sarcastic.

  • Sam81 #22 1 year ago

    Man the lack of knowledge and intelligent debate on this website is disturbing. Peter deserves this honour without a doubt, even if it was only for funding the ENTIRE development of Black & White out of his own pocket...

  • pervertron #23 1 year ago

    @Bibbo

    I do work in the games industry - and everyone I've ever met (and I've worked at six companies and know people from another 20+) thinks that Molyneux is a shamelessly self promoting loony. He makes good copy. I think the success of the games he's worked on have always been down to the tireless work of others (Demis Hassabis anyone?) - he's just a good promoter, that's all.
    Edited by pervertron at 20/01/11 @ 12:57

  • DRUNK3N-_-DRAGON #24 1 year ago

    Well done molly for creating the biggest pile of harry fritters i ever did see...