Out There: The magic of Molyneux

Whenever Peter Molyneux says anything, the gaming world listens. And then usually responds with "piffle", "balderdash" and "LOL". But the point is that it listens. And as Tadhg Kelly says, many developers who also have things to say - perhaps much more, dare we say it, deliverable things - look on and wonder how Molyneux gets so much attention.

The answer, says Kelly, is that Molyneux knows how to tell stories about the future, and appear to entirely believe in them. Kelly identifies three ways Molyneux and other such inspirational (whether you like it or not) figures - of graphics and technology, of social interaction and of saving the world.

"They all have a common thread. They look forward and say this: The future is over the next hill and will be amazing. Are you coming?"

Crucially, says Kelly, to have a chance of being able to make an impact on the world, you need to live those stories, which means trying to make the games that lead to your vision of the future. Not a bad philosophy - even if you never actually get there. Molyneux proves that dreams are sometimes enough.

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The science of Super Mario World's camera is more complex - and interesting - than you might expect. The real beauty, of course, is that it's so good it's unlikely you'll ever have noticed its cleverness until you watch this.

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When prototyping many games it's pretty normal to use placeholder graphics to quickly test ideas. But could rough graphics sometimes actually affect the game's end design? Ronimo's Joost van Dongen, currently working on Awesomenauts, writes that using sprites without jump animations made jumping feel wrong - even though the underlying code was perfectly fine. "I think the prototyping method always influences the outcome," he says.

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This must be the ultimate in catharsis. Eric Smith got over his fiancé leaving him by selling the engagement ring and using the cash to buy a set of Master Chief MJOLNIR armour. His friends suggested he was buying armour to emotionally protect himself or using it to hide away from the world. He says that he found he incrementally regained parts of himself as each of the suit's seven shipments arrived. But we'd suggest that, psychologically, what's really going on is Smith is now inherently thinking, "What would the Chief do?" Which we'd argue is useful emotional levelling for any situation.

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iOS free driving game Forever Drive, developed by Supermono, has been (lightly) criticised by Adam Saltsman for being slightly unethical in the way it puts barriers before the fun to extract money from players. So that's probably why the hugely charming and talented Tak Fung has stepped in to explain the measures he took to avoid Forever Drive being unethical. It's an interesting portrait of the pitfalls that lie in the nascent art of free game design, which Fung has tried to avoid by not allowing players to buy their way to victory, no levels locked behind DLC walls, no penalties for players who don't play for a while, and rewarding player skill. His conclusion:

"The more people that can create a fun, fair and successful game on this model, the quicker more people will set aside the tiresome mechanics as they can see that they are no longer required, or indeed competitive, to the better games that come out. This is the ultimate solution to people complaining about the current crop of “unethical” games."