Fable 3 - Interview @ Tech Radar

Tech Radar has met with Peter Molyneux to talk about Fable 3, Project Natal, his promotion, cloud gaming and virtual gaming.
Here's the part about the episodic nature of Fable 3:

The first part of our game [Fable 3] is going to be free. And at the end of that first part you can choose to continue playing as normal, by buying the full game. Or, if you are still not quite sure, just buy the next episode.

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Here's what he thinks about virtual gaming:

It is so different. This is might whole point that I make. You don't meet computer game characters when you use a controller. You control computer game characters. And that is fundamental....That things can recognise them and see them and have a relationship with them. And we've been talking about that for years and years, you know, emotional engagement in gaming... "are games art?"... "how can we make people cry and laugh?"

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Here's his thoughts on cloud gaming:

What with the cloud, what we can do is that when we release something that has object recognition in it - that is just the start of how that thing is able to recognise different objects – because the database of things that are being recognised being held in the cloud can continue to grow and improve. By the millions of people actually interacting with objects locally down here and sending the information back 'up' to the cloud, behind the scenes.

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More information.

After the nonsense about paying extra for an in-game sword, I'm glad to hear he's going to give away the first episode for free. Refreshing lack of money grubbing.

Anderson said:

After the nonsense about paying extra for an in-game sword, I'm glad to hear he's going to give away the first episode for free. Refreshing lack of money grubbing.

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We used to call that stuff demos. And can you believe once upon a time you could get 1/3rd of a game for free? (Doom shareware was the first of three chapters of the game).

It's amazing how they spin a concept that is as old as computer games to make it sound "new".

Well, old or new, I'm just glad it's free.

I've always liked the idea of a demo simply being the first few hours of a game, with the option of unlocking the rest. Gives you an actual feeling of how the game is, instead of what most demos do: Find some action-packed part, cut it out, and deliver it as a stand-alone demo.

Maylander said:

I've always liked the idea of a demo simply being the first few hours of a game, with the option of unlocking the rest. Gives you an actual feeling of how the game is, instead of what most demos do: Find some action-packed part, cut it out, and deliver it as a stand-alone demo.

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I always liked the idea of demos, too. I don't get why more game companies don't release them. People can then decide for themselves whether or not they like the game; or if they're going to buy it now or later.

On a related note, I don't get why Bioware and EA won't release a demo for Dragon Age: Origins. Many people seem to have be interested in this game during the last month or so. They could just release a demo for the game where we get to play the Human Noble Origin, or part of it.

aries100 said:

On a related note, I don't get why Bioware and EA won't release a demo for Dragon Age: Origins.

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I remember when they released a demo for Jade Empire. I don't know what it was like on the PC side, but on the Xbox side, the forums were filled with people nitpicking the demo and drawing unfair conclusions about the full game based on it. After that episode, I haven't seen Bioware release any demos for any of their games. Maybe I'm wrong, but I had the sense that they thought the Jade Empire demo actually hurt sales of that game, and based on the reception it got, they decided not to do demos going forward, or at least to de-prioritize them.

As a sidenote, at the time of the Jade demo, I spoke up in those forums about how we shouldn't judge an RPG based on a brief demo. A Bioware rep was in the audience, and he sent me a free copy of the game. yay!