GamesBeat: Did you find some temptation to make it more historically specific?
Molyneux: We did consider making it historical, but the trouble I’ve often found—it’s quite a challenging thing to pace gameplay around history. One of the early versions we tested linked to a series of Wikipedia pages, so that when you got to a certain stage of the trail it popped up with a certain page. But what we found is it was very hard to balance the pace of the game. Any historical events that happened on the Oregon Trail happened over years, because it took so long to explore across America. It really didn’t fit with the timeline of the game. I regretted taking that out, because I would have loved to have left some learning in there about the Oregon Trail.
GamesBeat: What were some of the more interesting reactions that you got, things that were memorable or inspired changes?
Molyneux: The first thing is how naturally competitive people are. When you’re traveling — sometimes you think, “Well, people need leaderboards to motivate them.” What we found when we watched people to play — and of course with the mobile version we had analytics, so we could virtually watch people play – there were different categories of people. Some people feel that if someone is ahead of them, they have to catch up. They have to be first. About 20 percent of people, I would say, have to be first. They run everywhere.
Other people seem to believe they’re supposed to be last. If they see someone else coming up beside them, they’ll slow down to let them go ahead. And the reason they do that is, that person ahead of them can do some of the work. You might learn that you can craft axes to chop down trees, so they’re waiting for people ahead of them to chop down trees so they can steal the stuff that other people have chopped down. I’d say that’s about 30 percent.
The remaining people were the ones who believed that around absolutely every corner, there was some danger. They would be very precise about their speed, very precise about making sure that when they were walking through the snowy hills, they wouldn’t walk too fast and get cold and waste food. It’s very interesting, the natural behavior that went on, the behavior that just walking on a trail and seeing people ahead of you or behind you — that was very inspiring.
The other thing was, the simple delight when people realized that they could — that there’s no limit to amount of stuff they could carry. We have this weird backpack where you can squeeze stuff in. All the stuff you put in are little physics objects and they squeeze together very nicely. What a lot of people do is work out the most elaborate way of trying to fit as much stuff in their backpack as they possibly can. That idea, again, I got from my traveling days. I used to go to America, and my absolute golden rule was to never check in any luggage. It didn’t matter how much stuff I had. I’d spend hours squeezing stuff into my hand luggage so I could avoid checking something in. Then, when you get to the other end, there’s the moment where you open your luggage and everything flies out, because it’s been compressed down for so long. You can tell that a few years ago, I did far too much traveling.
GamesBeat: How did you end up working with Kongregate?
Molyneux: We were talking to a lot of different people, and we had this one meeting with Kongregate. They were absolutely fantastic. They had taken this demo of the game and spent an enormous amount of time looking at it, critiquing it, getting feedback, and saying, “Well, have you considered doing it this way and that way?” There was a sheer passion and love for the gaming experience, and the amount of feedback they gave us was inspiring.
A lot of times you choose a publisher for X or Y reason, but it was the passion they had for the crafting and design of the game that made me believe this was the sort of publishing partner you need. You need a partner – especially in today’s world, with so many different apps and so many different experiences for users – who’s going to help you craft that experience, who isn’t just going to sit back and publish whatever you give them. Those days have gone. Kongregate did a fabulous job of convincing us early on that they were going to help us craft this game, and that’s what has come to pass.
I also loved the fact that they were one of the only publishers that still focused on both PC and mobile. That gives them an interesting perspective as well.
GamesBeat: Did the game take any particular direction through the work with Kongregate? Did it change in some ways?
Molyneux: We spent a lot of conference calls on what would make a good PC game. To be honest, I think they wouldn’t let us get away with being lazy. They said, in the early days, “You should be more ambitious with the PC port.” We spent a lot of time talking that through, brainstorming different ideas. They were part of a brainstorming meeting we had. Again, I love the passion they had to not just do another port. They did a fantastic job in the early days. In fact I think the idea of having a challenge at every campsite was theirs. They deserve some game design credit.
GamesBeat: So your current plan is just to talk about games that are shipping. Is that working out well?
Molyneux: It would seem wrong if I didn’t. It’s wrong for me to talk about games that aren’t available, and wrong for me to hype up games. I think the days of me doing that are very much in the past. I don’t think you can spend the time—there’s a formula to hyping a game, and that formula can’t be done by individuals like designers. But when it comes to the release of the game, if the lead designer is there, like myself — if I turned around to the press and said, “I’m not talking to you,” that would just feel sulky and childish. It makes sense, in my mind, to answer questions about a released game.
I’ve also been considering, if only I could find the time to do it — I think there’s still space for a blog about a game. If I, for example, had my own personal blog about developing a game and how the development goes — because I do miss being able to share the development process with the wider world. I’ve been wondering recently if there’s space for the equivalent of a blog that was regularly updated. That wasn’t hyping the game, but just talking about the development process of the game. I wonder if there’s an opportunity for that.
But that’s just by the by. At the moment I’ll talk about a game if it’s being released, or if anyone has a question about a game that’s out there and it makes sense to talk about it. If I said, “I’m never talking to the press again,” which is the sentence I said at the end of Godus — perhaps that was a bit of an overreaction. It’s a bit childish to continue with that. The statement should have been, “I’ll never hype a game again,” because I do think it’s a brave man that goes down that route in today’s world.
GamesBeat: This one is $15. Was it clear that was the right way to go, that you didn’t want to go free-to-play again?
Molyneux: There was a lot of debate about what the audience would enjoy. The final pricing is very much a negotiation between publishers and developers and all sorts of outside influences. Why it was set at $15 I’m not perhaps even sure myself, but I’m sure it’s the right sort of price. For me, the audience on Steam prefers, I think, to pay for something once, and never again, as opposed to feeling like the game is always trying to persuade them to give it money.
GamesBeat: Do you have any general observations on how 2017 is treating the game industry?
Molyneux: It’s a real industry now. There’s a lot of fascination, for me, in AR, more than VR these days. There are going to be some very interesting applications coming out of AR, especially with the new AR in iOS 11. That’s going to be beautiful. VR, for me, still needs the killer app that everyone talks about. It’s tedious that we haven’t got that killer app yet. I think esports are going to be harder and harder for parties to get into. It was projected as being a bit of a gold rush, but I think it’s proving tougher to make inroads there.
PC gaming is definitely here to stay. It’s growing. I still think we need more talented developers in the PC space. I think we need more variety in the mobile space. But this is very much the rhythm of the game industry now. It’s a fantastic, fascinating place, which now has billions of players and a whole diverse range of products, everything from feature film-like console releases to the equivalent of reality TV shows on mobile. It’s both impossibly challenging and wonderfully encouraging in one.
GamesBeat: What is the U.K. industry and your area in Guildford like?
Molyneux: Guildford remains a real hub of the industry. There’s about 70 game development companies within a five-mile radius. It’s a huge focus here. I have to be honest, though, that Brexit is causing a lot of headaches for a lot of people, including the games industry. Just for recruitment — when we put up a job advert, normally we get about 50 to 70 from the U.K. and 50 to 70 from Europe. But what we’ve noticed now is that the European applicants have really fallen off in the last year, simply because of people’s uncertainty about where Britain lies.
I feel that, in the U.K., there’s a real price we’re beginning to pay for this terrible uncertainty that’s going on, this not quite knowing what’s going to happen and not seeing a strong route from a place where we don’t know what the hell is going to where we know what’s going on. Nobody seems to know at the moment, and that uncertainty is really crippling. It’s crippling for recruitment and it’s very challenging — if I was a startup now, looking for investment, it would be very challenging to find investment, because of so much uncertainty. It’s one more hurdle to get over in what’s already an incredibly difficult process.
GamesBeat: The U.K. does still have a lot going for it that other countries don’t, though.
Molyneux: The frustrating thing is, the people who don’t understand that are people in the U.K. That sounds bizarre, but it really is true. Only after many years of lobbying our government have we gotten any form of tax breaks coming in. We have a thing called VGTR that’s come in. But the fight we had to put in to do that was impossibly hard. That’s crazy, because the U.K. has a special creative force to its people. You would think that a nation that has that, be it in music or film or art or video games, would have a culture that made it easier for creative people to flourish. But almost the reverse is true.
I think the U.K. has a lot going for it, but I also think the U.K. doesn’t quite realize what it is that it has. That being said, there are so many talented people here. I’m sure that Brexit will eventually find a way of not being the thorn in the side that it is at the moment. Creative people will still be here. It’ll still be an attractive place for people to come to.
GamesBeat: You have a new franchise in The Trail. That seems like it should keep you busy.
Molyneux: We loved making it, and people on mobile loved playing it. I hope people on PC love playing it as well. And I’m on to something new.
GamesBeat: But we can’t talk about that yet.
Molyneux: No, no. For all the reasons we’ve spoken about. You know me, though. If you asked me over half a glass of chardonnay I’d probably spill the beans and get myself in terrible trouble.