Classic Game Postmortem - Populous
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ม.ค. 2017
- In this 2011 GDC postmortem, renowned game designer Peter Molyneux tells the story of how Populous came to life, starting with a job selling baked beans to the Middle East...
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I worked at Bullfrog as a summer student shortly after the EA acquisition. This had me close to tears of joy and nostalgia.
Some might think that depriving the Middle East of baked beans in order to make frivolous video games would be more than enough reason to declare a Fatwa against Bullfrog.
so rare for a postmortem to have just this simple but amazing information: the step by step of the mechanics development.
Great talk - the postmortems are, imho, the most valuable talks available from GDC.
I suppose that comes from the leveling. That not all developers should be looked up to, as if they are gods, standing on a pillar of light.
Some of them are globfish like us, flopping along and occasionally getting their stuff to work. XD
You have got to love this man for making Populous: The Beginning. What a classic!
Peter Molyneux, a lot of people criticize him, but we need to realize that if this man wasn´t born, videogames will not be how they are today.
Not every person in the world is capable of creating anything even similar to Black and White.
Thank you Mr. Molyneux!!
B&W? Oh you mean creating a game where "training" your creature achieves absolutely nothing?
black and white was a disappointment. it's classics like populous, theme park, magic carpet, dungeon keeper and syndicate that he (and bullfrog) should be remembered for.
They might have been even better! Just because someone didn't come along doesn't mean nothing would have happened instead, it just means that someone else will influence the development instead.
He always was great in creating that potential, but when not steadily kicked in his ass, he is totally incapable of bringing it on the road. Which I guess explains the anger more than the actual failings: it is the sheer disappointment of not getting what he announced and what without a doubt would have been another great game. Instead it ends up with half thought through systems, way to complex to really work.
This started with Syndicat, which had a great action part but a completely useless economy/research/strategy level, it continued with Theme Park, which had this wonderful park idea but never gave it meaning as an economic simulation, and Black & White as already mentioned.
the first black and white thought me so much about myself, amazing game
I can't believe they have fucking Peter Molyneux in a tiny corner window where you can barely see him!
NightLurk If you can't see him, you can't hate him ;)
In a corner? I think that kinda reflects the general public's opinion of him now. "Get back in your box Peter! We've had it with your marketing campaigns".
Do you really want to see him?
Imagine you are sat at the back but thankfully your ticket was cheap.
I *loved* Syndicate.
SELECTED
Thank you very much Mr. Molyneux.
Hey Peter, thanks so much for everything!
"I'm a huge optimist by the way." - no shit peter, lol.
What a great, great talk. He's extremely entertaining, and the story is genuinely funny :).
Wow, this was a really good talk. Never knew Populous was that popular, it certainty deserved the attention. A simple, but interesting game with lots of simulation mechanics.
He is a great story teller. Fun to listen too.
Loved this game. played it a lot on my Amiga. Powermonger was my absolute favourite of the bunch though. That PowerMonger opening sequence and music was amazing at the time on the best computer in the day.
Peter Molyneux is just an amazing figure oh video game history. I first got to know about him when he started talking about the first Fable. I guess everyone remembers that his speeches were extremely inspiring. Fable itself didn't match up against the expectations he had built, but it was great nontheless. Thank you Mr. Molyneux for enriching the game industry :)) !
Populous The Beginning is one of my all time favorite games!
Populous is fantastic game and this video was really nice too. :)
Populous was FANTASTIC because it along with DUNGEON KEEPER, actually did what was promised. :) Unlike every other game Molyneux led the propaganda wagon on
I have very fond memories of playing Populous on the Acorn Archimedes 310 while listening to the Pop Will Eat Itself album 'This is the day...' (which I taped off a tape) some time between 1992-1994. I hope to get back into Populous some day.
He’s totally lying about my contribution. Listen to me on the retro hour podcast if you’re interested, I can’t be bothered to go into it here. Also, Druid II Enlightenment was made by Andrew Bailey and Dene Carter.
You mean Peter Molyneux is a liar? Why, I never would have guessed! I'm shocked! Shocked! Well, not *that* shocked. Not shocked at all. In fact, I already knew full well that he's a liar.
Love to see more of the games of my childhood get full break downs like this of how they were made
That game was THE game on my Amiga. I had to buy multiple copies because I trashed the disks of the first one I bought. Was a memory blast.
Live debugging of a prototype, this is literally the most awesome talk ever :D
I loved Populus.. Very innovative and created a whole genre
Eat more pizza and take up smoking, got it.
Don't forget the cola
Turns out the pizza wasn't nearly as good as promised and once you reach the cola it gets boring.
Don't forget to be insanely lucky and lie about your abilities.
The smoking he actually said was very detrimental to contract negotiation
@@doug8171 Smokers should always have nic gums for long meetings.
pop 2 is s till one of my fave games ever.
Great talk!
Great talk, for me Magic Carpet was Populous 2, probably sounds crazy but had the same intensity. Lovely games from a lovely era in gaming. :)
Hey, I loved Hi-Octane!
A question from Idle Thumbs Chris Remo at the end!
Okay....Step 1: Start a company with a name close enough to an obscure tech company to avoid lawsuits but to get mistaken for them.
Step 2: Fake the fuck out of everything else.
Wow I actually really enjoyed playing magic carpet back when I was like 6 or 7. This is the first time i have ever 'seen someone mentioning it anywhere and I am on mid 30s now.
Ok, now I want a Lego Populous Tabletop game.
Why do people hate him? he's a great guy
Loved multiplayer over a RS232 cable.
Good old serial ports!
✅ Constantly thinking about Guru Larry whilst watching this.
We need a new talk on Populous: The Beginning
I second this! Favorite game growing up.
One of the most innovative games of the time
Loved Populous and Populous 2. If you want to play it, try "Reprisal Universe" on Steam. It's basically a blend of Populous and Populous 2 that runs on a modern PC.
Thanks. Have to be careful not to rush through this game and ruin my sleep schedule even further.
Populous was the first SNES game I rented from Pharmor 😁
“Phar-Mor” now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time..... long.... time.
Great game.
Oooooh, this is why he tried to get Godus off the ground: Everyone was excited to see more Populus. I should see what state Godus is in these days.....
I'd love to have more Powermonger love. The idea that orders aren't instant and potentially intercepted, having to bother with logistics and morale, knowing when to take prisoners or not... This is quite a change from classic RTS nowaday
4:28 hilarious!
Scanning the comment section for Guru Larry.
Wow, HiOctane only sold 3k copies? If only I had mine left...
5:11 lol! There we go.
I played this game so much as a kid. TIL how to play.
38:00 where's theme hospital?
Lol, this guy is fucking awesome!
Only in the last minute I relaised I wasn't listening to Will Wright.
Can somebody explain to me why some people were applauding he was in the business of shipping baked beans to the middle east?
i want baked beans now
In an alternate reality theres a game maker called torus that got the biggest break of their lives
Populous on the SNES was my favorite game to use as a paperweight
38:17 MAGIC CARPET!!!! YAY!!!! (takes a moment from taunting other people to reflect). OK, back to work...
Can we talk about how this man still has the Zune software on his laptop?
Cause he had good taste in portable media players.
well, this video WAS recorded in 2011. Zune was all the rage then.
and that RealPlayer though.. ..
i and loved many Bullfrog titles and was totally with him until he screenshared with a huge icon on his desktop for... REALPLAYER? ;]
Is that Peter moniloux?
"you know"
The Amiga Populous was so much better than the MS-DOS version. It's a shame that gog.com hosts the DOS version.
I think we are lucky that they released a DOS version of Populous because DOSBox exists.
wgt3623 UAE also exists.
+uriituw - I agree that the Amiga version was better. It might sound trivial, but to me, the DOS version sucks mostly because it's almost completely silent. The background "music" really adds a lot of atmosphere to the Amiga version.
I suppose you would prefer Steam? At least gog treats its customers well unlike Steam that likes to sell you silly nonsense and if you ask for a refund they essentially tell you to "Chop down the mightiest tree with.....A HERRING!"
Taunting French Guard How's that relevant?
for all those guys bashing molyneux, the man is a legend. he is great at what he does. Sure he went off the rails the past years but that does not discredit him as a programmer.
It discredits him as a salesman and has lead to a whole new generation of silly people such as those behind NO MANS' SKY; WATCHDOGS. I doubt he even dabbles in programming now.
Put The Beans On It.
Peter Molyneux is a better storyteller than games designer.
did he just call C a girly fluffy language!? I wonder what he'd call javascript..
Zod in reference to the age he was in, everyone programmed in assembly or some form of machine code
In those days, the C compilers couldn't get as much performance as you could get by writing machine code yourself, so programming in machine code was usually better performance-wise, but slightly harder.
"He chose to lie" and continued to do so throughout his career to all of his fanbase.
A promise that isn't kept isn't a "lie", it's a broken promise.
Depends. If the one making the promise has a habit of breaking them time after time, you can call him a liar the next time he makes another promise based on previous behavior.
Unless you are a mongrel who cant learn from past mistakes (not trusting pathological liars).
Or you can chose to not believe the hype, judge the game for yourself, and wait for reviews from journalists you trust.
Only company I ever felt personally lied to was Valve, when they #1 sold me a game which wasn't playable out of the box but instead required Steam to be installed. And #2 when they promised an episodic game and then chose not to finish it.
I've heard molyneux oversells his games, but at the end of the day I bought his games based on how they looked and other's opinion of them, not what he said about it. Magic Carpet, Syndicate, Fable 2, all games he's made that I've played and enjoyed.
And at the end of the day, the most valuable thing any player can have is a basic understanding of how games are actually made. Because if a game out there is promising the world, then odds are, they're probably full of shit. See Star Citizen and No Man's Sky.
My point still stands.
Not really, you're just dog-piling onto someone with a reputation for over-promising, and ascribing motivations to a multitude of examples based on one humorous anecdote.
But if your standards for honesty were so exacting, I doubt you could support any company in the industry given how many features are dropped, how many games are delayed, and how many companies spin anti-consumer features as beneficial.
Why Godus, Peter? just.... why?
It started with Fable 2
Jhaid
28:22 when this gay... guy came down
"fluffy girls blousy c" really makes no sense, c is none of those things?
Today, of course, it's not considered so (and that's part of the joke). But at the time, for people who've been doing machine language and assembly code, C with its handholding "data types" and "functions" was a language for lightweights!
EA didnt deserve 1/3 of their revenue from populus
crappy company
They did give populous a chance though while other publishers didnt
Yes, he obv. could have put 10x his profit into Bullfrog to better use than those scamming fuck-orporatist rippers I mean 3rd party publisher.
Been a liar from the very beginning
damn he's great. peter monolinux, emperor of bullshit.
It's incredible to me that people actually take an hour of their lives to listen to what he has to say.
He was hilarious,I thought. But I don't gme anymore or know what scams he's pulled. I did not enjoy black/white for the 15mins i tried