Godus developer Peter Molyneux believes that generative AI will be a “real game changer” in video games, with anyone being able to “create a game” with a single command, such as “make a battle royale game set on a pirate ship.” These were among Molyneux's predictions for where video games will be in 25 years.
“AI is going to be a real game changer. There will come a time when AI will be used to create large parts of a game – AI-generated characters, animations, dialogue, voice acting, there's a lot that AI can handle,” Molyneux told Eurogamer, who spoke to a number of industry figures about their vision for the future.
“And finally, I think AI will open the doors to everyone and allow anyone to make games. For example, you'll be able to create a game with a single command like 'Make a battle royale game set on a pirate ship' and your AI will go and make it for you.”
Molyneux also predicted that movies and video games will continue to intertwine. “I think Hollywood will continue to be fascinated with games and will continue to come for more game stories and narratives. The success of Fallout and to some extent The Witcher and the deal between Remedy and Annapurna to bring Control and Alan Wake to the big screen show that games have the kind of worlds that Hollywood can really get into.”
I think a lot about this video profile of Molyneux, taken while he was working on his latest play, Legacy , which is full of quotes that echo back and forth throughout his career, picking up on dramatic ironies.
“That's what I always think about when we hire people. They give us the most valuable thing: a little slice of their life. And how terrible it would be if we didn't do something good,” Molyneux says in a passionate whisper.
During development, Legacy was turned into a blockchain game, seemingly abandoning many of its features and narratives, and reportedly selling £40m worth of land title NFTs before launch. It’s basically unplayable now. How awful, really!
“I've had a lot of excuses in the past. I've never done anything on this platform before – excuse. I don't have enough money – excuse. I don't have the right team – excuse. Now it's down to our dedication and passion, to find the soul of what's going to be a great game,” he told Red Bull Gaming five years ago.
Now that Legacy is a disaster, Molyneux’s excuse is that he was “sold” to the idea of blockchain by the publisher and that he “doesn’t understand it deeply.” It doesn’t matter that he showed up in Las Vegas in 2021 touting all the supposed benefits of blockchain gaming. “We have this incredible simulation, this incredible narrative that we’ve woven throughout the game. We have moral choices there and we’re competing with each other, all in this completely new world, which is, of course, exactly what blockchain is.”
Remember: Molyneux no longer speaks to the press and no longer gives excessive praise, but it’s not just Molyneux who gets the resonant quotes.
“We wanted to make a game about building things. I think there were two reasons for that. I like building things, and I think Peter likes the idea of other people building things,” explains Paul McLaughlin, Legacy's art director. “I think he wanted to make the audience experience things that maybe they didn't fully grasp themselves.”
In this context, you can see why Molyneux is attracted to generative AI, which claims to help other people build things and is best loved by people who fundamentally “don’t understand” creativity.
Molyneux and his studio 22cans are currently working on Masters Of Albion, a new god game that recreates aspects of Legacy. Most of the news about the game has been generous, with most of the criticism directed at Molyneux being categorized as being about his “overpromising.” I disagree with both, because there’s a difference between moon-eyed overpromising—what Steve Hogarty describes as “an unfailingly passionate ouroboros of promises and sorrows”—and being deliberately misleading.