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Fable creator Peter Molyneux remembers his first board meeting at EA as a "school playground" filled with "idiots" and says 2001 decision to close Dungeon Keeper studio "was a dreadful mistake"
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Fable creator and gaming visionary Peter Molyneux wasn't built for the corporate life - or at least, not EA corporate life in the mid '90s.
Having founded Populous and Dungeon Keeper studio Bullfrog Productions in 1987, Molyneux made his way up to VP of EA in 1994, just before Bullfrog was acquired by EA in 1995. However, right from Molyneux's first board meeting, he knew it wasn't an ideal culture fit.
"I went to my first board meeting and was crushed with disappointment because it was like the school playground," he told Edge magazine for issue #416. "They were just idiots - people jumping on tables and shouting. Not what I'd expected at all."
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Molyneux said there was pressure from the higher ups at EA to make Dungeon Keeper in just over six weeks, which he said was impossible. Instead, he compromised, Bullfrog would make an entirely different game in the same timeframe, which ended up being vehicular combat racing game Hi-Octane.
Frustrated by the "corporate life," Molyneux only spent three years with EA before famously getting "really drunk" with then ex-EA employee Tim Rance and haphazardly writing an ill-advised resignation letter, which Rance sent out to then EA CEO Larry Probst. There was no turning back from there.
"I told EA, 'Look, I'm not leaving until Dungeon Keeper is finished, but as soon as I handed my notice in, they kind of shut the doors and said, 'You shouldn't be here any more.' Now, I completely understand, and I'd probably do the same, but that was very difficult for me, because all my emotional life is based around people that I work with on games. I didn't really have a social life. And then to have that ripped away…"
How terribly sad. Well, if there's one lesson to be learnt from Molyneux's story, kids, no matter how much of your soul is filed down to its core by the depressing tedium of corporate bureaucracy, never get drunk with your friend and let them convince you to quit on the spot. It'll sound like the most punk rock thing you could ever do in the moment, but you'll wake up with a hangover you can't sleep your way out of.
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After earning an English degree from ASU, I worked as a corporate copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. I got my big break here in 2019 with a freelance news gig, and I was hired on as GamesRadar's west coast Staff Writer in 2021. That means I'm responsible for managing the site's western regional executive branch, AKA my home office, and writing about whatever horror game I'm too afraid to finish.
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