Lionhead hiring for next-gen MMO-like title
By
Eddie Makuch, News Editor
Fable developer staffing up to bring new role-playing game with massively multiplayer online qualities to future-generation technology.
With Fable Heroes out the door and development on Fable: The Journey coming to a close, what will developer Lionhead Studios build next? According to a job listing at the United Kingdom developer, the studio is staffing up to create an all-new next-generation title with massively multiplayer online genre qualities.
The job ad (which has since been removed) was spotted by indefatigable Internet sleuth Superannuation and reported on by MCV. According to the description, the title will be a role-playing game designed with a "radical take on how cooperative and multiplayer gameplay feeds into the experience." Additionally, the title will blend single-player and multiplayer into one experience, claims the ad.
On top of that, the new game will boast a "complex progression system, multiple routes through the campaign, and an MMO-like multiplayer experience that will affect the outcome of the player experience, and many other attributes surrounding their profile (such as the environment and outcome of certain actions)." Further specifics were not offered.
While the job ad in question is no longer available, a Lionhead Studios requisition for an experienced server programmer seeks a person with knowledge of MMO titles.
Lionhead Studios is familiar with role-playing games, having created the Fable franchise, but the company has never built an MMO game. As of press time, Microsoft had not responded to GameSpot's request for comment.
If Lionhead Studios is in fact working on an MMO game, the company will do so without Peter Molyneux. He left Microsoft in March and is currently heading up 22 Cans, a new independent developer.
By
Eddie Makuch, News Editor
Eddie Makuch (Mack-ooh) is a News Editor at GameSpot. He works out of the company's Boston office in Somerville, Mass., and loves extra chunky peanut butter.
64 comments
Im thinking of a open world mmo fable game for the next gen xbox that would be sweet buy a house and rent it out to some online people that would be amazing lol.
1 Like I wouldn't hate on Lionhead, they've done some pretty extraordinary stuff (long ago), but on the same token, they've failed to reach the high standards and expectations that everyone sets for them. I however think they can still pull off another great game and trust me, if its an MMO they're making, I can be 100% certain it will be far from a WoW clone- Lionhead would never do that.
I'm not gonna lie, I love the fable series. It just felt completely unique. I wasn't a big fan of 2 but I feel that 3 was getting the series back on track.
1 Like Lionhead Studios sucks now. Fable was great. Fable 2 and Fable 3 were freaking mess.
1 Like Everyone keep in mind that almost nobody important left in Lionhead worked on the original Fable.
In other words, treat this like you would treat Infinity Ward today, which too has nobody left from CoD1-4. Rookie studios, tools to publishers.
Hmm a .hack similar type of game sounds interesting but I have never been impressed with Lionhead's games. Everyone makes the fable games out to be these epic games but I haven't been too impressed.
4 Like Stop with MMO's already... To much on the market and not enough time to play them all.
2 Like Well after the success of Fable 3 the ........wait.....sorry couldn't type that with a straight face....after duping customers with over imagined rubbish with 2 sequels Lionhead is off my list of developers....
2 Like And yet another mmo. Geez. Can't they get it that the market is saturated with those?
A game with MMO-like qualities?
So requires an always on internet connection and will charge a monthly fee...
Hang on - I'm sure that's not what they were planning
2 Like why is the game for kinect. I don't think they could do much with Kinect's capabilities. Its harder also for us to use our hand to explore a sandbox game. This will be hard for Peter Moly to pull off, but good luck to their team if they want to try new methods of fun.
3 Like it will be even harder for peter moly to pull it off since he left lionhead months ago
I think that MS requires every 1st party game to have some sort of Kinect functionality. Makes sense they want to sell the accessory they made but meh.
4 Like Everyone who is still riding on Peter for the Fable series makes me laugh. Do you not realize Lionhead is owned by Microsoft? Ipso-facto Microsoft controlled what they were creating and producing. A few college quarters back, my class had the pleasure of having an old Microsoft Game Studio employee come and talk to us. From what he informed us about Microsoft was that they are about as corrupt as you can possibly get. He and his team were developing a game and about 3/4 of the way through, when they had to present it to the big guys in charge, they made them re-write the whole game and turn it into a underselling used box on your shelf.
This is what Microsoft is. To expect that anything that comes out of Lionhead to be "revolutionary" or ground breaking would go against the Microsoft way. I would guess Peter didn't want to make the next Fable the Kinect version we have on the way but when your boss tells you to do something at work, are you really going to say "No, I think it should be done this way. Sorry". That seems to be why Fable never lived up to what it was supposed to be.
Only time will tell if Peter really does 'blow us away" with his hype (believe me I was just as excited and just as let down with Fable 2 and 3) and with 22 Cans. We just have to remember it's Microsoft, not him or Lionhead that are calling the shots.
1 Like @MustacheLove Ya, microsoft has never done anything revolutionary, it's not like halo invented
Regenerating health(in almost every game now)
Online matchmaking(also in almost every game now)
Two-gun system(in every shooter now)
Separate melee button(in every shooter now)
Console theater system and user generated content(in cod,gow,ssbb)
The ability for shooters to succeed on a console(every shooter)
ect.
and it's not like gears of war made 3rd person shooters good again with it's cover system
Stop blaming microsoft for everything, it's not all the fault of the big corporations, it could be some their fault but it is also some of the developers fault, and for the record peter said that he loved kinect and that it should replace normal controllers so i don't think ms forced him to make that game that will end up sucking.
1 Like um microsoft didnt make halo that would be bungie.... dont give credit where credit isnt due
1 Like @SirNormanislost And microsoft didn't make fable but this guy blames microsoft for the bad things in the series but then doesn't credit them for the revolutionary games they published.
@SangheliZealotX I hope you realize that Halo was created by Bungie in 2000. They then got bought out by Microsoft in 2001. Microsoft took Halo, which was supposed to be a Windows/Mac title, and forced it into an original Xbox title... So before you go crediting Microsoft there, remember who actually designed the game..
Gears of War 3 made 3rd person shooters good? That would be your personal view on the game bud.. I honestly forgot the thing was even released till I saw a copy sitting in a Gamestop.
I will blame Microsoft because as I said, would you honestly think your bosses and head-honchos of the company that OWNS you would not want you to promote their games and hardware? Peter left Microsoft for a reason..
@MustacheLove Halo was successful due to it revolutionizing console first person shooters, and console multiplayer, if it was pc exclusive and a third person shooter half it's innovations would mean nothing, so that's a pretty obvious assumption. and I never said EVERY game microsoft makes is revolutionary, you're continuing to make assumptions lol. and i know for a fact because it makes no sense at all, it's just insanely obvious, has sony every forced devs to promote move? no. did ms force frank o connor to promote kinect? no. and what makes you think that he had no choice what so ever to make a kinect game and then praise the crap out of kinect, HE LOVES KINECT ACCEPT IT. and now that he's left ms he hasn't changed his opinion about kinect at all, why can't you accept that he actually likes it and ms isn't holding him at gun point to promote it? and i'm not "defending ms to my last breath", i'm defending people who are not at fault from retards like you who blame the big corporations for everything no matter what and are too blind by ms hate to accept that lionhead could be at some fault here. why don' t you just just keep defending lionhead to your last breath hypocrite.
P.S. The halo 4 thing you said makes no sense at all.
@SangheliZealotX Again.. you continue to make your own assumptions. You have no idea how Halo would have turned out if Microsoft had gotten their hands on it or not. So you're saying the Microsoft IS revolutionary yet... you didn't like GoW3? But...but... If they are revolutionary shouldn't it have made the leaps and bounds in the franchise and been a great game?!
Oh you no for a fact? I forgot you talked to all of them personally. My bad. I hope you notice that the new Fable is a Kinect game.. therefore they want him to promote it. Or are you going to play Halo 4 on your Kinect too so that your comment is valid? It's funny to me that I try to make a point in my original post that Peter isn't the one to blame once Microsoft claimed Lionhead as it's own and all you can think about is defending Microsoft to your last breath. They have you right where they want you, that's for sure. Obviously I'm trying to explain something to a Microsoft/Xbox fan boy and that's an obvious waste of time at this point.
1 Like @MustacheLove Yes they turned a pc third person shooter that no one would have cared about into the most influential game of the last decade, they are so evil. and i said gears of war ONE not 3, i actually didn't like 3. and gow 1's cover system is the reason third person shooters don't suck today, all third person shooters have cover systems now! and i know for a fact that ms didn't force peter to promote kinect, because they didn't tell frank o connor(leader of halo 4) to promote it(kinect isn't even in halo 4!) why would they tell peter, leader of the 3rd most popular xbox franchise to promote kinect instead of the leader of their flagship franchise? who they also have a lot more control over
For some reason this already screams Pay-To-Win Purgatory. I'll admit though, it puts me in a mood for B&W 2.
2 Like Wow, they even overhype their games in job listings? Well without Molyneux to give overhype presentations maybe they can hire Baghdad Bob, you know the Iraqi information minister who just kept saying everything was cool when it was so obviously not.
2 Like There are way too many MMOs these days. Developers need to stop making them. Maybe this is why the game industry is crashing. Too much money spent on big budget MMOs that fail within months. No one has time to play all the ones we have already, let alone 20 more in the next 5 years.
@James00715 and its not that we dont have time we cant afford to pay for over priced subscription.
I don't understand this recent obsession about MMOs in the industry...
MMO market is already very oversaturated with WoW clones,but none came even close to dethroning it.The latest example is SW:ToR,another overfunded "WoW killer" that failed to produce results EA was hoping for,and will probably soon go F2P,as it always goes with MMO failures.
I honestly don't see Fable MMO having any chances.MMO is not a goldmine these developers are hoping for,almost all end up being huge money drains,and if we're talking about smaller developers,MMOs can also end up financially killing them...
Dumb move,Lionhead...
1 Like @Rocker6 Because of metrics-based development. They show that the return on investment of such games is phenomenally higher than the simple 50-60 purchase once release. They tend to make money long after release and on a continual basis (or at least some of them do.) This would be why the suits at big AAA Publishing companies push their prize developers to make this kind of tripe instead of something great. Blizzard has made so much money doing this that all are tempted to try the same model...resulting in a severely oversaturated market full of WoW clones. I might have more pity if they at least tried to change up the base formula a bit but they don't. It's all variations on WoW these days. I've also met enough gamers who play these constantly and consider MMORPGs to be their social lives (if that's really what they want who am I to judge?) but personally I'd rather teach my kid to ride a bike, take my wife to the movies, and have a few drinks with the boys...and play a few hours of Half Life 2 before bed.
This comment has been deleted
Given the direction Lionhead is heading, I can't say I'm excited by the possibility of an MMO. Not even a Fable MMO. They've become so Disney as of late.
2 Like THERE. ARE. TOO. MANY. MMOS. I stopped after SWTOR and months (perhaps years) before then I have been getting fed up with this. It's taking over the entire market and not adding any real fun or inovative gameplay experience. Please, for the love of all that is good and creative stop buying these things people. One or two a year might be interesting but they're ALL THAT'S BEING RELEASED or so it seems.
1 Like Lionhead Studious making an MMO? Interesting... why would they take such a huge risk with MMO development when it's a guarantee that this game will be a 5.0-7.0 like every other game they make?
Peter Molyneux was a liar and a thief who aimed so incredibly high that he couldn't admit his mistakes when each game he developed failed and didn't deliver on what he promised, especially what it said the game did on the back of the damn box.
The fact that he was awarded that lifetime achievement award or whatever it was this or last year is completely and totally abhorrent.
Making over-hyped games that fail to deliver what they promise with every iteration because they were filled to the brim with bugs, performance issues, and including most of all (or not), features completely missing from the game isn't a lifetime achievement; it is a career made up of mediocrity.
@Entropy730 I dunno man. When you see why he left and what Lionhead is doing these days I'm starting to think Peter was forced to lie his butt off to sell games he didn't really want to make.
i put all my money on this is why Peter Molyneux left as well as not wanted to make ANOTHER fable game
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Fable: The Journey
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- Publisher(s): Microsoft Game Studios
- Developer(s): Lionhead Studios
- Genre: Role-Playing
- Release:
- ESRB: T
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