The studio that brought us Black & White and the Fable games has a creative process called "experiments" where anybody in the company can take a stab at developing a game mechanic or a piece of technology to be used in a future Lionhead game. The process sounds a bit more rigorous than Bungie pre-Halo 3; but it yields some pretty interesting results.

Molyneux showed off some of these experiments — ones that worked and ones that didn't quite pan out. We saw two prototypes of the dog from Fable II: the first was a rewards system where you could pet the dog a la Nintendogs (which Lionhead eventually chucked; and the second was a mechanic of having the dog run ahead of the player instead of following behind (the status quo in the final game).

We also saw a host of technical developments — like an aging system that applies a layer of wear and tear to everything in the world (murderizes the rendering rates), and a one-button combat system where the computer decides how the character attacks based on proximity to a target (which sort of made it into Fable II).

But the most interesting thing was a "tech demo" called "The Room" — made with love by Alex, Mark and Dave. As in Mark Healey, Alex Evans, Dave Smith — three out of the four guys that formed Media Molecule which went on to make LittleBigPlanet.

You could see a lot of proto-LBP things in "The Room" — from the textures on the fabrics and wallpaper to the concept of "empowering player creativity" by letting them design their own items to fill the room , everything just screams "Make me into an award-winning game."

But Lionhead didn't. They shelved it.

"This is one that didn't work terribly well," said Molyneux. "They worked on this for quite some time... and they had some really, really cool ideas. All of this was enormously, massively exciting... Each time we looked at it, our jaws dropped every single time. But – at the end of the day, even though this looks really cool and inspired us massively, it wasn't an experiment that really went anywhere."

You're right, sir. Four Game Developers Choice awards, a BAFTA and tons of Game of the Year nominations and wins is nowhere.

But, before you can cry "sour grapes," Internet — you should know that Molyneux said, "Media Molecule [are] some of the smartest people in the world."

Apparently, smarter than him, even.

In the six years since Black & White [was released] they have been working improving the great things that underpinned that game, and now they are getting pretty close to something that is very significant. It's a very big thing. A new franchise and as close to something revolutionary as I have ever seen. And we're close to announcing it... If you think back to the one thing about Black & White that was most fascinating, you'd have to say it was that creature that learned behavior and seemed, for a certain glimpse, to be alive. Imagine if you could take that and multiply it by a billion...

Two high honors, games like Populous, Dungeon Keeper and Fable under his belt, not to mention a studio buy out from Microsoft might lead you to believe Pete's got an out of control ego at this point, but you'd be wrong! Upon accepting the honor, Molyneux gave props to the rest of the Lionhead staff, saying:

I am extremely proud to have received this honour and would like to thank the French Ministry of Culture for this recognition. I would also like to say that I see this as a credit for everyone at Lionhead Studios, all our games are a team effort. I am just the figurehead.

What a swell guy. We've already forgotten about Black & White. Michael McWhertor

But the good news is that support for The Movies shall continue and that current Lionhead staff are hard at work on "an amazing next generation title".

Report: Lionhead To Re-Organize, Lay Off Staff [Gamasutra]

The Movies had quite a showing at Edinburgh. The head of Lionhead studios says that the game will be coming out in November and revealed that the Monkey God from Black & White will be available as a bonus costume in the game.

Bring on the poo-flinging shenanigans of Monkey God.

1Up's Jane Pinckard recently interviewed famed developer and braggart Peter Molyneux about his future plans. The man behind Fable mentioned that he still plans to develop three more Black & White titles. Each game will be set a thousand year's apart in the franchise' history with number five taking place in modern time. Judging by Molyneux's past experience at predicting the details of his own games, there will be one more B&W and it will take place about two years after number two and won't be released until 2050.

Idle Thumbs Forum [Idle Thumbs]