So what is it? In Molyneux's own words, "I think it's such a significant scientific achievement that it will be on the cover of Wired." Normally hallowed ground for scientific advancements on par with baking an inedible cake in the shape of a Wii, Molyneux thinks that a decade's worth of work on AI, simulation and character interaction is worthy of a cover treatment.

Video game AI advances have already made the cover of Wired—Munch's Oddysee graced the mag's cover in 2002—but Molyneux's photogenic nature and capacity for extensive quoting will surely make for a much interesting return to newsstand prominence.

Peter Molyneux: My Next Game a 'Significant Scientific Achievement' [Wired] [Image Credit]

Big-ish, eh? We know it's not the only big-ish thing happening next week, as we expect a respectable number of pre-E3 announcements throughout the week, but we have to wonder what Fable 2 secrets await us. Perhaps we'll see that ballyhooed acorn or learn more about in-game pregnancy! Who wants to make a guess? There's a no-prize in it for you!

Lost My Teeth! [Fable 2 Development]

I can tell you definitively that there is absolutely an acorn and it does absolutely grow into a tree. And it is actually part of the story now. We decided we got into so much trouble over acorns and trees that we are going to make it part of the main thread of the story in "Fable 2".

I've had a pet project I've been working on for years, three of them if my memory is right. It started as a simple idea: You can judge a lot from a person's desk. I bet you could judge just as much from their home entertainment system. So I decided it would be fun to try and track down some pictures from the work desks and home gaming set-ups of the people who work in and cover the video game industry. Simple right? Not so much.

Turns out that many of the people are either too busy or too private to want to participate in such a project. To make matters worse, there's always fear that something sitting on someone's desk, that ends up in a photo, could actually be news worthy. Like a secret project or the next big thing. But I didn't give up and about once a year I'd harass a bunch of game developers for photos. Finally, this year, the harassment paid off.

What started as a trickle of photos turned quickly into the collection of galleries you'll find on the jump: More than 40 different photo galleries from 17 studios, seven publications, two industry movers and shakers and a couple of fun surprises.

You'll get to see the desk of such greats as Sid Meier, Peter Molyneux and Tetsuya Mizuguchi along with plenty of others. Remember you can comment both on the next page and on each individual photo if you click on them.

If I find there is interest, I will try to periodically update this gallery of galleries with more developers, journalists and industry movers and shakers. Have fun.

DEVELOPERS
2K Games

ASTRO Gaming

Buzz Monkey Software

Capcom

Eat, Sleep, Play

Electronic Arts

Firaxis Games

Flying Lab Software

Gearbox Software

Harmonix Music

Incognito Entertainment

Insomniac Games

Kojima Productions

Lionhead Studios

NanaOn-Sha

Naughty Dog

NCSoft

NetDevil

Neversoft Entertainment

Ninja Theory

Pandemic Studios

Petroglyph Games

THQ

Q Entertainment

JOURNALISTS

Blue's News

BoingBoing

EGM

The Escapist

GameLife

Joystiq

Kotaku

MTV

Slashdot Games

VE3D

VH1

INDUSTRY FOLK

MISCELLANIES
I AM 8-BIT

Penny Arcade

Whorecraft

Video Games Live

Not all of the holiday cards we receive here at Kotaku Tower come via our grumpy mailman. Some pop right up inside our email's mailbox. Take, for example, this touching card from Lionhead Studios, featuring Fable 2's boy and his dog.

Nice picture, but more interesting is the note included:

Hi Kotaku,

Season's Greetings from all at Lionhead Studios! We wish you all the very merry Christmas and the best wishes for 2008, which will be a very busy gaming year (with Fable 2 and our other game...)

Best wishes,
Lionhead Studios

Other game? I can't seem to find any clues on the card...

Check out the Lionhead community blog for more information. For those unable to attend, make sure to visit the Child's Play charity web site to learn how you can make a contribution.

childsplaycharity.org [Lionhead Community]

Lionhead Video Diary - Episode Three [gametrailers]

Lionhead Diaries [lionhead]

It may not be much, but Lionhead Studios just posted this picture up on their Fable 2 forums with three points for gamers to "speculate" about:

This is a castle
"Own all the world's property"
Located in a city

Hmmmm, I see no mention of trees. What could this mean? The Msoft press release that pointed me to this post starts by asking me to imagine myself as the main character in a Fable where I own this castle. So that part is explained, but the rest seems very nebulous. Brian Crecente

A little something [Fable 2 Forums]

Lionhead Studios announced recently that movie-making sim and machinima creator The Movies is now available for the Mac.

The studios also have a demo up on their site for Mac users. The Mac version got a director's cut treatment, adding some new features for this latest port. Brian Crecente

The movies for Mac [Lionhead Studios]

No new news from Lionhead yet about Fable 2, but they did just release these two new bits of concept art. Pipe-smoking FTW. Brian Crecente

I didn't play The Movies... from everything I read, it sounded like the fun machinima generator I always wanted wrapped up in a plodding, completely pointless sim game.

Now I want to, despite all that. This machinima of zombie Bruce Lee versus shotgun-wielding Chuck Norris is great enough to make me sit through even the most plodding, pointless sim game for a chance to jizz my creative juices. Florian Eckhardt

Peter Molyneux will be talking about Lionhead Studios' research into next-gen fighting games at Liepzig next week. The description of the talk sounds very interesting:

For video games to make the transition to next generation platforms, existing genres need to be revisited and evolved in order to maximise the technical potentials of new platform and appeal to a mass market audience. With this in mind Lionhead Studios has actively been researching potential advances in fighting games. This talk will be focussed on those new advances centering around the inspirational of next generational combat games using film clips, concepts and animations to show Lionhead's bold steps toward revolutionise combat in video games. This talk by Peter Molyneux does not focus on any particular product but instead examine the processes and research that went into moving a much loved but very familiar genre to its next iteration.

While this talk takes the fighting game genre as its primary example the processes that have led up to its conclusions could equally be applied to other genres of video games.

Hmm, I wonder if the clips could be showing the combat system for Fable 2?

I have realised I've got the PR equivalent of Tourette's. I can't help myself. It's the inability to downplay stuff - I have to get excited!

Oh my god, I am so, so stoked. Seriously you guys, have you seen this?! It's Fable 2! You all remember how totally sweet Fable was, yeah? Me too! Cause I made it! Ha ha!

I don't believe in going out and saying: 'we're going to create quite a good game.' I believe that what we're doing, with Fable 2, is thinking, right we've got to address all those things we did slightly wrong on Fable 1; we've got to make a bigger, better story, it's got to be an amazing world.

One of the main things is we've got to make this game jaw-droppingly beautiful. Sometimes darkly beautiful; beauty doesn't only mean green fields, but just stunningly beautiful. I came away from E3 just sick of seeing gunmetal shiny things and sewers.

Like, remember how we made your eyes all big and shiny in Fable, and everyone's faces kinda blocky like a Pink Pearl eraser, and then you could like, buy hair trading cards so you could have a totally badass ponytail? Right, so I had NO clue how we were gonna top that. But one night I totally had this brainstorm, and the security guys went out and got internet superstar Brian Peppers and we totally just scanned him with lasers like, right into the game! I know!

There has to be one big, big thing about Fable 2 that is going to shock and surprise people and that's what we've got, that's the exciting thing. And we're not ready to show it yet. I think it's going to be next year if I'm honest with you. It's a very, very big thing and if I told you about it, it's one word, and if I told you about it then you'd say: 'what are you talking about? It's another one of those Peter Molyneux moments.'

I'm serious, I totally can't tell you! Okay look...I'm just gonna pull a Molyneux here and totally blow off the NDA, because like, whatever, and you guys are totally my peeps, right? Okay, so get ready for this...the word, the ONE word? Is "otterpops".

Eliza Gauger

Interview with Peter Molyneux [Eurogamer, thanks Joooooonas]

Speaking of how superior we obnoxious Apple-munching turds are compared to the rest of the home computing audience at large, an easy way to deflate our own gaseous egotism is to point out that Macs just plain suck for gaming.

What's available? Civ IV is pretty good, but runs like a dog compared to the Windows version. Doom 3 sucks; Diablo 2 is a classic but it's at 800x600, for god's sake. If you want to game for your Mac, you either really need love emulators, Nethack or Battle for Wesnoth; otherwise, you need to install Windows on one of the pretty new Intel Macs to play something not obsolete. That's like a sexy woman forcing you to make out with her slow-witted hillbilly brother before she'll sleep with you. Degrading, is what it is.

Peter Molyneux has noticed it too, and he thinks the way Apple has discouraged gaming on its otherwise amazing platform is just pitiful...

There's this Catch 22 situation where not many people play games on the Mac and therefore developers don't want to make games for the Mac.

Exactly. I think it would need Apple to get behind games. There's nothing in their operating system that panders to games at all and I take my hats off to Microsoft. I think they've realized that games are important.

Well said. Apple needs to promote gaming like Microsoft has done ever since DirectX. In the meantime, it's a good thing I do like Battle for Wesnoth, which is free and available for Windows and Linux, btw. Pan-inclusive! Florian Eckhardt

Molyneux - "Apple needs to get behind games" [TUAW]

The Lionhead Times is reporting some details on the making of Fable 2. The latest post touches on the need for milestones, the fact that there are already 70 people working on the game and that MoCap is well under way. But the really interesting stuff is the details about the plot.

So now that the whole story has been set out on paper and agreed upon, the implementation can begin. As you're probably aware Fable 2 is set roughly 500 years after the original Fable and Fable: The Lost Chapters ended. This allows for some vital changes in the world of Albion, the characters and setting, but also to build further upon the heritage and back story. Eventually you get a story that is not only longer than the story from the original game but also one that's a little bit more mature! No, we're not going down the route of GTA (violence-grandeur) but with the current plan some people might be shocked by what we have in stock for Fable 2 players. Story-wise this is a slightly different approach but you'll like it, it has some rather cool twists to it. And I'm not talking about someone who rescues you at first and then betrays you, we've seen that a zillion times before, including in the original game.

Brian Crecente

Fable 2 Milestones

Game site Kikizo has an interview up the legendary Peter Molyneux (Fable, The Movies) in which the designer dishes on Microsoft's acquisition of his Lionhead Studios. So things must have gotten worse, right? With Peter Moore sneaking around and all, constantly taking off his shirt to show staffers his 24-inch guns. Not so, says the Lionhead leader.

Being an independent developer now is very, very difficult. And I found, a lot of my time, a lot of the decisions that Lionhead were taking, we were FORCED to take because we were an independent developer, and it was starting to affect the quality of our games. That's not the reason I started Lionhead. I started Lionhead to make truly unique, fantastic, original games. And at that point, Lionhead and Microsoft joined together. And that is the absolute truth, that is not a pre-prepared answer, it's a really...

Molyneux then said he would be at Lionhead for a long time unless he was abducted by aliens, which "could happen" he added with a laugh. That Molyneux sure is a kidder. Brian Ashcraft

Good Interview, Too Many CAPS [Kikizo]

In his statement, Molyneux claims, "We had other options than Microsoft, but they are the perfect partner for us. We share the same vision about the future of games." What is this mysterious and undefined vision both Molyneux and Microsoft share? We're unsure, but we assume it involves teaching your gigantic monster to eat his own excrement in Black & White 3.

Molyneux also compared the EA acquisition of Bullfrog with Microsoft's acquisition of Lionhead, claiming that Microsoft will be happy to keep Lionhead at its current size, where as EA quickly bloated Bullfrog like its namesake being inflated by a small child's bicycle pump.

Will the acquisition mean that Lionhead finally manages to put together a decent game? Probably not, but we'll keep our fingers crossed.

Molyneux: MS 'Perfect' for Lionhead [Next Generation]

Here's the official release:

REDMOND, Wash. — April 6, 2006 — Microsoft Game Studios (MGS) today announced it has purchased U.K.-based Lionhead Studios, one of the world's leading and most innovative video game developers and creators of "Fable ," the hit Xbox and Windows franchise.
Lionhead Studios will immediately begin creating content exclusively for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows platforms. The companies previously worked together on the popular role-playing games "Fable" for Xbox and "Fable: The Lost Chapters" for Xbox and Windows, which have collectively surpassed the 2 million global unit sales milestone, making "Fable" the best-selling role-playing franchise on the Xbox platform. "Fable" and "Fable: The Lost Chapters" enable players to make decisions that affect their character's skills, appearances and morality and the world around them.
"At Microsoft Game Studios we have worked hard to become the best partner for the best creative talent in our industry, and this acquisition underscores our commitment to excellence," said Shane Kim, general manager of Microsoft Game Studios. "Peter Molyneux is one of the few true visionaries in our industry, and his joining us is incredibly important to the future of both interactive entertainment and MGS. Lionhead is a shining example of the innovative and creative talent that has delivered some of the most influential and unique games experiences to date, and I am honored to welcome Peter and the incredible people at Lionhead Studios." "We could not be more excited about being part of MGS. They have long supported our creative vision, and this teamwork resulted in the hugely successful 'Fable' franchise," said Molyneux, managing director of Lionhead Studios. "This acquisition gives Lionhead the stability and opportunity to focus on creating world-class next-generation titles. We are joining some of the most incredible game creators in the industry, the combined talent of which will truly take next-generation gaming to a new level."With today's announcement, Lionhead Studios becomes the latest member of MGS, joining such prestigious and globally recognized game creators as Bungie Studios, Ensemble Studios, FASA Studio and Rare Ltd. on a team whose charter is to create exclusive entertainment experiences that differentiate Xbox 360 and Windows from other gaming platforms.

Wow... just wow.

[Thanks Bushido]