New to the GDC agenda this year is something called the "Vision Track," a series of lectures on the future of game design and other 'big picture' issues. And here, Peter Molyneux is the perfect speaker: his game designs, while they may not always pan out as intended, always push the envelope. This year he wasn't alone, however. He teamed up with Ron Millar, creator of such strategy classics as Warcraft and StarCraft. The two of them are working together to wow gamers with Black & White 2, a game they used to demonstrate some new thinking in the realm of game design.

Molyneux prefaced his talk by admitting that he's not spouting gospel. He said that many people in the audience might absolutely disagree with him, but that was fine. He instead was looking to the future and calling on his own experiences to make sense of what's to come.

Ron Millar (left) and Peter Molyneux dive into the next generation...

Gamers Will Demand More...

Molyneux figures that next-generation games (and by this he means not necessarily games developed for next-generation hardware, just titles aimed at bigger audiences with higher standards in the years to come) will require several things to take off:

  • Clear Concepts
  • More Accessibility
  • Simplicity (Simple to Understand)
  • Deeper Interaction
  • Ability to Play & Experiment
  • Player-Defined Agendas
  • Morphable Gameplay

    Simplicity is the key! Molyneux claims that all great games need to have a hook. "Something clear that a single sentence can convey," he says, "I reckon you have ten seconds ... to grab someone." He also asserts that players will want to customize the experience, setting their own goals in a world that they can play around in.

    The Movies: Drag and drop simplicity.

    Putting It Into Practice

    "Simplicity" is Molyneux's new mantra, and it's demonstrated with his latest demo of The Movies. He describes an experience where he was playing an early version of his game, and realized that he'd played for like an hour while staring at nothing but text menus. That wasn't what people should be looking at! It wasn't the experience he wanted.

    But The Movies is a complicated game concept, with a studio-building part of the game, a strategic element, and the filming of actual movies themselves. It was going to be tricky. After his epiphany, he went back to the drawing board with his team and -- despite the game's complexity -- he got rid of more than 38 tiered-down menus.

    Instead, everything is now worked into the gameplay. Pertinent information appears above every person or building as you mouse over them. A simple control scheme is carried across through every element: You left-click to pick something up and right click to interact. Furthermore, everything you pick up is visually linked to all the things you can do with it.