ekim wrote:Peter Molyneux just announced "The Trail" - more info coming soon.
http://www.vg247.com/2014/12/02/the-tra ... -molyneux/According to Guy Cocker, Molyneux has announced his next game, The Trail, at The Fun & Serious Games Festival, currently underway in Bilbao, Spain.
We’ll probably have more on it throughout the day.
Original Source: https://twitter.com/guycocker/status/539742548907290624
UPDATE:http://tecnologia.elpais.com/tecnologia/2014/12/01/actualidad/1417461061_344645.html
Sorry for the kinda shitty translation. It's better than Google Translate though :P
It's the first time he publicly talks about it. It's called The Trial. It will mix the social netowrk with an aesthetic and emotional experience. It will be for phones are tablets, with the ambition to reach thousands of millions. And the leaderboards, that listing that tells you how good you are playing a videogame, will form an essential and "never seen" part of it. It's the latest thing from Peter Molyneux. the genie that invented how to be God in a videogame with Populous. The crazy that left Microsoft after selling more than 10 million copies of his fantasy trilogy Fable to work on his own. The guru that dares to say, with a oscilating voice between seducing and calm, "with my new game, The Trial, it will take five seconds to amaze you."
Molyneux, who is one of the stars on the Fun & Serious Festival lineup, which celebrates its conferences day for professionals from December 1th to December 3rd, breaks with himself with this announcement. He said that Godus, his actual game, would be the only one in which 22 Cans, his company, would be working. But he couldn't resist to continue exploring that game so it reaches not millions, but thousands of millions through phones and tablets: "There's a huge gap between the Candy Crush player and the Call of Duty player. It's a no man's land. But there's something key on both sides of the ecuation: they let me escape from this workd. What obsesses me is taking that pleasure, that delight, and take it to a broader audience."
The trial will have all the elements that obsess Molyneux. The most important one, the comunication with the reinvention of the incredible success of the social networks: "The problem of these networks is that there is too much communication. If you and me are sharing a conversation, and we could only say ten words to the other one, we would be on one side frustrated for all that is going to be kept outside. But on the other side we would strive to fill with meaning those ten words". Because of that he is going to mimic the tecnique he used on Curiosity, the extraordinary marketing campaign that got him headlines on all the media of the globe after confronting the Internet with a cube which external appearance (texture, color, light) changed with the player's interaction. And it hid a secret. It was known after that, being the god of gods full time (and getting money for it) of Godus. The interaction of The Trial will go through that way: "It will be understood at first sight. And it will play with the posibilities of communicating beyond words, like music or painting."
But he also pretends to reformulate classic videogame concepts. Something as simple as the leaderboards, those lists that sort the ability of players worldwide, will transform in The Trial into something different: "Imagine a notion as stupid, as infinitesimal as these leaderboards. The show me how good I am at a game. We all like them. Candy Crush has them. Call of Duty has them. But is there a way that we can transform this into something integral of the game and that it thrills by itself?" Molyneux, obviously, asks retorically. And he thinks that the grail, "what any of my game hasn't had until now" is something as simple as "other people". "If I make people to get thrilled on the whole, if I make the feel the emotion of discovery together, if I connect with them not only as a single person, but as a collective, if i manage to make them worry as much os more for the other people than for themselves, then... I think we will be able to have a game with feelings that haven't been explored before". Lived by people like the millions of people that painted on his cube and comunicated with light and color for the pleasure of creating.
Molyneux is aware of the paradoxical legacy he carries. He is so good selling an idea, suggesting what it could manage to be -while he opens and closes his hands, while he stares at the nothing, stays quiet and smiles- that after that he is so praised as reviled for making monstruos expectations. Sand castles. But he knows that's part of the ride. "As in any ride, you make hits and misses. And I've learned a lot, a lot from Godus' misses. There was no progression, no reward. If we are going to make it to such a big audience they have to feel the reward, even if they play a few minutes. And there wasn't a narrative. And there always has to be a story." He's sure he is now on the right way. Because, for him, the future of the videogames is going through a magic moment between message and message. A connexion of thousands of miles away between two, three, a thousand unknowns that suddenly connect and vibrate with the same note. "The designers like me now have a thousand million screens to deliver our experiences. It's our responsability. And we only have to find the right metafor. Molyneux believes that he has it. And he wants the entire world to have it soon.
Thanks to Kulapik
The Spanish link calls the game The Trial; the NeoGAF OP and VG247 call it The Trail. I'll go with the Spaniards for now.
