Lionhead History

In October 2008, Microsoft released the game Fable 2 studio Lionhead. She was a commercial success and was well received by critics. At the party in honor of the release of the game, emotional Molineneux (Peter Molyneux) shared his praise and thanked his tired development team, which had invested all his strength in the game for four years. Later, Fable 2 won BAFTA and became the best-selling RPG for the Xbox 360. Lionhead was on top of the world.


Seven and a half years later, a hundred Lionhead employees convened a meeting at the company's cafe. Hanno Lemke (Hanno Lemke), general manager of Microsoft Studios Europe, announced that the release of Fable Legends is canceled and Lionhead will be closed. The famous studio that Peter Molinho created almost 20 years ago has died.

The detailed history of the heyday and fall of Lionhead is confusing, but important. Workers in the studio describe it as a place imbued with the spirit of creativity, in which crushing defeats were often accompanied by tremendous success. They describe the frenzied British culture that won and suffered from its American sovereign, obsessed with winning the war of consoles. And they talk about the studio as a creation of man, as inspiring as it is annoying. This is not an easy story. But it is worth telling.

Lionhead was founded in 1997 by Peter Molinho, Mark Webley (Mark Webley), Tim Rance (Tim Rance) and Steve Jackson (Steve Jackson), but was conceived even earlier, when Molyneux was still working in Bullfrog, an amazing developer of such games for PCs as Populous, Syndicate and Dungeon Keeper. Molinho sold EA's Bullfrog to the company and made millions on the deal. Now, working under the heel of the American owner, Molinho craved freedom of creativity again.
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At first, it was planned to name Red Eye, because, as Mark Webley recalls, Peter and Tim had just recovered from a hard trip. Peter and Tim had just returned from a grueling travel stint. “It was rather unpleasant,” he says.

It was supposed to be called Red Eye, because the British video game magazine Edge was going to visit a new studio and interview the team. Then Molyneux and other co-founders discovered tens of thousands of companies that already used this name. They panicked.

Webley called his hamster Lionhead ("lion's head") because of his thick neck and because he looked a bit like a guy with a funny light hairstyle who visited a local pub. The future girl Molinho suggested using this name as a studio name. The name stuck. “As soon as we called the studio Lionhead, my hamster died,” says Webley. "It was his last wish."

The idea of ​​Lionhead was to create high-quality games, like Bullfrog, but avoid the trap of unlimited growth of the company. And Molyneux managed to pick the right people. Among the developers who joined him at the dawn of Lionhead were Demis Hassabis, the genius of artificial intelligence, whose DeepMind technology recently defeated one of the world's best go players, Mark Healy and Alex Evans, who later left Lionhead to found Media Molecule, which created LittleBigPlanet, and Jonty Barnes, who now manages the development at Bungie, the creator of Destiny.


Lionhead hamster webley

Under the terms of the separation agreement with EA, Molinho and Webley agreed to give the first refusal to the publisher of their first game, whatever it was. She became a god simulator called Black & White.

Work began on the extension of the Migninho Manor Bargate House in Alstede. There was a room that could accommodate just a handful of people, so very soon the development team became cramped in it. Molyneux was looking for an office in the Surrey Technopark in Guildford. Because of the artificial green hills, this place resembled the Land of Teletubbies. In February 1998, Lionhead found an office on Frederick Sanger Road and moved there. The Black & White development team has grown to 25 people.

The development of Black & White was, according to Charlton Edwards, “chaotic.” He worked at Lionhead in 1999 as a student intern, and then returned there in 2002 to full time.

Edwards dreamed of working at Lionhead, in the studio founded by his hero, Molinho. “It was like a job at Disneyland. I went there with wide eyes. I remember how animators made a huge cow, I burned with impatience and desire to join the team. ”

The company had no producers, no schedules and all that at least resembled a boring organization or planning. “It seemed they were just doing what was needed,” says Edwards. "But there was a truly creative atmosphere."

The “do-you-go-ahead” approach lasted at Lionhead until the first visit to E3 in 1998. Then the E3 was held in Atlanta, and not in Los Angeles. Lionhead rented a small room, which was called the "hall of losers." Mark Webley recalls: the only thing that Lionhead from Black & White had was “terrible” sprites, a couple of screenshots, a frame test stand and Moligno notes.

But this was a new game by Peter Molinho himself, the founder of Bullfrog and the creator of Populous, so people were crowding around. Cathy Campos (Cathy Campos), a long-time advertising specialist with Peter, recalls that Molyneux spread out these screenshots, a test stand, and notes on a twenty-minute presentation. In the end, Peter said: “I have a lot more to say. And I will tell, but not today. Thank you all and goodbye. ” “Then the journalists left. But, in essence, there was nothing more to tell. That was the scenario, but as a result, we were well covered in the press, and this returned us to work on Black & White. ”

The people who worked on Black & White recall the game with pride, despite the fact that the development absorbed all their powers. Lionhead was a men's club, Campos was the only woman associated with the work of the studio. And since it was a male club, made up mostly of young people, Lionhead often had long nights filled with hard work and games. They drank cola and smoked cigarettes while sitting at tables piled with chilled leftover pizza.

“Everyone was captured by the process,” recalls Andy Robson, who headed the Lionhead Testing. “It was a great atmosphere. We were a real family. ”

If Lionhead was a family, then Molinho was her father, who was sitting at the head of the table. Under his tutelage there were about twenty recalcitrant guys, who often got into trouble. In fact, Lionhead was a continuation of Bullfrog culture and ethics. The idea of ​​Black & White arose because of the event in Bullfrog: the infamous Tamagotchi incident.

At some point in his work at Bullfrog, Peter Molyneux acquired a tamagotchi and wore it around his neck. He fell deeply in love with him. “He was already an adult,” says Robson. "And I wondered what the hell was going on."

"" I tell you, if I ever see this toy on your desk, I will kill it. "That's exactly what I said. Just kill it."

One day, Robson, whom Molyneux jokingly called the “perfect bastard,” came across the Tamagotchi chief, alone and defenseless, lying on the table. He put the toy in a mug of tea and left it there.

“I was sad about him,” recalls Moligne. "And then I thought - if I became so attached to this piece of plastic, then this feeling can be used."

Draws continued, and the end of the development was not visible. One day, Mayor Guilford called the studio to arrange a meeting. Molinho agreed, but the team decided to play a trick on the mayor. Mark Healy inserted two pieces of wire into an old wool glove and put the ends into the computer's drive.

The mayor of Guilford looked at how Healy was playing the game with a glove on his arm, and he thought that it was the glove movements that controlled the famous on-screen “hand” in Black & White. Healy's other hand, hidden from sight, drove the mouse. “Mayor Guilford was shocked! It's like some kind of virtual reality, ”says Molyneux. “Poor man. We really fool him. ”


Ambitious and slightly “raw” Black & White laid the foundation for Lionhead after its release in 2001

Robson remembered the error bet between tester Joe Borthwick and Molyneux. Molinho set Joe a condition that if he did not find and reproduce this failure, he would come to a party in honor of the Black & White release in a woman’s dress. He never found a failure, so at the Black & White party in 2001 at the Quaglino's restaurant in London, Bortvik was wearing a dress.

“In those days, there was something to laugh about,” recalls Robson. "While we waited for the assembly to complete at three in the morning in the parking lot near Lionhead, we had small football matches."

Lionhead employees who lingered at work could order dinner from a restaurant at the expense of the company. Every evening, many long delayed. And takeaway dinners went one after another.

“Sometimes I came home and my wife offered to buy food at a restaurant,” says Robson. “And I answered:“ You know what? No, I do not want food from the restaurant. I have eaten it for almost three years. ”

Draws were part of the development, escape from the intense and inexorable work. In one particularly tough nine-month period, the Black & White team worked seven days a week at the weekend.

“We had no personal life,” recalls Molyneux. "If I was not in the office, then I was asleep."

“I know, many can call it work for wear. But we really worked with passion. Nobody needed to force. We really felt that we were creating something new, and everyone was eager for this with all their hearts. ”

“Some had difficulties because they had families. At that time I was not married and I did not have a relationship. I met my wife immediately after completing Black & White. The work was hard. But it was a creative tension. I think that not many, remembering the hours spent on the game, regret them. We just felt like we were doing something completely new, and it was amazing. ”

From Black & White, they expected something colossal. The community of PC gamers demanded information and carefully studied every statement by Peter in the press. Fans came to the office and refused to leave until the game was over. Years passed, and EA began to ask unpleasant questions. Work without respite continued until the very release of Black & White in 2001, four years after the start of the project in the extension of Peter’s house. She was a huge success and was warmly received by critics. All the blood, sweat and tears rewarded a hundredfold: the first game of Lionhead became a hit.

Then, according to Molinho, Lionhead made a “bad decision”, but this seems like a cruel verdict, considering what kind of game gave rise to such a decision. Lionhead established a system of studio assistants in which she could work with other independent developers and help them sign deals with publishers in exchange for a stake in the company. Lionhead collaborated with two companies: with the Big Blue Box, which at the time was working on an ambitious role-playing game in the open world, codenamed Project Ego, and with Intrepid, which created the BC game in the survival genre of caveman.

At the same time, Lionhead began working on The Movies and Black & White 2, expanding office space and occupying the entire top floor of the building at Ockham Court Surrey Technopark. Together with the expansion of space there was an increase in staff. “A company of thirty brilliant geniuses has expanded to a hundred people a year after the release of Black & White,” says Molyneux. “It was a big mistake. We needed to remain a small and concentrated group, and not turn into something big and vague. ”

Fable is known as the Lionhead game run by Peter Molyneux, but it was created by Dean and Simon Carter, who worked at Bullfrog, and then founded their own Big Blue Box studio in Godalming, Surrey.

After signing the contract for participation in the scheme of Lionhead satellite studios, the company Big Blue Box spent four years, almost completely independently working on what was becoming Fable. At that time, Microsoft, herself planning to release a video game console called the Xbox, fell in love with this game.

In particular, Ed Fries, one of the creators of the first Xbox. Microsoft needed a role-playing game for the Xbox, and Fable was suitable in all respects. The superstar designer Molyneux, the developer of many of Edd's favorite games, was a valuable prize. “I remember how happy I was to meet Peter before the Xbox because of his glorious past,” says Freise. "He is a programmer, and I am also an old programmer."

Shane Kim, who ran the Microsoft Game Studios at the time, also participated in the fate of Fable from the very beginning. “We must not underestimate the attractiveness of working with Peter,” he says. “He had a lot of resources. A large number of fans. It instantly won the trust of our new platform. We were fascinated by the concept of Fable, its design and the fact that it promised to become the main franchise console. I think it played a role. ”

Inside the Big Blue Box reigned joyful excitement. “A whole delegation came to us to see Fable,” recalls Fable art director John McCormack.

“When they went to the office in Godalming, they said that the game looked amazing and asked:“ Where is Peter? ” "And Peter is not working here." At that moment they were a little nervous, because they thought that the game did not correspond to the caliber of Peter. Before that, they thought it was Peter’s game. We said that it is not. Peter was working on another game in Guilford. ”



Neither Ed Fraise nor Shane Kim knew about the scheme with the Lionhead satellites and that the game was developed by the Big Blue Box. But both believed that Fable would still be Peter Molyneux’s game, or, as Shane put it, “Peter’s fingerprints will be on it.”

Microsoft decided to support Fable and publish the game. The company has a standard phased financing deal. Everyone: Lionhead, Peter fans, even the Microsoft executives were waiting for this game.

Simon Carter recalls Lionhead's first demo of Fable's Xbox demo on E3.

“We arrived in Los Angeles with a terrible jet lag and went to the exhibition center to prepare for the demonstration. It turned out that at Microsoft no one knew about our arrival. Me and Dean were shoved into a tiny utility room right next to the giant speaker on the Microsoft booth.

We spent the first day showing the Fable demo to journalists, trying to fit our story between the rumbling bass speakers Halo from the speakers. Coming the next day, we learned that we were nominated for the title of "Best Game Show", and Microsoft moved us to a much more spacious and quiet room with fantastic donuts. Donuts! Life was beautiful again. ”

But just before the release of Fable, there were a couple of events that forever changed the fate of the Big Blue Box and Lionhead.

Lionhead hoped to enter the stock market and spent a lot of money on it (and then mourned the bad advice of financial experts). To implement this plan, Lionhead wanted to acquire as much “property” as possible, so she bought the Big Blue Box and Intrepid.

The plan ended in failure after the September 11, 2001 stock market crash. Lionhead, desperate for the money to support the development of five more games for different publishers, has achieved investment from venture capitalists.

In the meantime, Fable has become more ambitious than anyone could have imagined. Therefore, it was decided to merge the core of the Fable team from the Big Blue Box with the Lionhead part to complete the game. The mysterious Project Dimitri, to the creation of which the core of the Black & White development team has moved, was canceled. In its place came Fable.

“Before the merger, it became obvious that Fable would be ... just huge,” explains Dean Carter.

“We understood more and more clearly that the carefully selected team of thirty people, created by Simon, Ian Lovett and me, simply cannot cope with the completion of a project of such size and scale without substantial assistance from the core of the Lionhead team.

Microsoft showed great patience, and even though the Big Blue Box had a very solid alpha version (the combat unit was almost complete, there were the beginnings of AI peasants and interactions), creating all of the RPG external attributes would require organizational work that Bullfrog had never encountered. Box and Lionhead.

When the clock “we need to release this game” started ticking, the only question was to use as many of the main Lionhead participants as possible to complete the game.

The idea that we could complete the RPG with a team of old sizes seems funny in retrospect. "

It was at that moment that the Carter brothers and other employees of the Big Blue Box experienced a genuine sense of the Lionhead culture, and for some of them this resulted in conflicts.

“The merger of Big Blue Box and Lionhead was difficult,” says Dean Carter.

“There were guys in Lionhead who really didn’t want to work on an“ alien game ”. They wanted to do something more “in Lionhead style” - Black & White 3 or The Movies 2, or something obviously more avant-garde.

On the other hand, there were others who jumped from rapture and dreamed of working on a new RPG, regardless of whose world it was. These guys literally saved our skin, and most of them remained with the franchise to the end. ”

Fable in the development process met the millennium, and its creators were close to exhaustion. “We already thought:“ But when will this game be over? ”, Says John McCormack, like all the other members of the Big Blue Box who moved from Glasgow to Lionhead.

Lionhead culture has become a blessing and a curse. Freedom of experimentation, combined with a lack of structuredness and even design documents, meant that Fable added a bunch of interesting "chips", but it lacked integrity. It was an interesting "sandbox", but it remained a role-playing game with no history. It was a huge world with hundreds of fantastic creatures and characters, not connected in any way.

“If you’re familiar with Peter’s games, you know that they don’t tell stories,” says McCormack. “These are simulators. „Games of God“. "Sandboxes". Therefore, none of those who were involved in the development of Fable, did not know what to do. And so the game slipped away. They tried to connect all the parts together, but did not know how to achieve this.And so it went on for a long time. ”

Some are tired of seemingly endless development. At the first demonstration of Fable, she looked amazing. But over time, the graphics became obsolete, which was noticeable on the example of other produced games,

“The graphics were ready for the release of the Xbox,” recalls McCormack. “The engine was complete, and it looked great. And we thought that we have the most beautiful game in the world.

And then we had to wait for three years of gameplay and plot, and this annoyed everyone, because a whole bunch of games came out that we had to compete with. By the time of release, everyone is already tired. "

Most interviewed about working on Fable believed that Microsoft saved the project. The company did not intervene in the design of the game. Instead, she offered support, resources, and assistance with production.

“We had the right resources,” recalls McCormack. “We turned from a team with 15 employees in Godalming into a team of about 90 people. Lionhead said it was a strong game, and Microsoft gave money, so everything worked out for us. ”


Microsoft support allowed Fable to be maintained, even though the marketing department did not quite understand the unique perspectives of the game.

After moving Big Blue Box to Lionhead, Microsoft sent a first-class engineering team and a couple of producers to help with the development. Technicians worked on Fable's quality work on the Xbox. Lionhead created the game on powerful PCs, but she had problems with high frame rates on the console. This engineering team worked day and night, McCormack recalls. “It was partly our fault, but the Xbox equipment also contributed. In addition, the specifications were constantly changing, because we started work in the early stages of console development. ”

Microsoft recommended Lionhead to hire producers to manage the chaos. Louise Murray (Louise Murray), many consider the most important for the release of Fable man. Without her production help, Fable would die a horrible death.

Murray was a good influence on Fable because, as it turned out, she was the only person in Lionhead whom Peter Molyneux listened to.

“When Louise arrived, she was a bit stiff,” says McCormack. “And, as was usual in the gaming industry of that time, no one knew how to communicate with a woman. Peter didn't understand how to talk to her. He let out inappropriate jokes, as if he were in a purely male team, and then he remembered that there was a woman with us. ”

“She found a good language with me,” admits Molyneux. “I always said that we need to add another function, and it will take even more time to balance it. And she fantastically knew how to answer: “Wait, Peter, is it really important?” She did better my work and the work of the rest. Without it, Fable would not have become Fable. ”

The people who worked on Fable describe the last year of development as one hard deadline. The developers spent long hours in desperate attempts to put everything together. "Bugs" constantly appeared, and then the head of the Lionhead testing department Andy Robson stepped on the scene.

Robson had a practical approach and perfectly coped with finding errors. Prior to the Bullfrog, he worked at the construction site, and then joined Molinho at Lionhead. In the office, he was nicknamed "Robbo of the Gestapo."

“I will tell you how it was,” he says. “I approached people and asked:“ What the fuck are you checking this code? No need to check it until it comes to me and I do not test it, or one of my testers. Check this one out. We will test your code and say if we need to check it. ” I was pretty tough. This applied to Peter and other programmers. So it was. I didn't stand on ceremony with Peter. Many in front of him fawn. And I always spoke straight to him. ”

Robson went to Molinho's office with a bundle of bugs reports, and Peter threw them into the air.

“I said:“ Well, I can print them again. They need to be corrected, Peter, they are not going anywhere. ”

All this time, the culture of the "male club" Lionhead remained, it was a vent to relieve the stress of exhausted workers.

Like most companies, Lionhead had its own corporate mailing list for all employees. If you send a letter to her, everyone else will receive it. This is useful for communication in the studio. But in inept hands, mailing turned into a weapon of self-destruction.

Developers recall how once a tester accidentally inserted a link to a newsletter.

“It was the funniest moment of all my work at Lionhead,” says Charlton Edwards, who has worked for the company for 14 years.

“I asked the tester if he wanted to send it to everyone. He turned white like paper and answered in a panic: “I swear to God, it’s not me”. ”

Molyneux, himself involved in the strange sweepstakes, found this episode amusing. But he did what he was obliged, and gave the tester an informal reprimand.

“He quickly deleted this letter,” recalls Edwards. "The IT department somehow managed to erase it from the computers."

On the fiftieth anniversary of Steve Jackson, the prankster said that a woman would come to the studio to interview him. Actually, it was a stripper.

“She undressed and started singing to him,” says Andy Robson. “It was a huge-breasted Madame. We were at the other end of the building, as the children stared at the windows just to see it. God, that was awesome. Steve asked why there was a camera there. We replied that to capture motion in Black & White. He was rather naive about games. Obviously, scripting is very different from design. But he was naively good. ”

Lionhead Christmas parties have become a legend among British developers. Employees remember how they came in at seven in the evening under a tent in the field, and saw some of their colleagues wallowing in oblivion on the ground. They recall how one artist saw his reflection in the mirror and shouted: “Whom are you staring at?”, And then hit the reflection in the face.

“Some of the people I worked with were absolute geniuses,” recalls non-drinker Charlton Edwards. “I saw these people every day and thought:“ My God, well, this guy’s brain is just amazing. ” And then we went to the tent with them, and after a few bottles of beer, they began to dance to the conga. It was insane. ”

“Artists were the best,” says John McCormack. “We looked out of the windows to the parking lot to see how one of the artists opens his car and a heap of foam balls falls out of it. And we all screamed with delight. ”

Every Friday, Lionhead held presentations at which employees told them what they were working on. And the best and brightest works Lionhead used to show: fantastic gaming graphics technology, new prototypes and so on. Each Friday presentation was similar to a secret mini-GDC.

Here everyone had a chance to become famous, a chance to create a name for himself. But with this you drew to yourself - literally - a big target on the back.

“We sat quietly throughout the presentation,” laughs McCormack. “They were completely covered with stickers of their backs. And then they came out and started the presentation. We were dying with laughter. It was so stupid. ”

In 2003, Lionhead culture declared itself by the fact that it probably became the peak of Lionhead: jumping into the canal.

Next to the Britannia pub, there is a canal connecting to the River Wei. The channel is wide enough for boats to pass through it. But he is not meant for jumping over him. However, in 2003, this is exactly what a couple of people from Lionhead tried to do. As a result, one of them was in the hospital, breaking his face against another wall of the canal. “This happened before the Microsoft purchase,” says Peter. "Microsoft's personnel department would never allow such a thing."


Fable was released in 2004 for the first Xbox and became another hit. But her success took Lionhead by surprise.

“The success of Fable was almost unknown in the Lionhead team,” admits Dean Carter.

“There was almost no marketing in the UK, and we found out sales statistics by chance. But we didn’t have any special feeling that commercially a game has become something rare, remarkable or worth celebrating.

We heard rumors from Microsoft: "The game received the highest ratings of the players" and "You have become the second most important franchise for the Xbox, right after Halo". But many of us just shrugged and said: "Well, probably, then you should start the development of DLC and Fable 2".

Although not succeeding in Halo, Fable became the foundation for the Microsoft console and the core for creating a community of crazy fans. The tortured team celebrated, but in the first place it felt relieved. Microsoft immediately signed the Xbox 360 Fable 2 deal, and work began.

However, problems were born in Lionhead.

The success of Fable had its price: cancellation BC Together with the Big Blue Box studio Fable, Microsoft received the rights to publish the game Intrepid, but it was decided to focus on Fable so that Lionhead did not try to sit on two chairs. The closure of Intrepid resulted in massive layoffs.

Lionhead has grown too big, and the number of employees has gone out of control. In 2005, it employed about 300 people. The projects included an expansion for Fable, Fable 2, Black & White 2, The Movies and other unannounced research projects that have not been released, such as Unity, created in collaboration between Lionhead and Tempest 2000 author Jeff Minter.

Molyneux and the rest of the Lionhead management worked spontaneously and lost control of the development. In addition, the preparation for the failed entry into the securities market took them a lot of time. “Instead of programming and creating code, we became intermediaries who managed several projects, but in reality they ruined everything,” says Mark Webley, one of the Lionhead management team.

“We completed the Fable on Friday. And literally on Monday I went to Black & White and helped her to finish, ”says Molyneux. “And the other team helped with the completion of The Movies. Working on three games and their almost simultaneous release is a real frenzy. At this stage, I pretty much burned out. ”

Molyneux didn’t pay attention to The Movies, because mostly the developers focused on Black & White 2 and Fable. “We used to say that the eye of the Eye of Sauron was distracted from us,” says Jon Askew, who worked on The Movies. "It seemed to us that it was better when Peter was distracted by other projects."

“There were sixty people working on The Movies, and some team members didn’t have enough work,” said Stuart Whyte, who worked on the game and later took over the management of the studio.

“They did not know what we would do next. It turned out that we were alone. I compared this to the moment from Wallace and Gromit, when heroes had to lay out rails in front of a moving train. The management was desperate to give the team a job. And the team sat and did nothing, and it was not very useful for the release of the game. The atmosphere was crazy. ”

The development of Black & White 2 in the office at Frederick Sanger Road was carried out by a new subsidiary of Black & White Studios and was chaotic, the team has grown to a hundred people.

“Black & White 2 was a complete chaos,” says one of the creators of the game. “We had a development manager who came from British Rail, and he lasted three weeks. After coming this guy is absolutely closed from us. The pace of change was completely different from the one he was used to. It happens that decisions are made instinctively, and at that time it went like this ”

“Everyone was doing what seemed necessary,” says Adam Langridge, who worked as a Black & White 2 programmer. This sounds negative, but Adam recalls Lionhead’s relaxed attitude to creating games with pride.

“If there was an area in which you wanted to work, you just asked to participate or start the work yourself. All decisions were made creatively, and it was awesome.

Everyone around felt like real rock stars. Everyone thought that he was doing fine. They felt experienced and talented. I could walk around the office, chat with people and watch what they were working on. And everyone did something amazing. ”


The Movies, released in 2005, was ahead of its time for a couple of years and did not reveal its full potential.

“Everyone was open and supported each other. A strong team spirit reigned in us, everyone wanted to be as good as possible in order to impress their colleagues. ”

The Movies was released in late 2005 and its sales disappointed the publisher, Activision. That same year Black & White 2 came out and its sales disappointed EA. In particular, The Movies speed was annoying. The game was appreciated by many players, but it was released at the wrong time — a year before YouTube. Lionhead has put a lot of effort into creating a website where players can upload their movies, but it has not gained popularity. At first, the creators hoped that The Movies would be sold in the same way as The Sims. Perhaps if YouTube were at the time, it would have worked. It also hindered the fact that they didn’t manage to implement The Movies advertisements in Blockbuster stores and on popcorn packages.

But really, both games had to be developed more concentrated, and, as they say in cookbooks, “to hold longer in the oven”. Molinho surrendered. “It would be too difficult for any studio to focus on a few games,” he said. "It was necessary to do one game at a time, and not to take a few."

As a result, Lionhead was in a very dangerous financial situation. The expenses were astronomical - more than one million dollars a month were spent on salaries alone. The money ran out, and Peter was tired of doing business. He wanted to go back to game development again.

Lionhead management raised the issue of buying long before the acquisition of Microsoft in 2006. Molyneux “probed” Ed Fraise when Lionhead created the first Fable (Ed said that against this idea, he was afraid of the disappearance of the spirit of creativity after the sale). It was obvious that Lionhead was too bloated, and salary costs too high for a company to become an attractive purchase for any potential investor. Therefore, to assist in the takeover, Lionhead reduced its team to about 90 people.

Meanwhile, Black & White’s key developers left the company to establish a new studio. Mark Healey (who worked on Rag Doll Kung-fu in his spare time, the first game on Steam, not created by Valve), Alex Evans, David Smith (David Smith) and Karim Ettouni (Kareem Ettouney) founded Media Molecule and began work on LittleBigPlanet for Sony.

Their departure seemed the end of an era, but for some it was not a surprise. “They had an office at the far end of the office, in which they did not work on any of the major games,” says Andy Robson.

“They did not know what to do with these games. Total nonsense. Therefore, I understand why they left and created Media Molecule. They are tired. They worked on research and development, on new ideas, but they were left in this office for a year. ”

Many knew that Lionhead was in trouble, and many knew that The Movies and Black & White 2 were not selling well enough to please people in business suits. Venture capitalists were worried, and this alarm was passed on to others.

“Everyone was whispering and sharing rumors,” says Charlton Edwards. “I remember the feeling of fear that we are in trouble. We had a sense of imminent collapse. ”

We had two sentences: one from Ubisoft and one from Microsoft. Molinho met several times in Paris with the head of Ubisoft, Yves Guillemot, and talked about a possible deal. According to people close to these negotiations, they went well.

It would be an exaggeration to say that Microsoft flew and dragged Lionhead from under Ubisoft's nose, because acquisitions of this kind are rarely so dramatic. But in this case, Microsoft wanted to protect Fable, which sold well on the original Xbox, as an exclusive role-playing game for the Xbox 360. She knew that if the company went to Ubisoft, she would start making games for a competitor - the PlayStation 3.

“If we had moved to Ubisoft, then at some point Fable would have appeared on PlayStation and other platforms,” says Mark Webley.

“It really was Microsoft’s war against Sony,” admits Shane Kim, one of Microsoft’s main sponsors of the deal. "We fought hard."

“Fable 2 has become a very important exclusive game in our portfolio, and we were ready for anything to ensure its successful release. A lot of people were waiting for her, and she could become an incentive to buy an Xbox 360. ”

For Lionhead management, the acquisition was mainly a matter of preserving the company's future, protecting employees, and yes - making a lot of money. The management spent months preparing for the sale, built fantastic prospects and met with influential bosses around the world. And all this at the very time when attention was needed to create several games and manage hundreds of employees.

“For me it was a very confusing time, because a lot of events were happening,” says Moligno. “It definitely wasn't like the way Hollywood draws it. There is no way that people come in and say that we sign papers. You need to go through the whole process of legal due diligence and meet with management. It was a real nightmare. ”

Molyneux had to fly to Redmond to meet with Shane Kim, Peter Moore and Phil Spencer to discuss the purchase.

“You need to meet them and impress them,” says Peter. “They are impressed. You come back. Do not hear from them a couple of days. Hear nothing for a week. And then they agree.

At Microsoft, such things are done in a specific process. Nobody does anything rashly. You meet with some people, and they are inspired. Then you meet the following in the chain. And then with the following. And as a result, you find yourself at the head vice president, who was Robbie Bach. ”

Sam van Tilburg, head of the Lionhead community, sat on a luxurious red Molinho couch at his home on Wyledrness Road in Guilford, just five minutes from the office when in March 2006 Robbie Bach called and made the last offer. Peter poured himself his favorite drink at the time - vodka with Purdeys. Sam remembers that it was a short conversation.


Lionhead was bought by Microsoft in April 2006.

"He said:" It was Robbie. " "What is Robbie?" I asked. “Robbie Bach. He approved the deal. Microsoft is buying us. ”

In 2002, Microsoft paid $ 375 million for Rare. Sources who know about the deal say that Microsoft acquired Lionhead "for pennies". One source reports that the purchase cost less than 20 million. “We were paid millions of pounds,” is the only thing that Peter Moligno said.

Not everyone was happy with the terms of the deal. Microsoft paid only a fraction of the money, and the rest of the payments were tied to Lionhead's fulfillment of certain conditions. One of these conditions is the release of Fable 2. One source told Eurogamer that the release of Fable 3 in 2010 was also part of the deal, and efforts to complete the game on time were also connected with the desire to receive payment in five years.

The ownership shares were divided between the venture capitalists who invested in Lionhead. According to Molinho, each of them got his piece of cake. "All these little chipmunks have taken our big pie apart."

“We were pleased with this,” says Mark Webley. “I think that Microsoft, too. For Microsoft, it was a very cheap deal. They got a lot of money, but I don’t think they bought the studio just because it was inexpensive. We had a lot of smart heads that were worth the money. ”

Andy Robson was one of the co-owners of Lionhead, who were not satisfied with the deal. He claims that the company, in which he worked so hard, sought to give him the money he owed.

“We had a hard time,” he says. “It was not about the money. It was about pride and principles. They made us a beautiful offer, but we did not give up. They tried to force us to sign the papers and exerted pressure because they could not close the deal until they received the consent of the majority of the shareholders. Finally, I said that I would sign my papers if it says there that I will receive payments on my shares after I left. ”

“I remember coming to meetings with Molly [Moligno] and Webley, and they asked,“ How are you, Robbo? ”I replied:“ How can there be things? You have everything in order. What about those who made the games for you? “Between the management and the people who worked in the studio from the very beginning, the situation became tense.

They sold the company for pennies. Sold to save her. They just burned the money.

I missed the growing up of my children, because all the time I was in this office, not for money, but because of the love for creating a game. They have forgotten all this. ”

“If someone wanted to get more money, I said that I would also like to get more,” Webley objects.

“I am sure that everyone would like more. But when you come to venture capitalists, they take the share of the company. This weakened my influence and the influence of Peter. All studio founders have partially lost their power. ”

Microsoft, however, looked pleased. “It was a great deal for Microsoft,” says Molyneux. "They beat off their costs in 18 months, because Fable 2 came out and it turned out to be fantastically successful."

Lionhead employees were told about the company's purchase at the Guilford Holiday Inn in April 2006. Molyneux made a speech. Microsoft explained why they wanted to buy Lionhead and the Fable franchise as an exclusive console series. They distributed to all those present on the free Xbox 360, which, according to those present, somewhat calmed the storm.

Most of the interviewees said they were happy about the purchase by Microsoft. To some, this seemed like a guarantee of preserving their jobs. Others, inspired by the positive impact on the creation of Fable, expected further investment, resources and greater organization.

“Microsoft told us that the game will come out, and you shouldn’t worry about it,” says John McCormack. “We will get marketing. Lionhead will be given full support. ”

Most of the former Lionhead employees recalls Magnitogate. [approx. Per.: by analogy with Watergate.] According to three independent sources, it was like this:

One artist used magnetic letters on the fridge to write a homophobic insult to his close friend. Another artist decided that it was intended for him, and wrote a formal complaint. The personnel department of Lionhead came down from the coils. Magnets were banned.

“The one who did this went crazy with fear,” recalls John McCormack. “He was in a panic, he thought he would be fired. And we said it would be so. We had fun for years. In this company, everyone made fun of each other and nobody took anything seriously. I will not say that this joke with the magnets was good, it was just such an atmosphere. The personnel department simply did not understand. ”

"Magnitogate" was a signal of change. Lionhead culture was slowly but surely replaced by Microsoft culture. The time of the men's club is over. The punk rockers matured, had kids and changed cans of cola and cold pizza for tea and hot food from the dining room. Producers, technical processes, and career potential have emerged. Appeared the balance of work and life. It is time for human resources, business analysis and online video training departments.

Every year, Microsoft conducted among Lionhead employees training on business standards with a video questionnaire, in which terrible actors recited lines of poor-quality dialogues. Can this employee accept the match tickets as a gift? Not. Can this employee bribe officials? Not. Can this employee raise his voice? Not. And so on.

Every year, the videos changed a bit, new clips were added to them - a clear signal that something unacceptable happened at one of the Microsoft studios. For example, chatter about business secrets in the bus. Can an employee talk about something secret on the bus?

Not.

“The training took about two hours,” says John McCormack. “Everybody thought,“ What the hell do you need to do this again? ” I thought we went through this already. No, that was a year ago. Wow, really? ""

And there were also “achievements”. Lionhead employees were asked to write down five tangible goals for the next six months, which their manager had to approve. Someone told how he was asked to write that Fable 2 should receive an average Metacritic rating of at least 85 percent for the team to receive an award. “And I objected that we have no power over him. Who can control Metacritic? ”

“Microsoft paid all our expenses,” says Molyneux. “They respected us very much. And they wanted us to do what we do well, but try to make our lives even better. They have become something of a hyper-protective parent. They thought that everything could be improved by contacting the personnel department. ”

And still, despite the gradual change in culture, most recognized that Lionhead had greatly benefited from the acquisition. Microsoft pumped huge amounts of money into the studio, leased the building to Ockham Court, so that the team could work on several floors. She paid for the studio's internal dining room and office renovation, although some were annoyed that all the walls were painted in corporate white. Columns on one floor painted green with an Xbox.

“Previously, a woman brought baguettes to us,” recalls Ted Timmins, a former director of the Fable franchise.


Among the advantages was a ping-pong table.

“For those who worked in the back of the office, she only had cheese. And instead of a lady with cheese baguettes, we suddenly had a canteen, vending machines with cola and coffee, a ping-pong table and table football, a seating area, an award-winning cupboard, an administrator, three floors and several meeting rooms with bean bags and HD- TVs, acoustic halls with surround sound 5.1.

Suddenly it turned out that we became real developers. We have become someone. We were successful, we received a reward. Suddenly, we had access to the Microsoft tools, and on every PC, for once, a licensed version of Windows appeared. We have become a professional development studio. ”

This has become part of the maturing process. Lionhead entered a very serious world of corporate video game development and began to work under the authority of a gentleman who respects her independence, but expects results. Jumping over the canal was over. With smoke detectors had to remove the tape. Draws are over. The “Lioncrap” mailing list, in which employees shared with each other references to all sorts of things, became underground.

“We ended up in a much more politically correct world,” Timmins admits.

“Even if we were not bought, there would still be a lot of changes. We began to know much more about each other, about opinions and feelings. Much would happen because of social networks. ”

Lionhead received death threats due to the gay character in the game, and the two main characters were black. One message said: "I can not believe that you added a fagot to the game." The German magazine wrote a devastating preliminary review of Fable, in which he accused Peter Molinho of “that this person considers himself a god,” called McCormack and other artists Satanists. Moms from the Biblical belt wrote to the studio complaints that their eight-year-old sons are subject to homosexual propaganda.

"We told them that the game was not for eight-year-olds," says John McCormack. “She has an adult age rating. So this is not our problem, but theirs. Hope they will burn in hell.

And we decided: go fuck - in Fable 2 we will have gay marriages and lesbianism. We reveled in this. ”

Another solution Molinho: in Fable 2 should be a dog. A dog that must die.

“We had a meeting,” recalls McCormack. “We have not seen Peter for several weeks, because he had other things to do. He opened the door, walked in and said that the hero would have a dog, and the dog would die. Then he left and we did not see him for another month. We thought - what the hell? But that was his decision. ”

Some thought that the thought of a dog came to Molinho after his own dog died. “When something happened in his life, he somehow tried to build it into the game. He felt something, and he wanted the player to feel it too, ”says McCormack. "It was powerful."

Molyneux denied the effect of his dog’s death on adding a dog to Fable. According to the designer, two of his Labradors were hit by a farmer. (One survived, the second died.) But it seems that he used this event as a tool of motivation to inspire the team to exploit.



“This case of a dog was one of the examples of how I had to make great efforts to convince everyone, from a novice programmer to Microsoft’s top management, that it would be the most important part of the game that players would remember,” he says.

“So I had to give many examples, for example - how do you feel when a dog dies? In the film, you can shoot thousands of people, but no one blinks. And if they kill the dog, they will remember everything. I kept repeating - people will remember the death of the dog. As a designer, I have to use any trick to convince people that the “trick” they never met will work. Therefore, I needed to do everything to convey my point of view. It is not enough just to share an idea. The real trick is that people believe it so much that they do not just realize this idea as their daily work. They must believe in it to make it brilliant. ”

Many consider Fable 2 the best Lionhead game. But six months before its release in 2008, she was in a dangerous “raw” state. As with many AAA games, it took all efforts to complete Fable 2.

The people who worked on Fable 2 say that the game had almost no plot before this last breakthrough, and some of its features were similar to prototypes. There were big problems with performance. At a certain stage of development, it took 36 hours to calculate the illumination of one Fable 2 level. The team allocated several machines for this process. According to Charlton Edwards, the level editor was “real chaos.” At the worst moments, it took seven minutes to simply remove a single object. At the beginning of development, the download of the editor could take up to 45 minutes, and then another three to four hours per level assembly. “We spent a lot of time looking at the download indicator,” recalls Edwards. "It was a real nightmare."

As the developers say, Molyneux was involved in the development of Fable 2 in a way that he was not involved in any other Fable game. According to one man, he was “obsessed” with the dog and the function of the bread crumb trail, which allowed the players to understand where to go. Also, it was absorbed by the plot and one-button combat system.

Microsoft, for the most part, left Lionhead creative freedom. But some friction arose. In Fable 2, a dog could dig out condoms. The first version of the icon graphic for this object resembled the designation adopted in the era in which the game took place. But Microsoft asked Lionhead to replace it with an image of a modern condom, despite the fact that Fable was a fantasy game in the entourage of old times.

John McCormack recalls how they “butted” with the Microsoft marketing department about Fable.

“The marketing department was shitty,” he says. “They were terrible. They did not understand anything. But it was not the marketing department of Microsoft. There was something like a department of its own. And they asked us: what are you doing? RPG? A, dragons and other garbage. So they advertised the game. We said that our game - rather comedy in the style of Monty Python. And they said they know how to do marketing RPGs. They opened a box with marketing materials for RPG, pulled out a picture with a dragon, which was not even in the game, and showed it to us. They said that this is our market. The market for our game is the average amateur Dungeons & Dragons. We answered - our game is completely different. That pissed me off.

McCormack was even more perturbed by the design of the box for Fable 3.

“They said you shouldn’t put black or woman on the cover. And you want a black woman. And I am so - yes, precisely, because in the game you can create any hero. Not.There will be a white guy. Only this will be the case. We know what is for sale, and it will interfere. Stop arguing. And I told them to go to hell. It was a serious fight. They asked: what is the most disastrous movie for Disney? I replied that I did not know. They are: "The Princess and the Frog" [approx. lane: the main character of this cartoon is black] . Think about it.And I: you all go to hell.

I screamed at them by conference call. Then I completely fell off the coils, because they simply did not understand the game. Especially because our game was the first in which there was a gay wedding, we destroyed stereotypes. It was supposed to be fun and “grown up.” They did not agree with this and put it on the cover of an ordinary white guy with a sword. Heck!They didn’t understand the meaning at all! ”

But still, the majority of those who worked on Fable 2 speak of Microsoft’s collaboration with enthusiasm. The company has directed all efforts to preserve the magic of the first Fable, that bizarre British humor, which was native to Monty Python fans.

“Microsoft had to sweat hard to incorporate Lionhead without destroying what made the studio unique,” ​​says Simon Carter.

“I suspect that they have learned the cruel lessons from the acquisition of Rare. In fact, I can not find a single flaw in their work. Having worked later in other Microsoft departments, I only now realized how isolated we were from them. ”

Fable 2 was released and instantly became one of the most popular Xbox 360 games. Lionhead threw a fabulous release party under a railway bridge in London. Huge TV broadcast online reviews, including Eurogamer. Lionhead later won BAFTA for the best action adventure game. Fable, along with Lionhead survived the purchase of Microsoft and flourished.


“When we switched to Fable 2, we were firmly on our feet in the console market and the RPG market,” says Peter Molyneux. "For me, Fable 2 was the best game created by Lionhead."

Lionhead spent four years creating Fable 2 and it turned out to be a really special video game. And on Fable 3 it took just 18 months.

The Lionhead developers expected that Fable 3 would be easier to develop than Fable 2, because they already had all the tools needed to create the game. The release of Fable 2 studio laid the foundation. Fable 3 was supposed to be an evolution rather than a revolution.

According to the plan Molinho Fable was supposed to be even more accessible. But he and Lionhead have gone too far. Many of the PRG elements that players enjoyed in Fable 2 were further simplified or trimmed. The graphics improved, but part of the atmosphere of Fable was gone.

And then errors surfaced. A lot of mistakes caused by the feverish sprint of completing the game and the intervention of Molinho. Indicating the initial vector of the game, Molinho, according to the staff, left the team alone with the project, returning only to the end and demanding changes in the design.

The most important change was the Road to Rule feature. It was a system by which the character of the player increased his level. It was added in just a few months before the development was completed, at the request of Molinho.

Ted Timmins recalls how it was. Before adding Road to Rule in Fable 3, there was no feature level increase at all. In May 2010, Ted asked Fable franchise director Louise Murray if he could go to E3 this year. She allowed. However, a few days later, she said that she could not go. A few days later, permission was again obtained. And finally, a few days later she invited Ted to the meeting room to say that this time everything was serious and he could not go to E3



Molligne visited the hall, he was looking for Louise for some of his questions.

“A light bulb lit up above his head,” says Ted.

“He said that the developers donated - if we want to implement Road to Rule, then we have only six months of developers time. So if I have time to do it in three weeks, then I can fly to E3. And what exactly am I deciding whether I will get on the plane or not. ”

“It was in the style of Peter - to give options. Then he left. Louise said I just signed a deal with the devil. I came home, took a toothbrush, toothpaste, a change of clothes, a sleeping bag, and left for two weeks. Then he showed the result to him. He liked this. And we have a character level system. ”

“Peter beckoned me with a carrot, and I gladly grabbed it. And had a great time at E3. ”

There were many other obstacles: six months before the release of Fable 3, Lionhead tried unsuccessfully to build support for Kinect into the game. The plan was to add mini-games, for example, a riddle with a statue that requires the player to stand in front of the camera in a certain position. But from the mini-games with Kinect refused. Just did not have enough time to make them good enough.

In short, the Fable 3 was a quality release, sold well and liked the critics. But the game failed to meet the expectations given by Fable 2.

“Perhaps we have moved the deadline too far,” Timmins admits. “Maybe the process put too much pressure on us. By that moment we became very responsible and learned how to release games on time. It probably started working against us. You could spend another six months. The game could have a more bizarre, eccentric storyline. ”

“The problem was that Fable 3 came out too early,” Peter agrees. “I blame myself for this. I needed to be more firm. We had to convince us that we needed another year. The part about the king in Fable 3 should have become completely different. But the time was running out. And when you are part of a large organization, you are praised if you are kept within the time frame and budget. ”

For many, Lionhead is a studio that made Fable, but while many of its developers devoted themselves to creating this series, others spent years on games that never saw the light of day. In fact, at the time of the closure of the studio and the cancellation of Fable Legends, some former employees of Lionhead created games for ten years that never came out.

Probably the most famous failure of Lionhead was Milo & Kate.

Milo & Kate is known as a project for Kinect, but it began as a game with a controller. His idea was that the player controls an imaginary friend of a little boy whose parents are constantly quarreling. Many in Lionhead thought the plot was based on Molyneux's childhood.

So it was before Molyneux showed an early version of Kinect, then named Project Natal. He thought that Milo & Kate could be turned into a game controlled only by a camera. He discussed with the development team a prototype that could be used to sell the idea to Microsoft executives, John Schappert, and Don Mattrick. Peter starred in a video with a "green man", which served as an advertising idea for the Xbox.

Redmond was delighted (one of the sources said that some executives were moved to tears by a demo inspired by the first five minutes of the Pixar “Up!” Cartoon) and asked Lionhead to prepare Milo & Kate for a demonstration at the Microsoft press conference on E3 2009. He’s wanted to use to sell the dream to the world - the potential of Project Natal, the future of video games.

Sam Van Tilburgh remembers the weeks before E3 2009 well enough to regret them.

Due to the fact that the Milo & Kate technology was still underdeveloped, it was decided to film the gameplay on video as part of a well-thought-out “ogurmuyushchy” demo. Trying to avoid image breaks, Lionhead rendered a demo frame by frame in high resolution. According to one of the creators of the demo, it was “quick and dirty work.”

Redmond wanted to ensure quality, so he sent a film group to the UK to create magic. We hired an actress to pretend to play a game. Two weeks before E3 at Lionhead, everything was ready for shooting, but suddenly there was a catastrophe: the light turned off in Guilford.

According to one of the participants, Molinho ordered his assistant to find an emergency generator within an hour and gave him his credit card. Very soon, next to the building on Ockham Court there was already a diesel generator. Video failed to record.

Lionhead flew to Los Angeles at E3 a week before the press conference. Closer to the date of the demonstration changes were made in the record. There were auditions to prepare for the big show. Sam van Tilburg was deeply involved in the process.

“Peter turned to me and asked me to participate in the final approval of our segment in the press conference, because he had an appointment with Don Mattrick,” Sam recalls.

“I asked if I could participate from his face. I replied that I would go to the meeting, not knowing what to expect. There were a dozen people at the meeting and me. They included a video of Milo & Kate. There was someone, I did not know his name. He said: so, I want to change here, here and here. Peter gave me some piece of paper with three or four notes that contradicted this man’s requirements. Then I got up and said: no, no, no. Nothing like that will happen. I'm from Lionhead. That is how it will be. Someone touched my shoulder and whispered that it was Mike Delman. I replied that I did not know who Mike Delman was. As it turned out, Mike Delman was the head of all Microsoft marketing. If someone can fire me on the spot, then it is Mike Delman. But Mike and I had a skirmish. We agreed on a compromise. I left the meeting, got into a taxi,I returned to Peter and said: “Peter, I did not manage to do anything of what you wrote. I let you down. And the decision is already final. " Peter turned and answered: “No, Sam, this is amazing. That's what I wanted. " And this is exactly what the world saw during the big press conference. ”

The reasons for the cancellation of Milo & Kate is very difficult to understand. Many of those who gave interviews on this topic said that the game was based on a strange idea that did not lead to anything. Others insist that it was a truly special game, but Kinect technology prevented it.

“Many people hoped they could get into the world of imagination,” says John Eskew. “At that time, they showed an advertisement on television that broadcast it quite accurately. Several children jump on the sofa, and suddenly this sofa turns into their pirate ship, and they shoot cannons on it. This is what we saw technology. We wanted to get away from realism and immerse ourselves in the boy's imagination, which suited the game, because in reality the player controls an imaginary friend. But it turned out that the boy actually cleans up his room and does other things, while his parents are arguing nearby. It was not interesting. Nobody wanted to do this. ”

An obvious problem was the thought that Milo & Kate could be obscene, branded as a game for pedophiles or as a “grooming simulator.” Demonstrating the game at E3 2009 suggested that Milo behaved like some kind of sophisticated artificial intelligence that responded to the user's voice and actions. Therefore, there were inevitable questions: what if the user draws a penis on a piece of paper and shows it to Milo? What if the user gets naked in front of the camera?

As it turned out, nothing. But there was a discrepancy: the game created by Lionhead was a series of mini-games in which the player moved his hand to attract Milo’s attention to the stones and snails in the courtyard of his house, while his parents were arguing against the background. He was not such a complex artificial intelligence, which could turn red on the type of intimate places of the player. He was just a sly illusion.

“If a player dropped his pants and showed Milo his personal belongings, then nothing would have happened,” says one of the sources associated with the project.

“Nothing will happen if you swear dirty. The character responds only to the actions we have programmed. This was not a revolution in AI. It was a story story in which you play the role of an imaginary friend of the child. But the dream that was sold on the stage was that the player can do anything, even show personal belongings. Then people began to ask: what will happen if you undress in front of Milo? They were told that nothing, because we did not program it. ”

Molinho knew about doubts, but did not pay attention to them.

“Should we, as authors, as creators, be afraid that people will be so sick as to come up with this?” He asks, obviously, even seven years later, upset by this. “I don't think so. Creativity implies risk. Not only the risk in the gameplay or in the management, but also the risk relating to the essence and plot of the game. If Milo & Kate were to work now, after such interesting indie projects as Gone Home, then everything would have been perceived differently. In 2009, people were obsessed with all of this and went to extremes. Why can't we tell stories about childhood, about the miracle of childhood and the miracle of learning something new? And about the miracle of learning someone, but not terribly perverted way. I don't think we could scare anyone. I do not think that you can create, seeking safety.

There are hundreds of films about growing up. Hundreds of films about the miracle of childhood. But there are no such games, because we are too afraid, afraid that people will do something terrible. I do not think that this is a worthy reason, simply because it will be politically incorrect. ”

“Our team tried to understand what the game will be about,” says one source. “I think we all wanted it. This was definitely a problem for the studio. Microsoft wanted to give Peter a blank check to work. But over time, there were problems with understanding what this would mean, and they simply ran out of patience. Milo & Kate was an important project for Molinho, and he fought for him. The people involved in the creation of the game tell Eurogamer that even after Microsoft recommended production to be completed, development continued. Molyneux still showed the latest version of the game in the hope that it could survive. He even showed a demoat Ted talk in Oxford in July 2010 after an online scandal with Xbox marketing manager Aaron Greenberg about whether Milo & Kate was a technical demo or a real game that will be sold this year.

Milo & Kate was an important project, about 50 people worked on it. The game spent a lot of time, effort and money. Molyneux was very involved in the development. The developers say that it was until the cancellation of the game, when Molyneux devoted all his attention to Fable 3 and to the enhanced introduction of new functions in the later stages of development.

Molyneux blames the abolition of the game technology Kinect and Microsoft's attitude to the market, which he was aimed.

“The catastrophe broke out when everyone realized how much Kinect’s cost for such an area, depth and accuracy of review would cost to ensure proper movement control,” he says.

“The Kinect's characteristics were becoming weaker, weaker and weaker, until only part of what Milo & Kate was designed for remained. In addition, Microsoft believed that Kinect is a toy for noisy companies. This is a sports device. It is for a company of people sitting and playing together on the couch. Kinect was not supposed to provide an emotional connection, an interactive experience that players have not yet seen. So Milo & Kate began to fall apart. At that time I was helping Rare with Kinect Sports. Kinect Sports caused more enthusiasm. As a result, we were told that Kinect is still more suitable for playing in a company, and not for Milo & Kate. And we decided that we did not want to develop the project further. The signal was very clear. I understood what was going on.

Our team has been working for a long time. They created content for a few hours. The player really felt inspired by the child on the screen. The game was exciting and emotional. It is a pity that we have not completed it.

I can understand that. Microsoft created a device designed for companies, and its characteristics were not high enough to support the Milo & Kate gameplay, so I understand why they did it. I think the power of Kinect and Xbox, we would not have enough. "

The dejected Milo & Kate development team has moved on to creating Fable: The Journey, a failed game for Kinect that didn’t justify its budget after it was released in 2012. The guys did everything possible in the current difficult circumstances. But for Molinho, the near end was obvious.

At E3 2003, Peter Molinho gave a press interview about Fable. He said that the game will have a multiplayer mode. The developers at Guilford were terrified. No one has heard of multiplayer. We were informed that one of the engineers almost burst into tears. When Molinho returned, the wrath of a harassed development team fell upon him. Carters protected him. Do not worry, they said. We will fix everything.

Molyneux had a reputation as a person who caused all sorts of trouble working under his superiors. If he did not declare a new “trick” of the game, which should have been released in a few months, then he spoiled the completed work. Throughout his life, Lionhead has accumulated many such examples. And they are not joyful at all.

Acorn. Or, in the words of one former developer of Lionhead, "this fucking acorn." Right before the release of Fable, Migninho promised that when a player hits a tree and the acorn falls off, a new tree should gradually grow out of it. When the game came out, nobody discovered this fantastic “trick” with acorn.

To cool down the growing anger of fans, an apology letter was posted on the Lionhead forum:

.

. , . .

, , , , , . , , , , , . , , , .

- , Fable, . , , , . , . , , . , (15%), . 15% . , , , , , . , . , Fable — , , - .

, , . , Lionhead , , .

Lionhead — . , , , , .

.

Peter.

According to one person who worked on Fable, 15 percent were “pure fiction.” But the apologies still hit the main page of the BBC News website .

Although some were angry at Molinho’s antics, others didn’t pay attention to them.

“We laughed that he took up the old again,” says Andy Robson. "So, you need to add a couple more functions to the game until it comes back."

“I, in a sense, cannot blame him,” says John McCormack. “He tried to sell the game. We all worked on the game and lived in a hermitage. He was in the outside world, saw other games, followed the trends and what was interesting for the press and the public. We did not understand this. He came out of our shell, saw everything and thought he knew how to act. ”

About Fable: The Journey Molinho told the press that the game would not be linear. But it turned out that Fable: The Journey is very linear.

“After Peter’s statement, a popular joke about linearity went into the office,” says one of the creators of Fable: The Journey.

“We could not do anything, it was again a statement that put us in a difficult position in front of the press and fans. To give weight to the words of Peter, the team tried to create non-linear levels, but they strongly interfered with the gameplay, and rather annoyed. ”

“If Peter simply acknowledged that the game would be linear, something like an interactive film, then I think we would get better reviews.”


Technopark of Surrey, aka Teletubbies Country

One developer, Fable: The Journey, recalls how Molyneux shortly before the end of the game a new vision appeared. He wanted to give the player the opportunity to soar into the sky, look at the world from above and attack enemies with magic. A minor problem was that Fable: The Journey was created as a game in which the player can only look ahead. Designers created beautiful environments and effects designed for a demonstration in front of the player, and everything was removed behind his back.

“And now we suddenly had to add the ability to fly and look at the whole world,” says one developer. "It was insane, but fortunately, many objections arose, common sense won, and the design remained almost unchanged."

Peter Molinho among fans of his games and Lionhead employees is considered a controversial figure. He could infuriate and inspire, scream during meetings and create a strong headache, while at the same time creating a stunning design. He is a man of paradox.

“There was only three months left until release, and he showed the game,” recalls Fable about John McCormack.

“At that time, I was completing the work, finishing up the latest resources. And he showed up at the big press conference on the screen and said that at that time the graphics of the games looked only 30 percent of what it would be after the release. And I knew that the graphics have already been completed. Why did he say that? And he said to me: "Well, you know, John, calm down, we need to sell this game."

According to those who worked with him, Molinho is a terrific speaker. He perfectly communicates with the masses of people.

"Peter appeared at meetings, started talking about some function, and ended up shouting," says Charlton Edwards.

“He said how excellent the game is, how proud he is of everyone, and then he was carried. He was really absorbed in the process. That is why I am inclined to support Molinho. He did not lie. It was inspiring, so we followed him and were on his side. ”

But many who worked with him believe that at the level of personal communication, Molyneux had problems.

“He often said: don't worry guys. Someday we will laugh at this on our own island, ”says one of Peter’s former employees. “I don’t think he doubted that. Sure, he thought that everything would be amazing, and we need to work hard. ”

It did not help either that Molineux threw in different directions, both before and after the purchase of Microsoft. He managed the creative side of the projects being developed at Lionhead, but more often than not he did not seek to devote enough time to each of them. Molinho arbitrarily changed the design, and this created enormous problems for developers, sometimes destroying months of work in one fell swoop.

But he was a genius. Among the crazy, idle ideas was a diamond: a dog in Fable, which many developers considered stupid, could be one of the best examples of Peter's design flair.

One of the veterans of Lionhead said: "I love Peter, but he is a beast."

“I think it’s no secret to anyone - now it’s clear that I’m a perfect moron,” said Moligno. “Let's not pick up softer terms. Too often, my talkativeness got in the way of common sense. ”

In early 2012, Lionhead suffered from the so-called “Black Monday”. Frustrated by the direction in which the company moved, and the projects she worked on, John McCormack, Stuart White, and several other Lionhead veterans quit on the same day. Molinho's reaction was not very good.

“He completely flew off the coils,” recalls John McCormack. “We were asked to leave the building immediately. I said that I worked there for twelve years, and asked for time to collect things. I was told that they will be sent by courier. Get out. Peter was furious. ”

McCormack, according to the tradition of Lionhead, went to the pub. At five o'clock he was again called into the studio for a meeting.

“Peter said we call it“ black monday. ” "John McCormack, Arise." And he slowly patted me. It was terrible.

He took everything on his own account. Can't blame him. All the leading workers left, betraying him. When I collected my things, he sat us down and apologized for what happened. He said that he fell off the coils, he felt that everyone betrayed him. We all hit him in the back at the same time as Caesar. ”

Then, according to McCormack, Molinho tried to fix everything in the only way he knew.

“He gave me a very emotional inspiring speech about entrepreneurship and what I need to do, and I thought: what the hell. He was awesome. He sincerely apologized.

Then he said that he respects me very much. He got angry when the guys from Media Molecule left. But when they left, he loved them again, because in a sense they gave him life. So when we left, it hurt, but then he wished us luck. ”

Almost immediately after black Monday, Peter Molinho left Lionhead to set up an indie studio next door. He summoned the Lionhead staff to a meeting in the cafeteria. With tears in his eyes, he announced that he was leaving the studio, of which he had become one of the founders.

Why did he leave? One source told Eurogamer that Molinho wanted to break into the free-to-play social gaming market, seeing the amount of money received by Zynga. Others claim that he has long been tired of Fable, and he was upset that after Black & White 2 and The Movies in 2005, Lionhead did not release anything but Fable. Cancel Milo & Kate just made it worse.

At the same time, being one of the top executives at Microsoft meant that he would spend whole weeks out of office. He was the creative director of Microsoft Games Studios Europe, that is, he had a certain power over Rare. He often had to fly to Redmond on the "Microsoft bus". Indeed, he was never ready for such work, she was too far from his expectations during the creation of Lionhead in 1997.


Fable: The Journey was a challenging project for Lionhead

"I think everyone is tired of Fable," says Molyneux. “I loved the world we created. It was very unfortunate when Simon and Dean left. They built this world. But I sincerely believe that the team needed a break. Perhaps it was enough for six months to practice any nonsense. They needed to get off this Fable merry-go-round.

Twelve years is a long time to work on any franchise. Yes, I'm tired. ”

“Peter told me that if he again had to stand in front of people and talk about hobbes [app. Per.: one of the creatures of the Fable universe], he will kill someone, ”recalls John McCormack.

“He asked: what else can you say about the hobbes? What else can be said about Fable? He is not the one who makes the sequels. He says: I have an idea, and then another. For Fable 3, he needed to fly around the world and talk about Fable. He said that people no longer believe his words about Fable. He wanted to talk about new ideas. He was not interested in Fable 3. He was interested in Milo & Kate and Survivors, and other games in Incubation. That's what he liked. ”

“Obviously, Fable has completely changed Lionhead,” says Simon Carter.

“Its success and the subsequent acquisition by Microsoft first gave Lionhead considerable financial stability. However, Lionhead has always worked on several projects, driven by Peter’s ideas and enthusiasm. So there were games like Black & White, The Movies and Project Dimitri.

After the acquisition, Microsoft was very interested in Fable. This game, which was not born in Lionhead, did not exactly match Peter’s aspirations. Today, I suspect that he perceived it more and more annoying and restrictive. "

Molinjo left, but other Lionhead veterans left him. Many of those who helped to create the Lionhead culture left for a long time: Mark Healy, Alex Evans, Andy Robson, John McCormack, Dean and Simon Carter. Has Lionhead changed dramatically by the time Peter left to create Curiosity: What's inside the cube? And despite this, it was Peter’s departure that marked the end of the era. It was Peter’s dismissal that launched a blast wave in the studio.

"I remember that for me it was pretty sad," - says Charlton Edwards. “I remember how I thought: what will happen now? Who will be our prophet? I did not know what the studio would do without it. At that time it was a great loss for me. ”

Employees say that after the departure of Molyneux, the studio became more organized, more structured and professional. And there were still amazingly talented people in it, many of whom worked for years. But the creative spark was lost. And, in a sense, Lionhead lacked Peter.

“Before he left, we underestimated Peter’s best talent: keeping Microsoft in check,” says one of those who worked at Lionhead before closing it.

“Peter could do whatever he wanted, and could deny Microsoft almost everything. He had such power, and when he left, we suddenly felt more vulnerable. ”

Microsoft has changed as well as Lionhead. Xbox Head of Department Don Mattrick set a new direction for the next Microsoft Xbox One console. The focus of attention was to switch from avid gamers to a more casual audience who would like to watch TV on the console. After the departure of Molinho, the European division of Microsoft began to be managed by Phil Harrison, a former employee of Sony. Times have changed.

The concept of “game as a service” is a rather abstract term, meaning that games must be constantly updated after release. It may be free-to-play. In 2012, “games as a service” were in full bloom: the most popular League of Legends game in the world was the quintessence of this concept.

According to three independent sources familiar with the relationship between Lionhead and Microsoft in 2012, Xbox management insisted that the studio make a new Fable in the spirit of “game as a service”. Lionhead Studios said that there will be no single-player RPG mode. "No one else will make single-user products," said the Lionhead studio Microsoft management. "I want a game as a service."

“You are doing a service, or you will be closed,” another source recalls. "This was a new strong pressure from Microsoft, and I heard that many of its studios also received a similar message, but some objected to this."

Microsoft refused to give Eurogamer an interview about this.

At the same time, Microsoft has long wanted to make more money on the Fable franchise. Molyneux and Webley insisted that Fable made a profit, but not as big as the franchises of other Microsoft studios, such as Halo.

“This category is not the biggest in the world,” says Robbie Bach, who was president of Microsoft Entertainment and Gadgets before Don Mattrick. “This is not European or American football. This category falls short of first-person shooters. So from a commercial point of view, I can say that it was successful, but not insane. ”

“For the game of the internal studio, it was important for us to create a unique, innovative gameplay that a third-party company would not risk. It had to force people to buy an Xbox, and thus stimulate equipment sales, ”explains Simon Carter.

“However, they demanded huge profits from us. Let me explain: Fable 1, 2 and 3 were very profitable, despite the sprawling development of Fable 1 and 2, but not as profitable as one or two other Microsoft franchises, in which the same effort was made. ”

Under these conditions, the Fable 4 concept was rejected. John McCormack became the chief architect of the concept. He wanted to go to the Unreal Engine 4 and move the series into a technological, industrial era, with trams and flying machines. “We wanted to reproduce the Victorian era, which is far from Juelver’s nonsense.

In the first Fable, Bowerstone was a small town. In Fable 2, it became a big city. In Fable 3, it was already a metropolis. In Fable 4, McCormack Bowerstone was turning into London, extensive and rich. Jack the Ripper roamed the streets, and the game itself was actively using British mythology. McCormack planned to implement Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, add Fable to them and put "them in this crazy environment of London".

It should have been Fable 4, only darker and more sinister. Because of the rating of R, there would be prostitutes and humor. I thought it was amazing and everyone would like the game. ”

It turned out that not everyone. The concept was rejected because Lionhead had to switch to“ games as a service ”.

McCormack was outraged by this decision and this was one of the reasons for his leaving the company in 2012. “It’s as if we were told that we reached the ceiling of RPG players on the Xbox and now we had to double the profit, so we won’t do the RPG,” he says. “I thought we could. I said: just give us four years, sufficient funding, give us the chance that Mass Effect and Skyrim had. It took them four years and a big budget. Give us this, and we will ensure that you get your players. No, they answered, you had three chances, and you just tripled your profits. This is not enough, roll away. That is what annoyed me. ”


A few years before the closure of Lionhead, Microsoft finally added some color to the walls of the building on Ockham Court. This part was called the Alley of Memory.

Meanwhile, Molinho and the core of the Fable development team were working on a prototype for the secret Lionhead project called Project Opal. This was, according to the people who worked on her, another crazy idea of ​​Peter.

Here is what we know: Project Opal is a village building simulator in which several game processes were connected. On the PC, the player was the village builder himself. On mobile devices it was a game of fishing and the creation of resources. And on the Xbox the game became a shooter.

The construction of the village, according to one source, reminded Minecraft, but with more complex construction mechanics. You could throw bricks into a house or lay them out row by row. It was possible to climb the beams to collect the house. “It was really great, although it was a bit long,” says one source.

The “game” part of the Project Opal involved obtaining resources for building a village. The player received resources, going to the open world and participating in battles in the style of Fable. Also present elements of a platformer.

The mobile resource collector was similar to Farmville and Cookie Clicker. Lionhead cut fish out of cardboard and made a frame-by-frame animation for playing fishing. Also in the game was a map of the village, which could be viewed on the phone.

All parts of Project Opal were connected together to satisfy Microsoft's desire for “three screens and the cloud.” Remember the power of cloud computing? In 2012, she was on the rise.

"In a small technical demo about the village and climbing up it looked like Assassin's Creed was mixed with Fable, Minecraft and Sim City," says one source. "That was incredible".

“It all worked,” says another source. “We actually created the game. We needed a lot of code to redo Unreal to manage user-generated content. People were building villages for gold, obtained in a cooperative third-person arcade shooter. ”

Project Opal was not a Fable game, but sources say it had a chance to use the Fable universe if it was approved by Microsoft.

“I felt that Lionhead should do what it was created for,” says Peter Moligno about Project Opal. “To make games that were not there before, especially after the cancellation of Milo & Kate.

It was in Lionhead DNA. That was exactly what Project Opal was. "We are going to do something new, so let's do something completely new."

Can we unite millions of people? Can we make them play together? That was the idea. The team worked well on prototypes and the game could be played. There were very interesting mechanics in it. It is unfortunate that as a result the work was stopped. You had to hold on to this game. I'm sure of it. I think she had a chance. ”

Opinions are working on the Project Opal divided. Some thought he was a “slop”. Others believed he had potential.

“Some of the construction technologies were amazing,” says the source. "She reminded me of why I came to Lionhead, that sense of novelty, of pushing the limits and of risk."

Opinions of sources about how Lionhead switched in 2012 from working on Project Opal to Fable Legends vary. Some say that Project Opal has turned into Fable Legends. Others claim that it was a different product, born from the Creative Day project called F-Versus. One source describes F-Versus as "Fable Team Fortress". Various heroes had to fight with a team of creatures. The game was built on the engine of The Journey. Another source recalls the following concept: “Imagine the level of Fable in which four players play together, and the fifth controls the creatures, traps and narrative of the level.”


Most of the Legends could be the basis for a fully formed Fable 4

“When we were told that we had to do“ play as a service, ”we did not intend to deliberately create another Fable,” says one source. "The marketing department decided that, thanks to the Fable universe, the game would sell better and become more recognizable, which is why it happened."

Here is another point of view from another source:

“They somehow wanted to tie the name Fable to Opal, because they were not sure that it would“ fly ”by itself. This project did not have a solid foundation. And then this new idea arose, the Opal project came to an end, and Fable Legends began. ”

Be that as it may, Microsoft approved the production of this new type of Fable game. It was supposed to be “game as a service” and free-to-play. This decision was made in the early stages of development, but was kept secret until February 2015 due to uncertainty about the reaction to such a business model.

Lionhead has never before created a “game as a service” or a free-to-play game. She just had no experience. In the era after Molinho, the studio needed to re-create itself. After Fable Legends became the next Lionhead game, the studio had to hire staff with relevant experience. People were hired with experience in monetization, back-end services and design of competitive games. Head of the studio was John Needham, who worked at Gazillion on the Marvel Super Hero Squad Online MMO and in Cryptic on the Champions Online MMO and Star Trek Online MMO. David Eckelberry, who worked as a consultant on many games for Gree, was invited as a creative director. The idea was to "make a turn." Inside the studio, staff talked about the start of Lionhead 2.0.


“We had to get away from the former Lionhead culture, which was headed by the author,” says former studio director Stuart White.

“Peter was the head of the studio. He was a lead designer. The main PR. He combined many roles. It was an attempt to survive in an environment where teams were becoming more and more. It would be nice if we had more autonomy in the team so that people would take more responsibility, there was more transparency and communication inside. ”

Lionhead had problems with Fable Legends. Those who worked on it said that they had never done anything like it. One of the most serious problems for developers was to provide a balance.

Fable Legends was a four-on-one game. Four heroes fought monsters sent to battle by a villain who watched the battlefield from above as in a real-time strategy. A system of leveling up was added to this mix, which allowed players to feel stronger at higher levels. There were controversies about how this was supposed to work.

Rules were established. For example, all the game levels of Fable Legends were built from left to right, because the villain’s camera moved from left to right as the characters moved from one arena to another. There was not a lot of height variation in the levels, because there were problems with the villain’s camera. All heights were transferred to the backyard level, where they could not bring great inconvenience.

The gameplay design has changed. Fable Legends had the mechanics of reviving players, but it was unfair to the villain. One solution to this problem was to transfer the bodies of the players to the next arena.

To feel stronger, the heroes must level up. But at the same time, the villain also raised the level. “Therefore, they sort of neutralized each other,” says the source. "It was a serious problem."

“If an experienced villain came across experienced heroes, then the game became exciting. But one problem emerged - if the villain is weak, or the hero does not know what to do, then they will simply be killed in the first arena. For them it was not at all interesting. ”

The longest problem of potions remained in Fable Legends. Should a player appear in the arena with a full set of reviving potions? The deceased hero must be revived with half or full health? Can heroes be able to get potions from chests? Do potions imbalance for the villain? If someone entered the game after the start, then joined the players in the next arena with a full set of potions and health. This, too, was dishonest to the villain. How much health should potions restore?

Some thought that Fable Legends should be like a war of attrition, an eternal battle. Others thought it would be easier. It seemed that Lionhead was at a loss with the choice of the path.

“It was a nightmare for us,” says one source.

Another problem was the disappointment of the players. The design of Fable Legends meant that the team of heroes would continue the game, even if they constantly stunned the last boss. A user playing as a villain would be helpless at this moment. So what to do? Allow the villain to create more and more powerful enemies until the players are crushed? That would be a bad idea.

The game was overcome with technical difficulties. Fable Legends was created on the Unreal Engine 4, but, according to one developer, the engine was not quite ready when Lionhead chose it, so it was necessary to integrate new versions of the engine in the process of creating the game. Sometimes it took months. When the new version of UE4 went online, the developers corrected the errors and added new features, but then other errors appeared.

“We were ready to release a closed beta in a couple of months, and at that time there was still no monetization in the game, a system of player levels and skills,” says one source.

By the end of 2014, when the team was still trying to design Fable Legends, Lionhead hired a specialist in competitive multiplayer games to analyze the balance and recommendations for improving it. The consultant pointed out many problems of the game and its systems, but, according to the people who worked on the project, these recommendations remained unheard.


From left to right: Phil Harrison, John Needham, Kudo Tsunoda and Phil Spencer. The photo was taken at Lionhead in December 2014.

And there was also Microsoft. In the development process, Fable Legends was used as an advertising demonstration for various Microsoft initiatives. In January 2015, Fable Legends became a game for Windows 10 and Xbox One, after Microsoft decided to switch focus from a cross-platform game (“We didn’t know about Windows 10 when we started developing Fable Legends,” the source shares. ” In fact, we were preparing for Steam. ”) This gave Lionhead a severe headache. Cross-platform game with a PC version opened up opportunities for cheating.

“We had to make sure that the architecture was correct to prevent cheating, otherwise we would end up as The Division,” says a source who participated in the development of Fable Legends.

“If PC users had learned to cheat, then the players on the consoles would have to fight hackers and cheaters, which they were not ready for. If we were not protected from this problem, it would greatly affect the reputation of Xbox Live. ”

In addition, the PC version had to show the potential of DirectX 12. Fable Legends needed to demonstrate graphical capabilities, but was it worth it to make an example?

“We were constantly asked to use Legends as a demo of something new,” says one source.

“Legends was supposed to be cheap in production, that’s the point of the free-to-play game. If people do not like the game, you get a small profit. If you like, then you add what users like. Legends cost a lot, and it was put off many times to show some new feature of Microsoft technology. ”

How much did you spend on it? One high-ranking source from Lionhead says that Fable Legends spent $ 75 million — a huge amount for a free-to-play game.

“The goal of free-to-play games is to release an earlier version, and then gradually build up the community and user base,” the source said.

“But since it was considered a flagship game, before the release it was aimed at making more and better. Therefore, the scale of the game was much more than is necessary for the success of the game free-to-play. ”

Sources say that Lionhead’s work on Fable Legends was partly an attempt to fulfill Microsoft’s ever-increasing queries. If they were performed, the studio would continue to make games.

“We have always sought to stimulate ourselves to create great games. But when you own a company that has strategic directions, for example, Kinect, or wants to switch to “game as a service,” if you can fulfill any conditions that a large organization considers important, such as support for Windows 10 and DirectX 12, then there was confidence that we provide security by giving the organization what it asks. ”

“Microsoft was very interested in the concept of“ game as a service ”. And Microsoft was also very interested in supporting Windows 10. She was interested in the most beautiful online game using DirectX 12. Therefore, we met all these requests because we wanted to be in good standing. ”

On March 7, 2016, two meetings were convened. One was for permanent staff. It took place in a cafe downstairs, in the only place that could accommodate a hundred people working on Fable Legends. Outside workers convened for another meeting. The signal was unequivocal.

“It made you wonder what was going on,” says one source. "I thought we were going to fire some of the contractors, and Microsoft would demand to release the game."

“We, as it happened before, made fun of the fact that the studio was closed,” said another source. "But this time we almost believed in it."

The staff sat in a cafe and waited for the meeting to begin. “It was obvious that people were nervous, but we continued to joke,” says the source.

The cafe entered the general manager of Microsoft Studios Europe, Hanno Lemke, along with representatives of the personnel department.

“It could be understood by mood, by how they stood, that something bad would happen.”

“The atmosphere was tense,” says another source who participated in the meeting. “Lemke began to speak, he seemed very nervous, it was not like him. At that moment we didn’t even have to say anything, we already knew that the news would be bad. ”



Lemke announced the cancellation of the Fable Legends release and the closure of Lionhead. He adhered to the script, his statement reflected what will be said the next day to the press. Microsoft wanted to control the information and avoid damage from the leakage (publishers are doing their best to prevent their employees from learning about their dismissal from articles on the Internet). Therefore, the team was told that the statement to the press has already been sent. And not only to the press like Eurogamer, but also to the external press. Microsoft studios like Rare also found out about this just like us.

“It was a short speech,” says the witness. “He spoke directly, but not detachedly. It was a sad speech, like a funeral. It was felt. Obviously, this was not an easy decision. ”

“I was shocked,” says another person who attended the meeting. “Some could not say a word. They were literally crushed. The face of the creative director has gone gray. ”

Some senior Lionhead executives suspected that something was being prepared. It was rumored that the personnel department requested letterhead for all. Bad sign. There were meetings in Redmond. But no one thought that Microsoft would go so far and close the studio.

One hundred people suddenly lost their jobs, and the game they have been working on for the last four years never came out. Everyone went to the pub.

“Many were shocked,” says a person close to the studio. “Many have worked the mechanism of denial. It did not appear that someone was angry. When you spend four years of your life working on a project, and it is so close to completion, you simply refuse to believe it. Until recently, I was shocked and denied that this could happen. ”

Why did Microsoft close Lionhead? Some accuse Lionhead of not following the concept of the “game as a service” of Microsoft. Others object that the studio would have been closed long before, if the team had not danced to their master's tune in 2012.

Some blame the closing of bad decisions and weaknesses in management. Lionhead obviously had problems with the Fable Legends design. Closed beta with each update showed improvements, but having already spent 75 million on the project, Microsoft did not believe that it would make a profit.

“We knew that year was unfortunate for Microsoft games,” says one source. “In addition, inside we understood that the game is not so interesting and it lacks the features that should be in a free-to-play game. However, it was obvious for a long time, and Microsoft had many opportunities to cancel the game before completion, but it did not take advantage of them. ”

Someone says that Fable Legends was too ambitious in itself. Her impressive graphics were not associated with free-to-play, such as League of Legends and Hearthstone. In Fable Legends, there was a Brightlodge, described by one person as “an excellent part of the game, costing us enormous development time and money” because “people could not realize that we no longer do a“ boxed ”product and wanted to stick a piece of Fable 4 in Legends ".

Some claim that Lionhead has created too many levels for Fable Legends. 16 levels have been completed, plus the Brightlodge area for the first season of the game only. "Each of them was perfectly worked out by surrounding artists," the source said. “We had enough content to create a full-fledged“ boxed ”game and it was good enough to compete with any other game." "Perhaps this was a brute force compared to League of Legends, which takes place on one card, and developers like would it not care.

Someone says that Fable Legends missed her chance. Fable Legends was supposed to be released in 2015, immediately after the July release of Windows 10, but it was postponed until 2016. Sources report that Lionhead has set goals to achieve a certain level of retention of players before the release of an open beta version. And could not implement them.

“Because of the big name and the small number of free-to-play games, we thought that as soon as Fable Legends appeared on Xbox Live and anyone could download it for Xbox One, hundreds of thousands of people would start downloading it,” says one developer. games.

"And if they do not like the game or have problems in it, then, in all likelihood, we would have lost them and never returned them."


One thousand people were added to the closed beta. Lionhead watched their game and track how the game matched their goals. As soon as all the statistics began to correspond to the desired level, it should have gone into the open beta state. But the statistics did not correspond to all parameters. Therefore, the game was postponed.

Some people think the problem was the very concept of was free-to-play Fable Legends. This system was not trusted by very many avid players, frustrated by microtransactions and in-game purchases. When Lionhead announced that Fable Legends would be free-to-play, most were angry. Only a few thought that it would be similar to Hearthstone and Team Fortress 2.

And the most obvious problem: Fable Legends was simply not the game that most Fable fans were waiting for. Fable fans wanted Fable 4, a single-player role-playing game that will stun them on Xbox One. They did not want a free remake with competitive multiplayer mechanics.

One of the sources told Eurogamer that Hanno Lemke was invited to replace John Needham in the post of Lionhead Chief, “so that he would make a firm decision about whether the game will be worth something.” Another source said that Lemke recommended canceling Fable Legends and closing the studio.

“These changes had an effect because Microsoft Studios continued to focus on investment and development on games and franchises that fans considered most interesting,” says Hanno Lemke. This is the only thing we got from Microsoft as an explanation.

“This decision is business related,” says one source. “They shut down Lionhead to save money, nothing personal. At the same time, closed Press Play. Someone looked at the bills and decided to save a little. ”

It is clear that in the opinion of those who worked on Fable Legends, it was close to completion. According to one source, only a couple of updates remained until the open beta.

It was believed that soon Lionhead with Fable Legends technologies and resources will switch to Fable 4, which at this stage was just a Powerpoint presentation.

“Technically, the game was ready, the infrastructure was also created, work began on the next Fable, and the morale became high again,” the source says.

“People were happy that Legends was nearing completion. We never thought that the popularity of Legends would be long, but did not expect it to be canceled.

But the biggest shock was the closing of the studio. It seemed that due to the difficult year for Microsoft games, we were cut off, and not a big studio, such as 343.

The main blow to the heart was that for about six years the studio had been developing games for Microsoft that were needed to demonstrate the technology. Very few wanted to do Fable: The Journey and almost no one wanted to work on Fable Legends.

"It was felt that it was time to declare Lionhead 2.0 and make the game that everyone wanted to play - Fable 4. In the end, we had a terrific proprietary technology, a system of vegetation that can compete with any other engine, a very beautiful system of global illumination."

Lionhead’s “worst-case scenario” was that Fable Legends would be canceled, and the studio would use all the resources available to create Fable 4. This meant that Fable 4 would take place during the Legends era, that is, several hundred years before the events of the original trilogy, therefore there would be a lot of magic in the world. The game should have appeared in the role of cameo heroes Fable Legends. But it turned out that the worst scenario was the closure of the studio.

In accordance with UK labor law, Microsoft has redeployed Lionhead employees as consultants. The studio was in the process of closing, but Fable Legends was still living. The servers did not turn off until mid-April, giving buyers a chance to return money spent on in-game gold. The small support team continued to work in Guilford. All others could come to work or stay at home.

Most stayed at home, but some came to prepare their portfolio and add a resume. One person came to the office because of Lionhead’s incredibly fast Internet connection to play all day in the Rocket League. The staff say that the atmosphere was very bleak.

On April 13, Lionhead employees watched a broadcast on Twitch: one of the workers played Fable Legends through a projector showing a picture on the wall of the Fable Legends main office. She shamelessly violated the nondisclosure agreement, but she didn't care. When the servers shut down and the game stopped, she began to cry. It was a very touching moment.

The core development team tried to keep Fable Legends in what they called "Project Phoenix". They wanted to take Fable Legends, complete it, release it and continue development as a new studio that licensed the game to Microsoft. “It would save a lot of jobs,” says one person who participated in this project."And if you write off the cost of developing Fable Legends to the current moment, the game could make money."

Project Phoenix was already close to signing the agreement, two Chinese companies expressed interest in financing the creation of a new studio, but as a result the project failed. It was not only that the rights to Fable refused to sell, but also that the negotiations were too long, and by the time the news appeared outside the core of the development, most had already found a new job.

“Microsoft supported this idea, but we didn’t have enough time,” the source said.

“At that time, Sony closed down Evolution, and two weeks later, Codemasters bought it. We were very surprised. How could this happen so quickly? It turned out that Evolution management was told about Sony’s intentions a few months before closing. Perhaps if Microsoft did the same, the story would be different. But alas, it happens. ”


At the EGX Rezzed event, Oli discussed with veterans Bullfrog and Lionhead their memories.

The people who created Project Phoenix negotiated to continue the development of Fable Legends with many companies. However, Sony was the only company they did not contact.

“It's one thing to buy a license for Fable Legends from Microsoft, but the game could not appear on PS4.”

Lionhead was closed on April 29. Charlton Edvadrs remembers leaving the office for the last time. He worked at Lionhead for fourteen years.

“When I left, I thought that I would kiss the walls and tear off pieces of the carpet as a souvenir. We took a lot of free souvenirs with us. But when I left the building, I was not upset. Perhaps not yet fully realized. So far it seemed unreal to me. ”


A table with souvenirs, set after the announcement of the closure of Lionhead.

“We had a library of games, and all games were put on this table. I took with me about 20 games for the Xbox 360. Someone took the portraits that were hanging on the walls, posters, stands for mugs, wristbands, illustrations, books. We just gave it all. And since I was the only one working on Black & White, I took some of the awards. I do not know what to do with them now. While I use it as a book stand. ”

Everyone went to the pub - The Stoke, to be precise - to adequately conduct a studio. Lionhead developers, former and current, came to honor her memory.

“It didn't seem like someone was upset,” says Edwards. “Everyone was quite cheerful, in the end they embraced a lot. Some cried, but not over the demise of Lionhead. Just because they will never see their colleagues again. But the atmosphere was bright. ”

It’s hard to sum up the legacy of Lionhead. Many people talk about games, especially about Fable 2. Black & White 1 also gets a lot of love. But for those who worked in the studio, there were people, talents, laughter, practical jokes, parties about the game releases ...

Peter Molinho's influence is hard to overestimate. Despite broken promises and meaningless design requirements, Molyneux made many serious breakthroughs. Most likely, the Guilford game development community owes its existence to this controversial designer. Of course, there was Lionhead, but not only: Media Molecule, the developer of No Man's Sky Hello Games, even EA and Ubisoft started publishing work here. I’ve heard that some call Lionhead a university. A lot of incredibly talented developers learned their skills here before starting their own business.

This place was imbued with a passion for creativity. Some people slept in the office, not because they were forced, but because they wanted to do their job as best as possible, and sincerely loved their work.

It was one of the most creative British game development studios. The success of Fable has led to the cancellation of the chain of projects, which caused outrage among some employees. Milo & Kate, Survivors, Eden Falls, Project Dimitri after Project Dimitri after Project Dimitri ... The list of unreleased games is very long. A lot of time and money was wasted. But it was Peter and Lionhead was a studio created to take risks, even if it was huge.

“I always speak of Bullfrog and Lionhead as studios in which anyone could take a rope of any length, provided that he is ready to be hanged on it,” says Dean Carter.


On the walls of Lionhead proudly posted illustrations from Fable, its most famous franchise.

Lionhead was a progressive studio. “We broke down barriers,” says Ted Timmins. She was innovative.

What is waiting for Fable? I heard rumors that Fable could still be released in Hearthstone style. Her spiritual followers appeared on Kickstarters. And many indie developers have risen from the ashes of Lionhead.

“Whenever the Goliath studio is closed, many others will immediately take its place,” says Ted Timmins. “Here, perhaps, there is an analogy: you can cut down a powerful oak tree, and in its place a new growth will grow, or something similar to Fable. There is always an acorn, right? ”

And despite everything, Molyneux still loves Fable.

“If, after completing my current project, someone comes up and offers to make Fable 4, I’ll be completely ready,” says Molyneux.

“I will bring back Dean, I will return Simon. And I will redo this world. This is a very rich world, besides, there are so many unexplored paths in it. That would be very interesting. And I still want to find "one more dog."