Peter Molyneux Blames Success on Baked Beans
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Peter Molyneux Blames Success on Baked Beans
1–10 of 17 posts
Re: Peter Molyneux Blames Success on Baked Beans
#2Peter Molyneux talks about how his software business began and recalls the humous baked bean story in his Game Developer Conference (GDC) postmortem of Populus:
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
The GDC classic postmortem talks are well worth watching.
Re: Peter Molyneux Blames Success on Baked Beans
#3Dungeon Keeper 1 is still my all time favourite game. I just wish for Peter to one day return to the series...
Re: Peter Molyneux Blames Success on Baked Beans
#4Bob Schieffer had a similar story where he was trying to get a job and went in to CBS's headquarters looking for someone high up to talk to. When he said his name was Bob the secretary responded that he was early but to go ahead and go in. He did an interview (more like good ol boys talk apparently), got the gig at CBS and ran out of there not knowing what just happened. Supposedly he found out years later that he had walked in before a Bob Shaffer (spelling similar, I may be wrong on it).
Source: He gave the commencement speech at RIT and told this story.
Re: Peter Molyneux Blames Success on Baked Beans
#5Dungeon Keeper 1 is still my all time favourite game. I just wish for Peter to one day return to the series...
If he weren't all about over promise and under deliver these days... looks at the Fable series
Sometimes I'm amazed the dev team lets him talk to the outside world anymore :P
Re: Peter Molyneux Blames Success on Baked Beans
#6To hear such humility from the man responsible for so many of the games I loved is really inspiring.
Re: Peter Molyneux Blames Success on Baked Beans
#7Bob Schieffer had a similar story where he was trying to get a job and went in to CBS's headquarters looking for someone high up to talk to. When he said his name was Bob the secretary responded that he was early but to go ahead and go in. He did an interview (more like good ol boys talk apparently), got the gig at CBS and ran out of there not knowing what just happened. Supposedly he found out years later that he ha…
My father got his break in a similar way.
He had been working in steel mills for all of his teens, and after high school went into the Marines. After getting out of the marines, he went to get a job at GM on the assembly line.
He was well dressed and presented an air of confidence (thanks to the Marines), and so the receptionist assumed he was there for a managerial position instead of an assembly line position, and gave him the managerial application form.
He got the job, learned management and then moved on to other companies as a manager before finally starting his own company.
One chance is all you need to prove your worth.
Re: Peter Molyneux Blames Success on Baked Beans
#8This article compelled me to create an account here to comment.
I loved this quote of his: "I’ve made so many countless mistakes...being as someone who isn’t particularly bright, I have to make them several times before I learn." That quote coming from someone so accomplished puts things into perspective for me.
I sometimes struggle with the capacity of my own intelligence. I am trying to change my mentality that intelligence is something that can gradually grow through experience/practice instead of it being an innate quality. I do believe geniuses such as Terrence Tao, etc. are exceptions and are born with the innate ability. For the rest of us, I believe we should emphasize hard work and just getting things done.
I also believe that this is a source of my procrastination. Sometimes I struggle to work on some of my side projects because of my limiting belief that the task at hand is so huge/complex that I am just not smart enough to complete something like that.
Does anyone else have similar thoughts or comments along these lines?
Re: Peter Molyneux Blames Success on Baked Beans
#9Dungeon Keeper 1 is still my all time favourite game. I just wish for Peter to one day return to the series...
If he weren't all about over promise and under deliver these days... looks at the Fable series Sometimes I'm amazed the dev team lets him talk to the outside world anymore :P
He is still a man with great ideas, and an amazing ability to hype them. But yes, they get overhyped. Black & White sounded a lot more awesome than it turned out to be when released (still a good game, though, but nowhere near as epic as we'd all heard). Fable was, in essence, the same thing. The Movies, I feel, isn't much of a game, but curtains for the movie making thing (which worked nice), but by that time I had figured out the hype machine and expected less. Lionhead makes solid games overall, but it amazes me how the gaming magazines and sites swallow everything Molyneux says hook, line and sinker.
And now I want to play Populous II again. :/
Re: Peter Molyneux Blames Success on Baked Beans
#10This article compelled me to create an account here to comment. I loved this quote of his: "I’ve made so many countless mistakes...being as someone who isn’t particularly bright, I have to make them several times before I learn." That quote coming from someone so accomplished puts things into perspective for me. I sometimes struggle with the capacity of my own intelligence. I am trying to change my mentality that int…
Personally, I only measure what I achieve divided by time used divided by stress caused. Intelligence has not much to do with that equation. It's a red herring, IMO. If you bind your self esteem to your perceived intelligence, it is very fragile. If you bind your self esteem to the amount of work you do, it is much less so.