Reality Bytes : Rolling Stone

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While testing the Fable series, Molyneux found that gamers' identities revealed plenty about their choices. "Most Americans can't bring themselves to do anything other than be good. Europeans or English people will be more liberated." Molyneux takes that as a challenge: "If Americans can't bring themselves to be evil, then my job is to test how good you are." Conversely, kids 12 to 14 chose to be evil the majority of the time — possibly, Molyneux has surmised, because they're just learning how to grapple with the consequences.

Still, Molyneux admits that, in the future, making games more lifelike won't be all about amping up the moral choices. Part of the challenge is to become more novice-friendly. "We have to do away with all the finger gymnastics," he says, noting that Fable II reduces combat moves to pressing a single button, or flicking the motion-sensitive controller stick. "Communication between a computer and a user needs to be much more two-way." To Molyneux, this means improving speech recognition software, so that players can talk directly with other characters as they would in real life. He also waxes about a time when "computers can look into our world and touch our world." "I'm working on some of that science fiction now," he says, mysteriously. "But I shouldn't talk about it yet."

What's the endgame? Molyneux insists that his bosses at Microsoft won't allow him to reveal the title or premise of his next game, but he hints that he's already working on creating a convincing simulation of a single human being. "Imagine if I could go into a game and truly meet a friend," he says — not a real friend, but a simulation so lifelike you could mistake it for the real thing. For Molyneux, it's a way to both make his Asimovian dreams come to life, and make the world a little less cold along the way. "I've played role playing games my whole life, and I've loved them," he says, "but I've been lonely."

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