Microsoft Games Studios recently axed over 5,000 jobs at a number of internal studios including Banjo Kazooie creators Rare, and Games for Windows Live, ACES, and many other unfortunate establishments.
The lone survivor of this night of long knives? Lionhead Studios — the friendly United Kingdom blokes that created the Fable series and recently released the sequel stateside.
Legendary video game designer and boss at Lionhead, Peter Douglas Molyneux spearheaded the defense of his company by “remaining professional and playing the internal PR game.”
“Our mission statement is to be the most respected developer in the world, and to create landmark games. And underneath that, to be the most professional studio in Microsoft Game Studios,” Molyneux remarked in a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz.
“Part of that means that when we want to do something, we can’t throw our creative toys out of the pram and say, ‘Look, we want to do this because we’re really smart people.’ We have to prove it.
As we reported early last week, Microsoft came under fire with recent allegations of homophobia from none other than a former employee of Lionhead. Molyneux however, disputed the claims (which have since been settled) by saying:
“I think if you walk around that studio, everybody is happier and they feel more empowered and more creative than they’ve ever felt before.
“I think everyone is really happy at Lionhead. That happiness is defined by the products they’ve just worked on – Fable 2. People feel super-proud of what they’ve done, and they feel they’re trusted creatively to do amazing things.”
Hardly a concise answer from the legend of hype, but without specifics from either side, it is a difficult issue to discern with any true understanding. What is clear however is Molyneux’s love for all things Fable, and the long rumored Fable 3 is, come on, obviously going to happen.
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