Fable II Interview, Part Two

[GameBanshee News]

VideoGamer.com has finally gotten around to posting the second half of their interview with Lionhead Studios' Peter Molyneux. The interview is primarily about the Xbox 360 and DRM, so don't expect much new information about Fable II:

VideoGamer.com: EA has taken some flak from PC gamers for limiting the number of PCs that Spore can be activated on.

Peter Molyneux: Ahh. How many did they limit it to?

VideoGamer.com: 3

Peter Molyneux: 3? Hmm. It's interesting because if you go online, a lot of PC gaming is now casual gaming. A lot of our people are talking about this. If you look at the gamer market on PC, I'll be quite honest with you, it's in tatters. There aren't that many releases on PC. There are some high points like Crysis and what Blizzard is doing, but other than that you are restricted to The Sims and World of Warcraft, they seem to be dominating the PC side. But on the other side of the coin you've got the whole casual market. Interestingly on the casual market if I go to a casual website, download a game that's it, it's only for that machine and that machine only. I cannot transfer that on to another machine. So I think the casual space has had even more restrictive copying than the core space.

I would say while me as a player hates any restrictions, I can understand that publishers need to do something to give them the confidence to make games for the PC, to spend the huge amounts of money necessary to spend on development and to get their return. Anything that may give them more confidence on the PC means that ultimately we as gamers will come out better off because they will invest more in the game. I don't think three sounds that bad. I'd prefer it not to be there but if it is going to be there then I think three is OK, but I can understand people being very upset. Personally I hate any copy protection. I hate typing in that number. I loathe it as a gamer. It just makes me feel insulted. And I always lose the blasted manual anyway. So if we can get away from that password protected side, which is a waste of time, then that would be great.