Why we should be wary of "gaming celebrities"

Among the highlights of my gaming year so far has been visiting Lionhead's HQ in Guildford, and not just because I had the opportunity to sample an early build of Fable: The Journey - a game I'm somewhat enjoying in accordance with my celebrated capacity to wind up on the wrong side of a critical consensus. Before hitting the sofa, I interviewed creative director Gary Carr on such topics as how you nurture new talent ("dumbing down" the design tools is apparently a good start) and, less successfully, Lionhead's relationship with Epic and the Unreal Engine.

One thing we didn't cover was what the departure of outspoken founder Peter Molyneux meant for the studio - I figured, correctly as it turned out, that all the other journalists would broach the issue - but the idea was very much in the air throughout. Molyneux's head-smacking susceptibility to outrageous overstatement casts a long shadow, and Carr makes for a similarly lively though rather more PR-friendly interview - twinkly, enthusiastic, and equipped with that rare gift of calling a spade a spade without, somehow, diverging from the party line.

As we spoke, unwholesome phrases like "The next Molyneux" and "Molyneux 2.0" began to buzz around in my head. Those phrases almost gave rise to an article in the extra-frothy vein, but when I read the transcript back, I was saddened to discover that nothing all that mind-blowing or revealing had been said, nothing to declare the man as rightful heir to Molyneux's throne. This is a testament less to Carr's skilled intransigence, as to my own preconceptions about his role. Why, after all, do we need "another Molyneux"? Why does there have to be a throne?

The damaging tendency among press and pundits to treat corporations as monolithic hive minds, possessed of a common will at every rung on the ladder, is countered by a tendency to reduce corporations to the actions of their most prominent individuals. Molyneux is probably the defining instance of this, but recent months have also thrown the career of BioWare's executive producer Casey Hudson into sharp relief - thanks to certain much-quoted claims that Mass Effect 3's endings would have more "sophistication and variety", he's the man generally held responsible for "scuppering" the finale.

Then there's the bizarre case of Tameem Antionades, creative director of Ninja Theory, who revealed this spring to OXM that he had received death threats in response to the studio's handling of DMC Devil May Cry. Antionades is one of gaming's more forthright interviewees, but that's not the only count against him in the eyes of outraged fans - he bears more than a passing resemblance to the redesigned Dante, cue accusations that the rebooted Devil May Cry is a flagrant vanity project, cooked up by a demented Limey with zero respect for the series in his care.

Is there any truth to these allegations? It's possible. There's a rich history of egomania in gaming, as Log's less than reverential video Indie Game: The Breakdown (see over the page) makes plain: among the more plausible examples of alleged hubris are IGN's extraordinary report on Brendan McNamara's "mismanagement" of Team Bondi, and the on-going West-Zampella vs Activision debacle.