Lionhead Studios - Archive

Xbox Live event


Next week - on the 18th February - the Fable Event on Xbox® Live"! will take place. European gamers will get the change to take on Dene Carter, Simon Carter and Peter Molyneux in a game of Crimson Skies and talk about the game they are making (of course with the whole team): Fable!

You will have to add Dene and Simon (gamertag: lionhead2) and Peter (gamertag: lionhead1) to your "friendslist". They will be there and so will several other people from the Fable team, as we will be going to the Microsoft offices up in London for this event. We will also bring you and extended coverage (with sound!) on LHtimes. It looks like it will be an incredible experience, earlier this week I visited Microsoft for a rehearsal, and even I am getting really exited!

I expect several scenarios; a first one is that thousands of people start sending requests to Peter's and Dene and Simon's friendslist, if that's the case people will have to be patient I believe, or play a game with other players. Heck, we might even set a new world record! The event will be going on for an hour and a half; with around fourteen people joining per session, and sessions between five and ten minutes, almost a hundred people could play with or against Peter, Dene and Simon. I've been playing the game on Live - as a rehearsal with Gareth Morris (and yes, other gamertags) - and sessions of around five minutes seemed to work really well!

Another possibility; people don't speak any English at all; and we end up with a totally lost in translation conversations going on about unknown topics. I doubt it, but luckily many people of the Lionhead team attending the event are bi-lingual. This shouldn't be a real problem.

Peter, Dene and Simon will have had some training with this game (they already have) but I'm a little worried their skills are no match for the real Crimson Skies players. Anyhow, it will be a unique opportunity to play against them - and find out about Fable or even more.

Next week I should finish the FAQ, it's taking quite some time now, but I want to check all this information with the team - and as they are working crazy hours on the game it takes a while for them to get back on it.

Several topics that are currently being discussed on the boards are also an issue within the team here. I presume it's all a coincidence, but it's good to be able to get the feedback from you "the community" to the people who will be implementing the actual feature. The topic we've had recently regarding the HUD is a good example. We are now considering making it totally configurable with opacity and fade-out settings for each indicator. Just wait and see, but topics such as these are more valuable then those on loading times&

I could tell you many different little things about Fable, get into detail on how things are being done at the moment but I won't! The FAQ will cover most of the questions which are appropriate to answer, and those that are not - will be discovered when all of us get a hold of the final copy!

Sam, Community Pet Lionhead Studios