Peter Molyneux Blames Success on Baked Beans | Hacker News Reader

Peter Molyneux Blames Success on Baked Beans

microsoft.com

66 pointsjdeastwood16 comments

All successful people have had a "lucky break". The difference between them and the one's that never make it are: they had the skills, confidence and dedication to make the most of the break.

It's not true to say that one creates one's own luck, but it is true to say that one creates the success from a lucky incident.

This is why you can't say that someone who succeeds, say, in their early 20s is necessarily more talented than someone who succeeds in their late 50s (although I suppose one could say that if someone in their early 20s has already developed the skills to deal with their lucky incident successfully may be more talented; however sometimes the fact they've had the opportunity to develop those talents can be luck/good fortune).

The secret: stay ready and throw your hat into the ring. The worst you're risking is embarrassment.

Bob Schieffer had a similar story where he was trying to get a job and went in to CBS's headquarters looking for someone high up to talk to. When he said his name was Bob the secretary responded that he was early but to go ahead and go in. He did an interview (more like good ol boys talk apparently), got the gig at CBS and ran out of there not knowing what just happened. Supposedly he found out years later that he had walked in before a Bob Shaffer (spelling similar, I may be wrong on it).

Source: He gave the commencement speech at RIT and told this story.

My father got his break in a similar way.

He had been working in steel mills for all of his teens, and after high school went into the Marines. After getting out of the marines, he went to get a job at GM on the assembly line.

He was well dressed and presented an air of confidence (thanks to the Marines), and so the receptionist assumed he was there for a managerial position instead of an assembly line position, and gave him the managerial application form.

He got the job, learned management and then moved on to other companies as a manager before finally starting his own company.

One chance is all you need to prove your worth.

This article compelled me to create an account here to comment.

I loved this quote of his: "I’ve made so many countless mistakes...being as someone who isn’t particularly bright, I have to make them several times before I learn." That quote coming from someone so accomplished puts things into perspective for me.

I sometimes struggle with the capacity of my own intelligence. I am trying to change my mentality that intelligence is something that can gradually grow through experience/practice instead of it being an innate quality. I do believe geniuses such as Terrence Tao, etc. are exceptions and are born with the innate ability. For the rest of us, I believe we should emphasize hard work and just getting things done.

I also believe that this is a source of my procrastination. Sometimes I struggle to work on some of my side projects because of my limiting belief that the task at hand is so huge/complex that I am just not smart enough to complete something like that.

Does anyone else have similar thoughts or comments along these lines?

Personally, I only measure what I achieve divided by time used divided by stress caused. Intelligence has not much to do with that equation. It's a red herring, IMO. If you bind your self esteem to your perceived intelligence, it is very fragile. If you bind your self esteem to the amount of work you do, it is much less so.

Peter Molyneux talks about how his software business began and recalls the humous baked bean story in his Game Developer Conference (GDC) postmortem of Populus:

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem

The GDC classic postmortem talks are well worth watching.

Dungeon Keeper 1 is still my all time favourite game. I just wish for Peter to one day return to the series...

If he weren't all about over promise and under deliver these days... looks at the Fable series

Sometimes I'm amazed the dev team lets him talk to the outside world anymore :P

He is still a man with great ideas, and an amazing ability to hype them. But yes, they get overhyped. Black & White sounded a lot more awesome than it turned out to be when released (still a good game, though, but nowhere near as epic as we'd all heard). Fable was, in essence, the same thing. The Movies, I feel, isn't much of a game, but curtains for the movie making thing (which worked nice), but by that time I had figured out the hype machine and expected less. Lionhead makes solid games overall, but it amazes me how the gaming magazines and sites swallow everything Molyneux says hook, line and sinker.

And now I want to play Populous II again. :/

I hardly think a guy that LIES about what his product is doing and has success merely because people decided to buy the product regardless. It is almost like he owes his success to the low self-worth of gamers that they would still play a game that is lacking NEARLY ALL the features that were promised.

You can listen to what he has to say, but in my mind, he is a liar and uses his costumers gullibility to his advantage. That is the only secret to his success, and really it is not repeatable in most industries. And if it were, I wouldn't recommend using it because it is insanely immoral, not to mention that living on lies is just a horrible way to go through life.

I'm not sure if he'd get away with it but for the fact he had some great successes with his name attached in the past, so people seem willing to keep giving him a pass. Why after so long, I have no idea.

He does still produce interesting products I think, just overhyped. For example, Fable 2 actually comes somewhat close to what Fable promised, albeit a few years later, and not hitting much of what Fable 2 itself promised. But it's still one of the more interesting games in that space that's come out in the past few years.

I don't think you realize the severity of his lies over Fable, and Fable 2.

Back when it was Project Mayhem (can't recall exact name) he promised very life accurate features, graphic engines that would redefine presentation, and gameplay mechanics that still do not exist today.

He didn't say, "We are toying with the idea," or something like that. He said, each blade of grass would sway in the wind. That you could free roam maps like never before.

Among the features not delivered in Fable 1,2 or 3: - When you die or age, you can play as your child to advance the plot. - You can workout to increase your strength. Not working over time makes you weaker. - You can roam freely thorughout the world. - You can steal anything. - You can break anything. - You can use any object as weapon. This list goes on for pages that I do not care to relive.

What did fable II feature? A dog? What the hell is that? How is this related to the core concept? Peter is the result of giving a 5 year old a gaming company. All the grandest coolest plans in the world and in the end having neither the resources, discipline or skill to carry it out.

But it is okay, because people are willing to accept an inferior product, and really just forget all the lies he tells. Just like your comments.

Isn't this supposed to be capitalism where this type of behavior gets you punished?

I'd rather shove a stake in my eye than take his advice on how to be successful. I could learn more about how to be successful interviewing a child about a lemonade stand. They atleast would have interesting comments on sales techniques, that don't rely on your audience not minding being abused.

Although not a direct result of mistaken identity, I have a few friends who are working on what they love because they essentially figured it out as they went along. This leads me to believe that passion and hard work is all one really needs to succeed. I almost added luck to the latter sentence but luck seems to find those applying the other two.

Does it bug anyone else that the Acorn Atom, Commodore Amiga et al are referred to as Consoles?

It's bad enough that the current crop of what I would call consoles have no keyboard, and you need to break the law to write code for them unless you have megabucks.

To hear such humility from the man responsible for so many of the games I loved is really inspiring.

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