Theme Park's "Smoking Mechanic" Is A Perfect Example Of Peter Molyneux's Love Of "Introduced Fallacy" 1
Image: Electronic Arts

Peter Molyneux is one of the world's most famous game designers and has had a hand in influential titles such as Populous, Magic Carpet, Black & White and Fable.

He's also famous for allowing his imagination to sometimes run away with him and has often told outright fibs when promoting the games he has worked on.

To his credit, Molyneux himself is aware that he does this, and every now and then, his habit throws up anecdotes, which, in hindsight, are quite amusing.

Alex Trowers, speaking to Time Extension about the ambitious and underrated Powermonger, recalls a moment during the development of Theme Park where Molyneux seized upon a random element and turned it into a piece of marketing hype:

When we started showing Theme Park to journalists, the mechanic in that game would fix a ride and wander off. And all they would do is they'd pick a random spot and they would walk there and they'd do their idle and then they'd pick another random spot, and another, and another until they were called to do another ride.

On one occasion, the mechanic had fixed the ride, and the random spot he'd chosen was behind the entrance. So a journalist had asked Peter what he was doing and Peter quick as a flash had gone, 'He's nipped behind there to have a fag and he knows that you can't see him.' But he hadn't. He'd just chosen that spot completely at random and there were no smoking animations in the game. But suddenly it became this thing where the AI was so clever that it would go and they'd sneak away from you.

Molyneux is currently hard at work on Masters of Albion, his latest magnum opus.