Now, I’m going to take an educated guess here and say that Peter Molyneux is probably the developer in question that suggested these things [that Notch should add pets to Minecraft]. It’s right up his ally [SIC - alley].
A couple of things to keep in mind with Molyneux: he has great ideas, but his ideas are often way overly ambitious. This is why his games are constantly very late and way over budget. While he’s brilliant, he also has a tendency to go way off on design tangents that keep his development teams spinning in circles.
This is from 2011. Fifteen years ago, at least professional game designers (like the OP from that quote, FlowerChild) were already aware Molyneux is an “ideas guy”. He pictures huuuuuge, world-changing games that are unfeasible. Couple this with anything related to RL money and guess what, you’ll get people losing money.
…wow. I wasn’t aware of that at all. But the forums confirm it, and Battosay wouldn’t joke about it. :-/
May he rest in peace.
Anyway. Now thinking, most of his takes were spot on, and proved true later on: Minecraft wasting huge amounts of dev time on pathfinding for pets and then testificates, Forge becoming a drama-generating machine, and, more on-topic, Molyneux.
Lemme quote a Minecraft forums post:
This is from 2011. Fifteen years ago, at least professional game designers (like the OP from that quote, FlowerChild) were already aware Molyneux is an “ideas guy”. He pictures huuuuuge, world-changing games that are unfeasible. Couple this with anything related to RL money and guess what, you’ll get people losing money.
Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time! RIP, apparently 😔
…wow. I wasn’t aware of that at all. But the forums confirm it, and Battosay wouldn’t joke about it. :-/
May he rest in peace.
Anyway. Now thinking, most of his takes were spot on, and proved true later on: Minecraft wasting huge amounts of dev time on pathfinding for pets and then testificates, Forge becoming a drama-generating machine, and, more on-topic, Molyneux.