Peter Molyneux on Dungeon Keeper: "This is Ridiculous" - News

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Normally, when Peter Molyneux speaks, he's talking about his own games. But this time, Molyneux is speaking about Electronic Arts' new free-to-play game Dungeon Keeper, which shares the same name as the 1997 game that Molyneux created, and he's none too pleased.

In particular, he spoke of constructing dungeons, which are done in-game by imps. Imps dig slowly, but can be sped up if the player pays real-life money. Without paying, it can take up to 24 hours for the imps to dig out certain terrain. When Molyneux saw this, he was appalled.

"I felt myself turning round saying, 'What? This is ridiculous. I just want to make a dungeon. I don't want to schedule it on my alarm clock for six days to come back for a block to be chipped," Molyneux said to the BBC.

Molyneux also spoke about the failure to balance the game between the interest of the series' fans and mobile gamers. "I don't think they got it quite right, the balance between keeping it familiar to the fans that were out there but fresh enough and understandable enough for this much bigger mobile audience."

EA has received waves of criticism about Dungeon Keeper, but the company believes it got the balance between paying and playing right. 

"We specifically built Dungeon Keeper around typical mobile play patterns - that is, checking in a few minutes here and there throughout the day, an EA spokeswoman said. "This way of playing, we've found, allows fans to naturally progress through the game as a free player."

"We believe we've designed an experience wherein players don't have to spend money if they don't want to," she said.

EA has also previously defended the game by pointing out its high review scores on the Apple and Google Play app stores. But they have also come under fire on this front too as Dungeon Keeper includes a manipulative system that discourages players from posting any review lower than 5 out of 5 stars.

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