// PC GAMER — GAMING
Peter Molyneux explains why Black & White 3 remains MIA, and then drops a tantalising teaser: 'It's such a difficult, difficult, challenging title to develop'
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As part of an interview that I conducted with Peter Molyneux in Guildford recently, a wide-reaching chat that covered everything from Molyneux's final game, Masters of Albion, and its new game-changing update, through to the origin of Black & White's famous titan creatures, I also asked the veteran designer why a third Black & White game has never been made.
Fans of the Black & White series like myself and countless other PC gamers (Black & White is currently top of GOG's most-wanted remaster list) have been desperate for a new release, be that a remaster of one of the original games or a brand-new third game, so the fact that it has now been 20 years since the Black & White 2: Battle of the Gods expansion was released is pretty dispiriting. But is there hope for fans of the series?
"Why has it taken 27 years to do that? It's such a difficult, difficult, challenging title to develop. It really is. I mean, there were so many systems in there which just were inventions, first-time inventions. You've got to remember there was no middleware [back then], so [mastering those systems] is the first big challenge, and this is a challenge with Masters of Albion, too. The player can look and be anywhere in the world at any time, and the traditional ways of doing optimizations on a game is knowing that the player is only in this space, and that means the rest of the world can just be forgotten.
"But in Black & White, the whole joy is zooming in and zooming out [wherever you want at any time]. So there were a lot of technical challenges. [Also] that genre, that slice of the pie, is withering all the time. So, you know, getting a big developer like EA who owns the rights to Black & White 3, and Microsoft who own rights to Black & White 4, getting them to say, right, we won't do one of these big wedge games, [and instead] we'll do four other games [from smaller wedge genres, is really tough]."
My reading of these comments is that they ring true and are entirely unsurprising—especially that god games are seen as a small piece of pie by publishers. Any gamer who has followed the gaming industry for the last 10-20 years will have seen how the major publishers have coalesced around, and increasingly bet the farm on, just a few genres and business models, the most infamous being live-service. Those bets, for most, have now proven to be massive follies, with countless epic failures (Skull & Bones, Concord, Suicide Squad, Anthem, Marvel's Avengers, Redfall, MultiVersus, and APB: All Points Bulletin, to name but a few) leading to, literally, billions of dollars being flushed down the pan.
Why spend money on making a new god game, one that will require a dev team to really get to grips with a variety of bespoke, complex, interconnected systems, in order to make a profit, when instead you can just try to make your own version of Fortnite and make a mega profit? Or, as real gaming industry history has shown, actually make a mega loss. Getting a god game project greenlit, even a sequel to one of the most beloved god game series ever made, was likely next to impossible. In this light, it feels remarkable that Masters of Albion is now a reality, even in Early Access, and it is likely only due to Molyneux's pedigree as the father of the genre.
Just when I thought this part of the interview was petering out into disappointment, with any new Black & White release still stuck in gaming limbo, Molyneux dropped a potentially bombshell piece of news for god game fans.
"I think there are people working on a Black & White remaster. But it would be inappropriate for me to talk about it".
Now, obviously, Molyneux's studio doesn't own Black & White anymore, and he's not connected with EA or Microsoft now, either. He's clearly not involved in the project. And he also only says he thinks a remaster is in the works, not that it definitely is, so I think it is