UK gaming icon Peter Molyneux on AI, his final creation and a changing industry

Peter Molyneux OBE is reflecting upon the future of the UK games industry in his office - and how he could soon be leaving it. The 66-year-old, who over the years has helped create iconic series such as Fable, Black & White and Theme Park, tells me Masters of Albion - his latest project as creative director of 22cans - will also be his final one. He sees it as a return to his roots - a reinvention of the god game - a genre he introduced with Populous in 1989, one where players play as a deity on high, controlling a population's inhabitants as they please. In this new iteration, players are able to build and manage settlements by day, before defending them from attacks at night, with the ability to take control of individual characters at any point. For Molyneux, once voted one of the top game creators of all time, the key idea is freedom - creating systems that respond to player curiosity rather than directing them down a fixed path.