Deus Ex Machina Wanna play God for a day? Forget dialling in to kick some celebrity wannabe off the TV screen, try God games instead - the fast-growing genre of the video game. Games guru Peter Molyneux is developer of the long-awaited Black and White, due for release in March 2001. Key to the game is a creature-character whose actions are directly controlled by the player. Whether the aim is to nurture and assist or maim and destroy a populace is dependent on the player. Molyneux's game plays out destruction and creation on a single stage - the decision to adopt good or evil behaviour rests in the mind of the viewer. John Paul Bichard catches up with the Father of all God games Peter Molyneux for a rare interview - published in Mute magazine issue 15. Below is an extract. JPB. Black and White has its roots in your childhood fascination with ant communities. What happened? PM: I was a typical five-year-old. A few sticks of wood, a couple of play figures and a world with good and bad guys develops. I did the most unspeakable things to that ant's nest. JPB: Such as? PM: I stuck a hose in the middle of it to see what would happen, then came back a day later to notice that they had rebuilt half of it. It became my pet. I kept thinking: 'how can I bring this colony close to death, and then bring it back from death?' It was probably an indication of me becoming a games designer or a mass murderer - I don't know which. JPB: For me, destroying nature was about the individual ants. I'd chase them with a magnifying glass and pop them. I wouldn't deal with the entire community! PM: I always wanted to see the queen ant. I never saw her, so I built up an impression of what she looked like: bigger and more prestigious than the other worker ants. That's why I was interested in exploring whole colonies - it was about relationships. JPB: Did you continue to develop this model? PM: Yeah. At seventeen, I would go to my bedroom, and play with my Lego set. I built little worlds, the most sophisticated worlds. I had one purpose - to destroy the world that I had built. If you give someone a world to create, you must also allow that world to be destroyed. That's fundamental to games design. ......... JPB: Do you believe that something controls you? PM: You mean God! JPB:...since you make God games... PM: It's an interesting question. I believe that God does exist, he does exert an influence on this world today. But it's nevertheless a disappointing force... back