This article was originally published on April 17, 2026 - read the full issue

By Patrick Garratt

Host Jörg Tittel launched Edge In Person at London Games Festival's New Game Plus event yesterday with his first guest, 22cans' Peter Molyneux. The legendary designer spoke candidly about AI and also the neurodiversity that drives his development – of which, he claimed repeatedly, the soon-to-be-released Masters Of Albion will be the final product.

"I'm six days away from launching my very, very last game, Masters Of Albion, and I've never been more nervous," he said. "It means so much to me. I've invested so much in the game."

Molyneux, as anyone who's followed his career since he started creating games in 1984 will be aware, has made statements in the past that have not come to fruition. Is this really his final game?

Recounting the long path through the studios where he made his name, the most famous being Bullfrog and Lionhead, Molyneux said he's reaching the age where he finally wants to move on, despite the "utter terror" of facing an existence without game development.

"For me, there's been no other life, really, than making games. I think, when you reach 67, which I am now, I'm gonna say, well, is there anything else in life?

"What does a normal person do that doesn't have these obsessive thoughts about games?"

Tittel asked the audience if anyone believed that Masters Of Albion would be Molyneux's final game. Just one person raised their hand: Charles Cecil, the Broken Sword creator and Revolution Software founder.

Obsession session

Molyneux never stops thinking about the games he's making, and has barely ever done anything else. The British developer is well known for his obsessive nature. Tittel told the audience that he's recently been diagnosed with ADHD. Molyneux, too, is neurodiverse.

"Anyone who knows me knows that I get these unbelievably focused times when I become almost unresponsive to any outside influences," Molyneux said. "I don't know whether you call that ADHD. I don't know whether I'm autistic. I don't know what it is. I barely understand myself."

Molyneux has figureheaded some of the industry's most recognisable games, including Populous, Theme Park, Dungeon Keeper, Black & White and the Fable series. He's credited with inventing the god game. Success, however, was not immediate thanks to his neuro make-up.

"Every moment in my life, up to the point I touched a computer, was a failure. Every school report, every school team activity, every social activity, I was completely useless. I mean, I was famous in school for being the bottom of everything. And the moment I touched the computer, that changed. It was almost visible.

"And what I'd say to people is, if you've been to school and everyone says you're an idiot, don't think that's true. You're a unique individual and there's probably within you the capacity to be creative and amazing. You don't have to be exactly like that person over there."

AI and the genre revolution

AI dominated a large portion of the conversation, with Molyneux likening its impact, alongside other current technological advancements, to the Industrial Revolution. Whereas the arrival of the machine in society largely affected blue-collar workers, he said, this time the white-collar demographic is being hit hardest by technological upheavals in the professional space. All, however, is not lost.

"We adapt. That's the amazing thing about human beings. And those people that can adapt or be nimble and flexible to this are the people that do best."

Contrary to general discourse on the matter in game development, Molyneux is open about his enthusiasm for the potential of AI in games. He's no stranger to the concept. In fact, Demis Hassabis, head of Google's DeepMind and the 2024 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his AI research contributions for protein structure prediction, worked as a programmer on Theme Park at Bullfrog as a teenager. Molyneux's endless curiosity for technological advancement, coupled with his own contributions to the evolution of contemporary gaming, means he's well aware of the benefits the technology could bring – and the detriments it's already brought.

"It shouldn't be used to reduce costs, and it shouldn't be used to collapse our creativity," he said. "What it can be used for is to create potentially new genres. That would be truly exciting."

Despite being heavily critical of the manner in which Big Tech introduced AI to the world with "shit" early products, Molyneux said that we're entering a new age of problem-solving, citing social issues as well as media creation. He said AI could allow humanity a new "hope".

While he was clear that AI has not been used in the creation of Masters Of Albion, Molyneux went on to give a theoretical example of how the technology could have been implemented for the development of Fable, Lionhead's seminal 2004 RPG.

He noted that games involving many NPCs require that every interaction with every character has to be written and mapped. Fable, he said, required "a quarter of a million lines just for the people in the towns," dialogue which charts all of the player's potential actions with other in-game humans.

"It's limiting," he said. "It's limiting because we have to pre-think all the things the player could do. What we could be doing is spending our time training an AI model to impart a behaviour and a personality [on an NPC] – what the responses should be from a character like this."

Adapting to player actions

AI-driven NPCs, he said, could be given a background and could adapt in a way games haven't seen before. Whereas NPCs are currently locked into the lines written for them by development teams, they could adapt to events in the world and the player's actions based on their character.

"For you guys," he said to the audience, "this is an amazing opportunity, because it could create a new genre."

"I've been saying this for years. Your world is different to my world. I said it about Black & White and I said it about Fable. In reality, that had its limits, but you could stretch the boundaries of that because it can be adaptive to what the player is doing. And that is truly exciting and an incredible opportunity."

Tittel asked Molyneux if he could potentially make a game by himself using AI, as a retirement project.

"We need demand to make that happen, because it's not quite possible yet," he said.

"You know what I would love, what would be fantastic? If I could, when I first go into Unity or Unreal, the first thing I do is turn on my microphone, and I say, 'Right, Caribbean landscape, tropical beaches, crabs, shells' – you know, create a whole interactive world through just using my voice. And think of that like a canvas. Don't think of it as, 'Oh my God, that's the game to publish,' because if it were that easy, everyone could do it. Once you've done that, that's where [human designers] come in. That's where we still hold all the aces."

This article was originally published on April 17, 2026 - read the full issue