Peter Molyneux explains his departure from Microsoft and Lionhead

Peter Molyneux has broken his silence about his reasons for departing from his longtime home in game development, Lionhead Studios.

Peter Molyneux has broken his silence about his reasons for departing from his longtime home in game development, Lionhead Studios.

In an interview with Eurogamer, Molyneux explained, "I started getting all these lifetime achievement awards and BAFTA fellowships, and gosh, who knows what else? I almost lined them up on the shelf, looked at them, and thought to myself, well, are these awards really for things I've done in the past? Do they represent the best I'm ever going to do? Or do they represent a challenge to what I am going to do?"

Molyneux quickly formulated the idea of his own studio, 22Cans, and was approached by Microsoft about a potential publishing partnership. He turned it down, he explained, because he "didn't want to constrain any creative endeavours this new company would do with setting an early deal." He turns to OMGPOP's Draw Something as an example, stating, "That's come about in the last eight weeks. Only a small company of incredibly smart people can be that nimble.

Molyneux also discussed his disappointment in the cancellation of his Kinect brain child, Milo and Kate. Calling it the "most fascinating project I ever worked on," he admitted that while he understood the practical reasons for its discontinuation, it could have subconsciously pushed him towards his decision to start his own creative endeavor.

That endeavor, 22Cans, is in the process of staffing up — Molyneux said the studio is shooting for 22 full-time employees, appropriately enough — and workshopping its first title. From what he explained, the game will be available on a large number of platforms, and will aim to be as wide-reaching as the team can possibly make it.

"My definition of changing the world is connecting people together, of there being more of a persistent experience, of there being the ability of different people with different interests and different skills, playing and contributing and adding together," Molyneux said. "If I did all of those things, and I did them well and it was well crafted with this amazing team I've got, then it would change the world.

"It's neatly packaged up by me saying that I'm going to make a game to change the world — and I'm sure you're going to use that as the headline," he added. "But my caveat on that is, I just don't want to make something that's like another game."