Lionhead says public disclosure of development "backfired" during Fable I

Lionhead has stated that because of the way things were publicly handled during development of Fable I, the company had to change the way it involves people in the development process.

Promotion for Fable II was in jeopardy due to what the public considered "unfulfilled promises" with the first title, and Lionhead had to change that.

“It's a shame that we can't let people in on how games are developed to this degree anymore,” said Fable II creative director Dene Carter to 360 Magazine.

"The thing about Fable 1 was that we let people in on the whole development process, right from the beginning. We were more naive than anything else and hoped that our organic, blue-sky way of creating games would garner interest from the public.

"This rather backfired and we ended-up - in some cases - reading about certain features that we'd never even spoken about. The 'acorn issue' was a particular misquote. We never said the player could plant acorns."

As a consequence, Lionhead's now unable to involve the public as much it would like with current projects, which Carter called "a shame".

"Everything has to be considered as a marketing statement," he said. "People will hold you to any information they read as if they had read it on the back of the box."

More through the link.