At last night's British Academy Video Game Awards, gaming legend Peter Molyneux joined an illustrious list. His BAFTA Fellowship puts him not only in the company of Nolan Bushnell, Shigeru Miyamoto and Will Wright – three luminaries who've joined the ranks since BAFTA fully opened its doors to the video game industry – but also with the likes of Hitchcock, Chaplin and Kubrick. It's no wonder the man responsible for Fable, Populous, and Black & White was emotional when he took to the stage last night, and it was impossible not to be warmed by his enthusiasm and charm, two qualities that have made him so well loved and that have helped people forgive him when his grand ambitions often get the better of him. Here he tells IGN what the award means to and what it means to the industry as a whole.

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Peter Molyneux: Oh god, that thing. I still have nightmares about holding German sausages over my head.Well, I could tell you I'm holding a sausage. If this is what it takes to get good questions then I guess it has to be like this.Thanks. It's an incredible, out of the blue thing. It sounds very obvious and a bit crass but I truly believe it's just my name on the award, and it's for everyone that's worked with me over the years. Some of these people have been putting up with me for years and years. I just had the ideas – they're the ones that implemented those ideas. It's just an incredible honour from BAFTA, really.That's an interesting question – more and more, when a director receives an award, obviously they're totally brilliant and stuff.... I feel more and more like a director these days, where you don't write the script and you don't programme in the same way that [film] directors don't normally act and they don't write the script. It feels similar to that I guess, though I would in no way compare myself to some of the brilliant people that have already been awarded a Fellowship.I know – and they dwarf me. I'm like a kid at school compared to their brilliance and genius – I mean, Alfred Hitchcock, for Christ's sake – these are people that single-handedly defined a whole swathe of entertainment.Well, it's quite a long list. I suppose that one of the things is, I don't know what age Hitchcock got his BAFTA Fellowship at, but I think he was getting on a bit, so I've still got time left. I'm 51 now, so I'm a bit of a spring chicken compared to some of those people. But everyone on that list is fairly impressive – even if you look at Nolan Bushnell, Wright and Miyamoto, they're incredibly motivational figures.For sure, absolutely. BAFTA's always been pretty good at that kind of stuff – I think it was ten years ago that it started doing the awards ceremony and I think they were fairly forward looking. I just feel that in today's world, where you've got computer games of all types – through Facebook, Android and Apple, for example – you put them all together and it's an incredibly important force in all the world. You don't often talk about the cultural significance of video games in places like China and Korea, but it's a huge part of culture throughout the world, and very, very accessible too. Now that you don't have to be locked away in your bedroom to play them, it's gaming everywhere.We've been talking about this convergence since Wing Commander in the mid-nineties. In a way, I love being inspired by the production quality that TV and film have got – there's no question about the amount of skill they use to entertain us. But to say that we are converging with them doesn't imply that we have our own place of innovation, and I just feel that things are happening so incredibly fast in video games, with all the changes in input devices, all the social gaming changes, all the mobile changes. Film and TV feel like that they're a format that's got to change within themselves, and we're already on that train racing ahead to a future that god knows where it will end up.That's a good question, and it brings up an interesting point. I wish you – people in the press – would focus on some of that up and coming talent, because there isn't enough focus on it in my opinion. People like Markus Persson who did Minecraft, he's a fantastic person to talk to, and I think Minecraft is a complete work of genius.Peter Molyneux: It was a disaster! Me and my son were playing with it, and he was bullying me saying he wished he could get more people into our world so I set it up and he was a bit disappointed that no-one knew about it, so I just tweeted the web address. That was the worst thing to do – within ten seconds of me pushing the Twitter button there were ten people, within 20 there were 50 people, and in a minute there were 200 people and we were bombarded until the point where the whole server crashed.I opted that they couldn't have permission to change anything – but if you could imagine, there was this hill completely full of people, like a forest of people. It was quite scary, actually. In Minecraft your designs tend to be quite personal – and that's the genius of it – and to think there are all these people just going there and looking, it was quite funny. But to answer your question, people like Markus – and there are some people in the social side – I feel there's a real talent there. I think the triple AAA titles will continue to improve, but I dearly wish that things likeI think Minecraft's the best thing I've played in the last ten years, and what's so brilliant about it – and I've met Markus and he's a real inspirational person – he did everything on his own, and I think how brilliant and inspirational that is, to not need the full force of publishers and marketing people. He did everything on his own. I agree with you about it being a golden age – there's so much choice, and I feel there's so many opportunities as well.Absolutely. Go back to the Populous days and it was a hand to mouth existence, and I think Markus felt that he's been blown away by the success of Minecraft, and I felt that as well.Look out for part two of our interview with Molyneux next week.