A while back, game developer Peter Molyneux (you may remember him from such games as Fable , The Movies, Populous, Black & White, etc.) told the world he’d created a new set of game development tools affectionately codenamed “The Room.”

Now the details of this technology are a matter for a more technically-minded blog entry. What was important here is what “The Room” meant for people who make games — and probably for those who play them as well. This technology allowed developers to share contents of their individual “rooms,” allowing for the quick and easy creation of in-game environments, characters, and behaviors.

Here’s Molyneux,sitting in a room.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen the technology in action — Molyneux showed it off at the 2005 Game Developer’s Conference — but it’s quite the fancy set of tools. More importantly, it may allow game developers to do more with less — making bigger and better games without hundreds of people working on a title for years on end.