You might have seen the drama over Twitter last week. Need a refresher? Here’s what happened: a tweet was posted from the account of prominent industry figure, Peter Molyneux, announcing not only the cancellation of his latest, crowdfunded endeavour, Godus, but the developer’s retirement from the industry.
Oh, and a stab at Fable III.
Kotaku writer Jason Schreier was quick to point out the seeming hypocrisy behind this announcement.
https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/692817350849093632
The pieces didn’t exactly fit.
Everything was soon exposed as a hoax, with Molyneux himself revealing that his account had been hacked.
Only in the land of Twitter, right?
There’s something more to all of this, though. For just a few minutes last week, many people truly believed that Molyneux had given up on Godus for good. Why would they believe such a thing? Well, because Molyneux and his studio 22Cans have been struggling with the wildly off-rails project for some time now. There’s a long and messy history behind the game. We’ve discussed it at length.
If the latest Twitter drama has done anything, it has cast a spotlight on Molyneux’s recent failings and brought attention to Godus once again, reminding us of the broken promises and lack of progress backers have come to expect from the project.
Can we expect to see any encouraging news from Godus any time soon? Probably not, but if Molyneux is smart, he’ll capitalize on the renewed attention and spin things to his favour. There’s an opportunity to be seized here, and it shouldn’t be missed. Surely there’s been some kind of progress made lately? No? Anything to restore backers’ confidence?
In any case, until Godus truly gets going, people are likely to believe any wild rumor coming out of Camp Molyneux.
In spite of what a certain hacker would have you believe, Godus is currently on Steam Early Access, where 5,429 user reviews have led to a ‘Mostly Negative’ reception. The most cursory perusal of these reviews had several red, downturned thumbs scrolling down my screen. The reviews considered most ‘helpful’ by the Steam community warn users not to waste time and money buying into Godus, and encourage people to avoid any crowdfunding campaign founded on Molyneux’s infamously overambitious promises.
Man, he’s going to have to do some work to turn things around.
Godus, as the title implies, is a god game intended as the spiritual successor to Populous. Its development follows 22Cans’ first release, the experimental iOS & Android title, Curiosity – What’s Inside the Cube?. Curiosity was a multiplayer social experiment that ran for a year or so, ending with player Bryan Henderson dubbed a winner, of sorts, in 2013. His prize? To become the virtual god of Godus, earning entitlement to royalties associated with the game. As of today, Friday the 29th of January, 2016, Henderson has still not received his prize, and it’s public knowledge that 22Cans have ignored several of his e-mail inquiries.
For more on Godus, ask Peter Molyneux. Should he ignore you too, stay tuned to Cliqist, where we’ll report on any worthwhile developments pertaining to the project.
[…] really been a slow year filled with radio silence for Peter Molyneux and his team of 22cans. After a disastrous Godus launch on Early Access riddled with negative […]