When it was initially revealed, I was unimpressed with the prize awarded to the man who chipped away the last block on the Curiosity cube. He won a “small piece” of the income from 22Cans’ Kickstarted upcoming game, Godus. He also won the role of “God” in the game – and the chance to influence some of the rules.
Here’s the trick though: this “life changing” prize is very temporary. All of the benefits, including the slice of profits, will expire at some as-yet-undefined point in time. Molyneux has told RPS that it won’t be sooner than a few months after the winner takes on his “God of Gods” role but he might not retain his abilities for more than a year. After the vague time limit has expired, the Curiosity winner can be deposed by another Godus player and they’ll inherit all of his perks.
Sounds a little bit less “life changing” now, doesn’t it?
There’s more. The prize of being able to define the rules of Godus are also limited. “What they aren’t going to be is carte blanche uncontrolled, unrefined decisions that would throw the balance of the game out entirely. Bryan (the Curiosity winner) can absolutely request something to happen, and we’ll make our best effort to do it. But he can’t decide everybody in Canada will explode or anything like that. There are limits to his power.”
While it makes sense to place certain limitations on just how game-breaking the winner’s amateur stabs at game design can be, it feels a little like the prize for Curiosity was, perhaps, overstated a little.
djhsecondnature
Molyneux over promising? Never…
bunimomike
Thing is, he might be able to come up with something delightfully devious, funny, insightful or hellish but this game has already had professionals working on it which means they will have a clear idea of where they want the game to go and also how it achieves that. I’m not sure how they’ll crowbar anything “bad” in there or whether they’ll just hold back the truth and say “oh, yeah… Bryan thought of that one!” knowing full-well that the devs did months before Bryan’s input.
My fellow Product Designers and I (when we studied on our degree) were invited to Panasonic to design new packaging to reduce breakages during transit, etc.. Did we come up with anything they hadn’t? Did we hell! They’re on this 24/7 and we mince in there for four hours walking around and going “cor!” every now and again. Like buggery we could best their top-drawer designers. They even looked gutted when we couldn’t. Muppets.
Anyway, I digress.
Molyneux – off with his head!
cnutard
http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20130527
parryman
I always expected ‘life changing’ to be the winner gets acid attacked and loses sight in 1 eye.
harsh, but life changing
Bilbo_bobbins
life changing? Anyone fooling for this got what they deserved in my opinion. In real life this would be called a con.
It’s like a door to door salesman, asking for money each time he turns up with the promise of something life changing, only for him to give them a box of chocolates at the end after they’ve spent lots of money for something more.
yiddo
Molyneux is no better than an old snake oil merchant.
psychobudgie
At least with them you did actually get something useful in a container for liquids to keep.
bladesew
“Snake Oil” is actually the name of 22Cans’ new proprietary game engine.
The Avenger
I’m not sure overstated is the word, more a case of ‘not thought through’ very well. I’m with Bilbo’s comment above, seems just like some cheap con for all manner of reasons; publicity, getting enough people to join in on a pointless (so far) experiment.
KeRaSh
Molyneux strikes again. I have to hand it to him. He truly is the troll of our generation.
Just when you think he found his sanity again, he surprises you by being the overhyping, promise breaking self loving, manchild he always was…
I wonder how they will find the next “God”… Probably another stupid “experiment” that is nothing more than a PR farce.
yiddo
He is a genuine, public troll.
KeRaSh
Just like the mod who changed my gif and embedded the new one. :P
*quick google search*
Wow, Trollception…
I don’t know what happened but the thumbnail from Google images no longer matches the gif at the referenced URL…
I actually meant to post this:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v512/kurtp/Fark/Slow-Clap.gif
I think I need to lie down…
Adam Garrett
The image is a gif of a guy clapping? That’s what I’m seeing.
KeRaSh
The gif embedded in my original post is a troll dressed in purple…
hazelam
like i said before, hardly life changing, but i still think it’s pretty cool.
and it seems to me, Godus would make a much more interesting experiment.
seeing what people do with the power over the game, limited though it might be.
The Von Braun
I used to have a lot of time for Peter, he and his teams, used to make games i really loved:Flood, Populous, Powermonger, Dungeon Keeper 1+2, but then around the Dreamcast era, things really started to go badly wrong, Peters ‘passion’ seemed to get the beter of him.
Black and white was hyped up to bizzare levels by Peter on the Dreamcast version, but even Sega got tired of waiting and pulled out of publishing deal and in interview in a DC mag, Peter slagged off every game prior to Black+White he’d made, it was a stupid move as it came across as ‘well, everything i’ve previousily done i’ve hyped and it was shite, but trust me, Black+white will be THE one’.
From there it was Fable on Xbox-The greatest RPG ever eh Peter? no, it was decent enough, you shafted us Xbox owners as we had to buy the lost Chapters exp., stuff you gave PC owners for free and at least 50% of things you claimed would be in there were’nt and niether were they in Fable II or III.
Milo+Kate on Kinect? ohhh so ‘we’ are’nt ready for it eh Peter?, nothing to do with fact it was all smoke+mirrors bullcrap.
He seems to have gone from great games designer to utter mouthpiece in a few short years.
Nowadays, fact Peter’s connected to a project is’nt a draw, it’s a turn off.