Peter Molyneux admits his faults on Godus

“The only answer is for me to retreat,” Peter Molyneux said to The Guardian via Skype. Molyneux's latest fiasco has left him shying away from the press, but how did he get here? The failure of his most recent game, Godus.

Godus was the spiritual successor to Molyneux's Populous. In the game players would act as the God of a world. They would grow, shape and support a population of followers throughout time. Every world created by a player would be interconnected and each population would be able to interact with one another.

The game was funded through Kickstarter (with over half a million pounds) with rewards promised to those that backed the game. There was a seven to nine month release window; but, we're now 18 months later and the PC version still has yet to release (the mobile version has released).

What exactly went wrong with the game though?

“I suppose the big mistake was estimating how long the game would take to make, I very stupidly and naively didn’t build in enough contingency time into my predictions and I was 100% wrong. When you’re creating something that hasn’t existed before, it’s very, very hard to be precise about those things.”

Recently, Molyneux released a video announcing that his studio, 22 Cans, would be cutting staff and working on a new game, The Trail. In addition to the studio working with a smaller staff, the video also revealed that some of the backers of Godus would not be receiving the rewards that they were promised for donating money to the game's development.

Upon hearing this backers were understandably upset, they had given Molyneux their money to develop a game that will not be delivering what was promised. Molyneux empathized with backers over the upset:

“If I was pledging on this campaign I’d probably be saying the same thing as our backers, I’d be saying ‘I wanted a PC game, I wanted combat, I wanted a story. Why haven’t I got it? Why did you do the mobile version first?’ I wish I was more effective and efficient, and the next game we work on we’re going to make sure we keep behind closed doors for much longer. We’re going to make our mistakes and go down those blind alleys privately before presenting the game to the world.”

Is there any salvaging Godus? Molyneux expressed that there is hope, so long as the technology is available:

"The problem we have is we can’t start his reign as God of Gods until we implement the technology that allows him to have influence over people’s worlds and crucially allows him to be challenged in competitive games of Godus and as people have pointed out we have to add combat to Godus still.”

What can be taken from Molyneux's interview with The Guardian is that the developer understands people are upset. He understands his faults — his expectations for what the game would offer were too set high, while at the same time blaming the lack of applicable technology.

Peter Molyneux has admitted that he no longer wishes to speak with the press, but has been interviewed by a number of sites reiterating the fact. Perhaps he wants to make his intentions clear or he would like to keep speaking to the press.

Since the fiasco, Molyneus has passed Godus on to Konrad Naszynski, from 22 Cans. The nine month release window has been reinstated (18 months later).

[The Guardian]

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