Godus - train wreck in progress

[Ghambit]

I dLed it within the first few hundred downloads when it (finally) went live on Play.  This game has me.
I was skeptical during the early access and held off until it went mobile, but I must say they did a helluva good job.  Small indy team from a small town in England, very soon to have likely a top 10 game on their hands.

Anyways, it's a god-builder like Black and White, Spore, etc.  only not.  The difference here is the terrain itself is the main game mechanic (somewhat of a puzzle).  You mold it to open up new settlement space, to create safe pathways, to get to new areas, and so forth.  This costs you 'belief' to do, which in turn is generated by settlements, destroying rocks, and various other means.  As you grow, you gain cards (powers ranging from new housing types, to growing trees and so forth) which in turn are activated by placing stickers on them of varying types.  You find these stickers on 'adventures' (large puzzle boards essentially) and exploring the map, uncovering chests.  Or of course you can buy them.

There is of course a friend mechanic.  Builders in the game will be named after your friends that play and supposedly if you visit eachother you get stickers.  So unfortunately yes, ideally you'd link the game to FB, but it's passive so it's entirely up to you how annoying you want to be with it.

Building is partly automatic based on radius to other structures (you must task them though), but you can path your builders wherever you want for a cost; ideally to a plot that you will eventually build out.   There is a subtle but nice mechanic with this.

Game is very ambient.  Music is soothing, there are weather effects, and so forth.  Very pleasant game to play.  Love it.

[IainC]

Fuck Peter Molyneux.

I was at Gamelab in Barcelona this year and he was giving a talk (via Skype) on Dynamically created content. Except what happened was that he rambled for a bit about his studio and then took the webcam on a tour. Which wasn't exactly fascinating to people who already work in a games studio.

[Ghambit]

Yah well, aside from the politics of the game and how it was made, I'm having a decent enough time with it.  It's free too... that helps.   

[Malakili]

I bought this and played it a bunch earlier in the year.  Maybe more features have been added since then, but my main concern was that the game felt like a terrain flattening simulator.   Watching my stuff build up, unearthing the chests, making little "towns" etc was all neat.  But at the end of the day the really neat game world ended up just being paved over into a parking lot.

Maybe I was doing it wrong.

[Kail]

It's free too... that helps.  

Steam still shows it as being a $20.00 Early Access title, weird (and the reviews on the store page are not kind).

edit: didn't look at the forum this was in, derp   Sorry!  Never mind!

[Ghambit]

It's free on Google Play; on your mobile/tablet (as of last night).   They've obviously injected the microtrans though.  As a PC game I'd say it's unmentionable, but as a simple mobile/tablet game I think it's a nice title.  Definitely not a $20 game.

I bought this and played it a bunch earlier in the year.  Maybe more features have been added since then, but my main concern was that the game felt like a terrain flattening simulator.   Watching my stuff build up, unearthing the chests, making little "towns" etc was all neat.  But at the end of the day the really neat game world ended up just being paved over into a parking lot.

Maybe I was doing it wrong.

The more flattening you do, the more belief you use.  My strat so far has been strategic "valleys" and pathways.  Also, supposedly some of the structures only build on higher (different) terrain, but I havent confirmed that yet.  The builders do indeed build at somewhat random... sometimes a grass hut, sometimes a grass cabin.  Not sure how that works at higher levels.  I just bronzed.

[Samwise]

I played Godus for a while when it came out for iOS a while back.  The interface is crap, but I was able to forgive that until the difficulty started jacking up so that failures to pick the right pixel to drag would cost hours worth of belief or a chance at a time-limited puzzle -- oh and would you like to buy a do-over on that for $5?

Fuck Molyneux.

[Wasted]

I gave this a try on my ipad, what a fiddly annoying piece of shit this game is.

[Ghambit]

Yah, once you get to midgame it quickly turns to shite.  That can be said of most mobilegames though. 
Most fun I had was annihilating the local tribe with fire and meteors; turning them into a steaming pile of unhappiness.  After which, of course, they were mysteriously happy again.

[Pezzle]

Fuck Peter Molyneux.

[Hawkbit]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/02/09/oh-godus-what-the-hells-going-on/

Godus won't complete the KS goals.  I know its been said Molyneux is a tool before, but this really hammers it home.  Established designers really shouldn't be using KS.

[HaemishM]

Established designers really shouldn't be using KS.

No, I don't think that's necessarily the case, though I do agree anyone with big publisher ties should fuck right off KS right now. No, I think the best lesson to learn is NEVER FUCKING TRUST PETER MOLYNEUX. Do not give this French fuck any more of your money unless you consider it a donation for past works. He will NEVER deliver a promise.

[eldaec]

Meh - you don't have to back. At least a major publishers or established designer will likely deliver the thing. That said,  I have a broader rule of no video games on Kickstarter ever ever ever.

Also the rule about not giving Peter Molyneux money applies regardless of Kickstarter.

[lamaros]

Good god he is a fuckwit.

[Velorath]

Established designers really shouldn't be using KS.

NEVER FUCKING TRUST PETER MOLYNEUX. Do not give this French fuck any more of your money unless you consider it a donation for past works. He will NEVER deliver a promise.

He pretty much said it himself in the quote they pulled from Techradar.

"There's this overwhelming urge to over-promise because it's such a harsh rule: if you're one penny short of your target then you don't get it. And of course in this instance, the behaviour is incredibly destructive, which is 'Christ, we've only got 10 days to go and we've got to make £100,000, for f**k's sake, lets just say anything'. So I'm not sure I would do that again."

Yeah Peter, it is indeed a harsh rule that they won't let you take money from people despite it not being enough to actually complete the project according to the target you yourself set. It's totally kickstarter's fault that you had to lie in order to sidestep the one tiny way KS actually attempts to protect people from getting ripped off.

[Fabricated]

Reminder this rule also applies to Tim Schafer/Doublefine.

[bhodi]

Ahhahahahahahahaaha Peter Molyneux, hahahahahaah

He just reeled in a bunch of suckers (no surprise!)

Molyneux has announced that he’s now working on a new project, a mobile thing called The Trial, suggesting Godus is no longer his focus. And the team currently working on the game have recently acknowledged that they, “simply can’t see us delivering all the features promised on the kickstarter page.”

Abandons his game, takes the money and runs.

[Falconeer]

Molyneux states that a Kickstarter causes one to over-promise at the start of development. He told Tech Radar,

“There’s this overwhelming urge to over-promise because it’s such a harsh rule: if you’re one penny short of your target then you don’t get it. And of course in this instance, the behaviour is incredibly destructive, which is ‘Christ, we’ve only got 10 days to go and we’ve got to make £100,000, for fuck’s sake, lets just say anything’. So I’m not sure I would do that again.”

I hope he ends up flipping burgers.

[Jeff Kelly]

No, generally con artists on that scale always tend to land on their feet. Their victims and the people roped into their spiel tend to end up flipping burgers.

I recently found a few old game mags and read through a lot of reviews from the "golden age" of PC gaming and I realized that Molyneux has alway been that way.

- Dungeon Keeper
- Magic Carpet
- Fable
- Syndicate

He overpromises and under delivers. Totally hypes up games during the PR and trade show circuit. Takes years longer than initially promised and ends up delivering games that are missing core features, are weird mash-ups of half thought out concepts and that sort of peter out half way through.

[pants]

Fucking black and white.  I have never forgiven him for that - he suckered me in on that.

Never again.

[Jeff Kelly]

I completely forgot Black and White

[Cyrrex]

Black and White.  A game that I believe I may have pirated, and still ended up feeling like I'd been ripped off.

[HaemishM]

The Movies. It was over halfway there and then just... stopped.

[Sky]

Black and White is also where I parted ways with Molyneux. Fuck that asshole, go work on Madison Ave.

Dungeon Keeper and Syndicate were awesome games, even if he over-promised like crazy on them.

[Phildo]

I liked Black & White well enough, but probably just because I discovered it in a vacuum.  First I ever heard of it was when I saw the box in a store.

The controls were pretty garbage, though.

[Margalis]

Collecting money for stretch goals then not delivering them seems to be veering into outright fraud territory.

[Khaldun]

The Movies. It was over halfway there and then just... stopped.

The Movies seemed to have so much potential, yeah. Right about where you were really ready to do some fun shit with the actual movie-making, the game just basically slipped out the door and said, "See you later baby, it was great while it lasted."

[jakonovski]

Bwahaha, you guys remember that dumb cube thing Molyneux did? Well, the guy who won never received his prize.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-02-11-the-god-who-peter-molyneux-forgot

[Rendakor]

That's about as surprising as the gutting of SOE.

[HaemishM]

Peter Molyneux is a complete wanker.

[schild]

Always was, always will be.

[IainC]

Peter Molyneux seems to be imploding. This interview is super hard to read, he just doesn't seem to understand what the problem is.

RPS: During the Kickstarter for Godus you stated, regarding that you don’t want to use a publisher stating, “It’ll just be you and our unbridled dedication (no publishers).” And five months later you signed with a publisher.

Peter Molyneux: Absolutely. And at that time I wish we had raised enough money to not need a publisher.

RPS: But you got more than you asked–

Peter Molyneux: We could have gone and we were asked to by publishers to publish the Steam version, but we turned that down. The economics of doing Godus, unfortunately Kickstarter didn’t raise enough money. Now the trouble is with Kickstarter, you don’t really fully know how much money you need and I think most people who do Kickstarter would agree with me here. You have an idea, you think you need this much, but as most people will say with Kickstarter, if you ask for too much money up front because of the rules of Kickstarter, it’s very, very hard to ask for the complete development budget. I think Double Fine have gone back and asked for more money because development is a very, very, it’s a very confusing and bewildering time, and it’s very hard to predict what will happen.

RPS: Yes, but you know that. You’ve been working in the industry for over thirty years, you know how much money it costs to make a game and you put a specific amount–

Peter Molyneux: No, I don’t, I disagree John. I have no idea how much money it costs to make a game and anyone that tells you how much it’s going to cost to make a game which is completely a new experience is a fool or a genius.

RPS: But you have to have enough experience to know the basics of budgeting a videogame, you’ve been doing it for thirty years!

Even The Guardian got a few digs in.

[koro]

Speaking of Molyneux:

We spoke on the phone on Wednesday evening, Molyneux speaking from the Guildford offices of his studio, 22cans. Sounding stressed, but composed, Molyneux asked how I’d like to begin, whether I had questions, or should I just let him talk. I told him I had questions, many questions, and so we began.

RPS: Do you think that you’re a pathological liar?

Peter Molyneux: That’s a very…

Bahaha.

[Samprimary]

brill

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/13/peter-molyneux-game-designer-interview-godus

"Molyneux has handed control over to a fledgling designer Konrad Naszynski, who joined the team after being a passionate fan on the game’s forums"

"Peter Molyneux has admitted regret and culpability; he was clearly in distress throughout the interview – an interview he told us would will be his last. An hour before publication, however, we discovered that he had spoken to the gaming news site Rock, Paper, Shotgun the day before, and had given their interviewer the same impression – that he would no longer be speaking to the press (that interview is now online). He has also spoken to at least one other site, seemingly on the same afternoon as our discussion."

[Hawkbit]

To be a designer without any comprehension of budget is fucking irresponsible.  He didn't have to be an accountant.  However, he should have had at least a ballpark idea of what it would cost to make, then multiply that by 3. 

I don't work in game design, but I know what my ballpark team costs are to my company.  It's a great way of knowing how to expand or contract the scope of our influence.

This is a great use case for anyone studying business or game design.  I hope the schools are watching.