Curiosity ends: What's inside the cube revealed

Curiosity ends: What's inside the cube revealed
Craig Chapple

By Craig Chapple

May 26th 2013 at 8:20PM

Edinburgh-based player wins after 150 days and 25 billion cubelets destroyed

Peter Molyneux's and 22Cans' experimental mobile game Curiosity has ended with a UK winner.

In a video received by the winner, Molyneux revealed what's inside the cube: a pivotal role in how upcoming god game Godus is played.

The winning player is Bryan Henderson from Edinburgh. He will now be able to set some of the rules by which Godus is played, and will also receive a slice of money from game sales.

The god game, which garnered £526,000 through crowdfunding on Kickstarter, is described as a reinvention of Populous, which was created by Molyneux over 22 years ago. It is currently set to be released on Android, iOS, Mac and PC.

Curiosity was released back in November, and it has taken 150 days for users to smash 25 billion cubelets to finally destroy the cube and reveal what’s inside.

The title has been downloaded by four million users, with tens of thousands of them playing it concurrently.

Molyneux admitted that his previous claims that what’s inside the cube would be life changing were typical of his personality and reputation, but that now the game was over he felt the prize was truly that.

He finished by teasing that although this was the end of Curiosity, 22Cans could start another experiment “even more intriguing”.

You can read a full transcription and watch the full video below.

“We started this experiment back in November of 2012, and we have been completely blown away by how the world has embraced this amazing experiment, and that's exactly what it was, an experiment,” said Molyneux.

“Could we take the simplest possible conceivable thing, connecting them together and allowing them to tap on this massive cube, could we take that and pose this question of 'what's in the centre'?

“Now when we released it, the first real question was, what's inside the cube?

“And I said, and I'm known for these things, I said there's something amazing inside, something life changing inside. Well, this is what this video is about. After 25 billion cubelets have been destroyed over 150 days. After four million people have downloaded it onto various devices. And after hosting tens of thousands simultaneous concurrent users, we have reached the end, and one lucky person has reaped the rewards of their hard efforts.

“How can anything be worth all that effort? Well we could give you a piece of advice, we could say 'oh be nice to people'. We could say 'here's a wodge of cash'. But it needs to be more meaningful. It needs to say more about the effort, as much about the effort, as about the outcome.

“And so what is in the centre is something that only we can grant. And it is the ability to be a digital god. We are making a game called Godus. The whole game is about being a god to your followers.

“You, you the person who has reached the centre, will be the god of all people that are playing Godus. You will intrinsically decide the on the rules that the game is played by. And, here's the life changing bit, you will share in the success of the product.

“Every time people spend money on Godus, you will get a small piece of that pie. We will follow up with details of what that means.

“It does mean as we break this down and analyse this, it means that you will decide on how people play a game. You will accrue riches from that game, from the start to the finish of your reign.

"That, by any definition of the word, is life changing.

“You will have fame, you will have fortune, and you will have the power to introduce morals into a game. This idea of allowing one human being to be the god of an entire game genre came to us many years ago, and it's only now when we're all connected, when the whole of the gaming universe is connected together, that we have the power to do it.

“And I hope that you will find that this is worth the sore fingers that you may have gained through tapping. And I hope the world agrees with me that it is a worthy prize for the efforts of what's inside the cube.

“Thank you very much for all your efforts, and thank you very much to those people who didn't get to the centre of Curiosity. We may, who knows, start another experiment even more intriguing.

“Thank you very much.”
