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Opposable Thumbs / Gaming & Entertainment

Peter Molyneux’s introspective attempt to revive the god game

The storied developer struggles to raise Kickstarter funds for Project Godus.

Concept art like this hasn't been enough to convince a critical mass of people to back Molyneux's Project Godus

There's something a bit off-putting about talking to Peter Molyneux these days. The well-known designer of games ranging from Populous to Fable is known for projecting such over-the-top confidence about the world-changing nature of his upcoming projects that the self-parody of his public persona has become a bit of an in-joke in the gaming community.

Given that reputation, the Peter Molyneux I talked to recently was quite a bit more restrained and subdued than you might expect. The usual child-like enthusiasm and grand vision for the video game medium are still there, for sure. But these days, Molyneux seems more chastened and self-reflective than bombastic and expansive.

One proximate cause for this change, no doubt, is the less-than-stellar launch of the cryptically titled iOS app Curiosity: What's Inside the Cube, the first "experiment" from Molyneux's new startup 22cans. The app consists of little more than chiseling away at a massive, multi-layered cube alongside other players on the Internet. It launched earlier than expected last month and was quickly plagued with server problems, choppy performance issues, and an error that wiped out the amassed, in-game savings of thousands of early players.

Looking back, Molyneux sees Curiosity as a victim of its own viral success. "I anticipated 40 to 50,000 people would kind of stumble across it... that number was exceeded within three hours and it just became a real testament to how virality works, because suddenly the number of downloads was completely spiraling out of all control. Our poor servers were struggling incredibly, we thought we would have weeks to scale out beyond the 50,000 maximum, but we had minutes. The team did some fantastic work implementing a solution quickly but unfortunately made a mistake that got rid of everyone's gold."

Reflecting back on it now, Molyneux thinks the botched Curiosity launch might have also led to the second major cause of his current anxiety: the slow funding progress for his Project Godus Kickstarter. Previous Kickstarter efforts from well-known game designers like Tim Schafer, Chris Roberts, and Josh Sawyer have quickly set crowdfunding records. Molyneux's effort to revitalize the largely defunct "god game" genre, however, is struggling. As of this writing, there is less than £330,000 ($533,676) pledged with five days to go to reach Molyneux's £450,000 ($727,740) goal.

While Molyneux remains hopeful that a coming prototype will help prove the concept to wary potential backers (plans to publicly launch that prototype last Friday have apparently fallen through), he admits Curiosity "had a real substantive effect on our next plan... we had a high price to pay for Curiosity's [launch], which has boxed us in," he told Ars. The new, more reflective Molyneux also seems to realize that his well-known gift for overstatement may be hurting his efforts. It's tough to get members of the public to buy in to another grandiose promise to revolutionize yet another gaming genre.

"If there's something to learn from Kickstarter, it's maybe that being so open and honest so early with the passion you have for what you're creating is maybe something that the world just doesn't like," he said. "Talking about a game six months before it's released is maybe the wrong thing to do. I don't know many other people who do that, and I think I maybe need to stand back from Kickstarter and say, 'You know what, this is something that people just don't find valuable, and actually it may have hurt our Kickstarter.' It's very hard to analyze the cost of those premises. Maybe post-Kickstarter, I need to look at any or all of the public-facing stuff I do."

Molyneux seemed especially introspective when comparing his usual, effusive style to that of novelists talking up their next book or directors who can't contain their excitement about their next film. "That's kind of what I do. I sit down in front of people, and say, 'This is what I'm saying to my team and this is what I'm saying to myself.' The immensely evocative lens of 'We're trying to make the best role-playing game ever' or 'We're trying to redefine the god game genre,' maybe that approach is not the right approach for the PR side of things. I think it's an honest thing to say and do, and I think other people in other industries do it, but I think if you bury your head in the sand and come out and just do it and not care [about the PR side], you're going to pay a price. I, especially, have to look at that side."

"I've been sitting in the corner trembling slightly with fear and trepidation," Molyneux said of his initial response to his recent challenges, "but you just have to carry on and put your feet in front of each other.

What Godus can learn from Curiosity

An example of the chaotic patterns that come when thousands of sculptors work together on Curiosity.

Just when I was starting to worry that Molyneux has completely lost his confidence, the old Molyneux came back for a bit to talk about the grand, industry-changing vision represented by a game that's all about tapping aimlessly at cubes.

"A lot of the times we approach computer gaming and entertainment in a very staid way," he said. "In this industry, we tend to focus on what excites gamers and players—that's the mechanics of leveling up, achievements, the progression curve. These rules are sort of cast in stone and chiseled on tablets and passed down from developer to developer, and it's unthinkable to break those rules. But here we are in a world where technology has far outstripped our ability to innovate with that technology. Before we can catch our breath we have incredible power of the cloud... the power of multi-device play, the power of persistence. You've got to reinvent those rules that are carved out on tablets and ask why do we do it like that."

With Curiosity, Molyneux says he tried to break those rules by "[giving] everyone this minimal thing—it's impossible to think of anything less than this, and in that way learn what people are actually doing." The result has been an interesting breakdown of different types of identifiable personalities among cube-tappers, from careful artists to OCD cleaner-uppers to rampaging destroyers to "motorwayers" that just cut long strips through other peoples' tapping work.

The lessons from that minimalist game are being carried forward into the more involved Project Godus, Molyneux said. "There's a part of Godus where you can sculpt the landscape, and I love the idea that I can modify and change the landscape, I can create mountains and valleys and put sculptures on the side, the way you do that, the time you do that, the style you do that in comes a lot from what we've learned from Curiosity... the basic tapping mechanic in Curiosity helps us take it a million times further."

Making massively multiplayer deities

While explicit god games have declined as a genre in recent years, Molyneux points out the general principle of "playing a game in a simulation" has thrived of late, from games like Grand Theft Auto and Assassin's Creed to his own Fable series. What hasn't been as widespread (excepting notable counterexamples like The Sims) is controlling those simulations from a god's-eye view, with the near-omnipotent ability to do whatever you want. And Molyneux says the hardware hooked up to your living room TV is partially to blame for that.

"That point of view, standing from a mountaintop and looking down, is hard to do with a console. It's very hard to do with a controller because it's all about the freedom to look around and act. Whether you're talking about a god game or [real-time strategy], those games didn't make it over to consoles simply because no one would do a controller-based version which had the same feel."

22 cans' latest Kickstarter update shows an early Godus prototype.

Instead, Facebook games like FarmVille and CityVille have taken that god-like perspective and dumbed it down to the point of unrecognizability. With Project Godus, Molyneux says he wants to "strip all of that back," reviving the classic gameplay of his previous god games like Populous, Dungeon Keeper, and the Black & White series.

Then, to drive the genre forward, Molyneux seems to have his focus squarely on expanding the multiplayer aspects of these games. While previous god games have often featured the option for one-on-one multiplayer battles, Molyneux seems his old, effusive self when discussing how new advances in massively connected gameplay can revolutionize the dusty old god game genre.

"One of the things our Kickstarter didn't quite do is talk about the ability to connect people together, connect worlds together, connect lands together, so you can do things cooperatively like in Curiosity, or competitively, so it can be my people with your people versus other people. Those sort of flavors of games they should be a lot more popular than they are now."

Unlike the upcoming SimCity reboot, which will require a persistent Internet connection to create an interconnected simulation, Project Godus will still have a goal-oriented single-player campaign for when players want "that feeling that I just want my me time, not us time," as Molyneux puts it. But he seems much more fascinated with the online mode, where the game will encourage players to interact with their neighbors by spectating and helping, then forming into clans based on geography, joint principles or mutual enemies.

"The idea is, we have the technology and we've proven it works now with Curiosity, to connect hundreds of thousands, millions of people together. That feeling that you're in a world is something that's very, very, very unique. We haven't emphasized this in our Kickstarter campaign because we've focused on making the core of the game, but the ability to influence the people and the gods around you is very, very interesting angle to take the game in."

Of course, that's all to come if and when the game gets funded, which is still far from a certainty. And if the Kickstarter does in fact fail, Molyneux seems prepared to do some more soul-searching.

"The alternative plan is to ask, 'Is what we're trying to do something people would be interested in? We need to ask ourselves that, and I think at the end of Kickstarter, if we haven't hit our target, the answer might be, possibly, no. However, if we're close to our target, Kickstarter's not going to work, we'll continue with development. And if we don't continue with development, we'll be working on something else."

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