Peter Molyneux is well known for promising more than he can deliver. When he launched the experimental iOS game, Curiosity , he promised that the winner would receive a “life-changing” prize. Unfortunately, this prize seems to be basically nonexistent.
The idea behind Curiosity was this: there was a huge cube on the screen, and it was up to users to tap to chisel away at the cube. You could spend real money to purchase better picks to chisel away quicker. Everybody was chiseling away at the same cube at once, and the goal was to be the person who chiseled away the last cube in order to make it to the center.
The life-changing prize was supposedly a stake in Molyneux’s next game, Godus . Not only would the winner get a cut of the profits, he would also be able to influence online matches as he chose. This is all great in theory… but unfortunately Godus ’s multiplayer hasn’t been implemented yet. In addition, Bryan Henderson, the eventual winner of Curiosity , has said that he hasn’t received a single cent from Molyneux or the Godus team.
“For a moment I was excited. My general feeling was, depending on how well the game does, I was thinking in terms of worst to the best, I could get £10,000 to £500,000 at the very best. Still, that would be awesome. But so far not a penny,” Henderson said.
Henderson has not received an apology from Molyneux or his team, and despite repeated e-mails, he hasn’t received contact from them in months.
“A month or two after winning, I would email them every month, purely because I expected more communication from them, but it wasn’t happening,” he said.
“I would ask, so, what’s happening? When am I going to find out more stuff? What’s going to happen, specifically? They were taking their time to answer. They would say, we need to do this first and tell you afterwards.
“Since I won and a year after, I would email them as a ritual thing, every month, just to get some kind of update. Eventually I was like, they’re not being professional at all. Communication is non-existent, so I’m not even going to try anymore.”
Molyneux feels horrible about this, saying in an interview with Eurogamer “I totally and absolutely and categorically apologise. That isn’t good enough and I’ll take it on my own shoulders that I should have made sure he was communicated with. We will from today onwards do that.
“This is going to sound ridiculously excusey but it’s the actual truth – we are now working on combat, which is the piece of the puzzle we need in the game before we start working on the Hubworld and the multiplayer,” Molyneux says.
“When that happens we’ve got the mechanics for Bryan to be a useful participant in his God of Gods role. We are accruing the revenues ready for that to happen, and when that does happen his clock will start ticking.
“But we can’t have the God of Gods role without the ability for people to challenge the God of Gods role, and the God of Gods role can’t be challenged without combat, and we can’t implement the combat without sorting out the server issues, which are being sorted out as of last week. It’s just a maelstrom.”
But the problem is, Molyneux still cannot guarantee that multiplayer will ever see the life of day in Godus , which means that Henderson may never receive his prize. But Peter Molyneux promising more than he can deliver on is nothing new.
I’m still waiting on Project Milo , Molyneux. When will I get to torment a young boy with my Kinect?
Source: Eurogamer