As Rock, Paper Shotgun recently pointed out, Peter Molyneux's Godus is in a spot of bother. Possibly quite a big spot.
We
sat down with Peter in December to talk about the challenges his mobile
game has faced so far, his regrets with Kickstarter, and his opinions
on solving the free-to-play problem.
Godus save us all
When
we met with Peter Molyneux a year ago, he was enthusiastic, optimistic
and excited. He beamed with that child-like wonder that only Molyneux
can. Now the Theme Park creator talks with a tone of caution, even
regret.
The last 12 months have been trialing. Molyneux hasn't
only ventured into the bold new world of mobile gaming, he's also walked
the precarious path of free-to-play. The reception to Godus, his
'reimagining' of Populous, has been a mixed bag all the way from its
early Kickstarter birth to its launch. That's not to say he regrets
making it. But it's safe to say that in the space of a few months,
Molyneux has learned some invaluable lessons.
"If I had my time
again I wouldn't do Kickstarter at the start of development, I would do
it at the end of development or towards the end of development," he
tells us at Bilbao's Fun & Serious Game Festival. "I'm not saying I
would never do Kickstarter again, but if I was to do Kickstarter again I
would say 'Look, we've done half the game, you can download this demo,
you can play the game. You know what the game's going to be, now we're
going to take it from this point to this point."
"I think what
ends up happening, and what ended up happening with Godus, is that
people get a view of what the game is going to be like from what you've
said here, and that view quite often from what the final game is. And
there's this overwhelming urge to over-promise because it's such a harsh
rule: if you're one penny short of your target you don't get it. And of
course in this instance, the behaviour which is incredibly destructive,
which is 'Christ, we've only got ten days to go and we've got to make a
hundred thousand, for f**ks sake lets just say anything'.
"I
think what i've also learned, is that doing Kickstarter and Steam Early
Access before you've got something which is defined and playable is a
hugely risky undertaking that can be very destructive to the final
quality of the game." Freemium
has become a dirty word. You might think that companies like EA would
be the ones setting a good example, but go tell that to anyone who had
their childhoods ruined by Dungeon Keeper earlier this year. Even Apple
has changed the dialogue of its app store so that the little button that
once read 'Free' now reads 'Get' on games with in-app purchases.
"For
certain genres of game, the free to play model has got a bit fairer,"
argues Peter. "If you look at how [Supercell's] Boom Beach has evolved
it, and what's been happening on some of the other apps, it's not nearly
so harsh. It's far less 'you need to introduce five friends' or 'you
need to spend 50p or you can't go any further'. That's got fairer. The
disappointment however, and I include Godus in this I think, is that the
free-to-play model hasn't evolved and spread out to other genres. So
that free to play model is great for certain games, it's great for car
battle games, it's great for world builder games like Clash of Clans -
it's just not as good for open-ended open world games like Godus.
"These games have got a very simple model. If you look at things like
Candy Crush, you pay money if you want to carry on playing, if you feel
so obsessive. And I think that's a good thing to stop people just
spending endless hours. You pay money for that and you pay money if
you're struggling to get past a level. That hasn't really translated
into other areas."
"I think it needs to be simple and it needs to
be understandable. And the thing I've learned from Godus is that the
game and monetization need to be together, they need to be part of the
flow of the game. It needs to be feel not like a requirement, like a
gate."
The
thing is (as Peter points out) these free-to-play Facebook-y type
games, which have infested our mobiles, are based on a model that
pre-dates smartphone gaming entirely. The difference is how that model
is being exploited.
Take Hearthstone, a game in which you can
never spend a dime and you'll never feel punished for it. Sure, in-game
purchases will help you build that extravagant deck even faster, but you
can comfortably earn it without opening your wallet if you're willing
to put in a bit of extra time and effort. To put it more simply, it
never feels pay-to-win.
"The model I'm absolutely fascinated with,
and we don't talk nearly enough about this - the press doesn't talk
enough about it, and I don't think the gaming community do - is the PC,"
says Peter. "It's Team Fortress 2, and League of Legends 2, and Dota.
They're all quietly going on and refining their model in a much more
interesting and a much more mature way.
"I think we're not talking
about it because there's not the data in your face like there is here
[on phones]. I don't think they need the press, they don't need to talk
about their numbers, so we don't see it so much. In places like Korea
and Taiwan, PC gaming is massive… that's totally invisible to us. I'm
very inspired by what's happening in those markets that have been using
free to play, or the equivalent of free to play, for many many years,
many more years than free to play has been on phones. And if you look at
that stuff, it seems fairer, it seems more interesting, it seems more
integrated with the game itself." Peter
Molyneux is a passionate man. And while he's earned an unfortunate
reputation of over-promising and under-delivering, no one could ever
accuse Peter of not loving what he does. With Curiosity: What's inside
the cube? Peter proved that thousands of people would happily tap away
at a screen to pursue an invisible prize, but with Godus, he explains,
he was also out to prove something to himself.
"I proved to myself
that making the transition from console to mobile is possible, but it's
very, very difficult. It's not just about an idea, and thinking 'OK I'm
going to be dealing with a new audience of people, and I'm going to be
dealing with a new audience of people that want to use their phones to
relax more than they want to use it to be excited'. It's far more
complex than that because there are so many skills that you have to
learn from the base up."
If you head over to Peter's 22Cans site right now and click on 'about us', you'll see the following message:
"Peter's
dream was to hand-craft a team of the 22 most talented, passionate and
creative individuals with which to make the defining games of his
career.
22 Cans create games for the world, and the journey has only just begun."
Indeed,
it feels like Molyneux is far from done. He'll take his lessons from
Godus with him to his next mobile game, The Trail - "I think the next IP
is an interesting step" - but we can't help but ask him if through the
trials and tribulations of Godus, there was ever a moment he longed to
be back on the lavish green pastures of Microsoft.
"I had a
fantastic time there. I'm not sure it was the most sensible thing for me
to do to leave in terms of life. I had a very comfortable existence
there, a very defined existence, I knew what tomorrow would be. And I
left the luxury cruiseliner to get into the lifeboat with a big hole in
the side. Creatively speaking, I'm at my most creative when I'm most in
peril. Necessity is the mother of creativity, it's being forced to do
something. If you don't create now you're going to sink.
