The storied, award-winning designer and former Microsoft executive is finding that working for Kickstarter backers and Early Access fans presents challenges he never anticipated.
"I apologize to everyone for the mistakes that I've made. you have been harsh and please continue to be harsh ... I don't want to stop doing Godus because of the mistakes that we've made, but I want to learn from them."
- game designer Peter Molyneux on the trouble with Godus
In the incredibly awkward YouTube video above, Godus developer 22cans sits down designer Konrad Naszynski and studio founder Peter Molyneux to talk about the state of its Kickstarted game -- which has been blitzed by backers for not being up to scratch.
In the video, Naszynski himself admits: "What I want to do is bring up the quality of the PC experience because it's just not there, in my mind." That's over two years on from the initial Kickstarter campaign, and almost a year and a half from its Early Access release on Steam.
The Godus saga highlights a number of pitfalls with contemporary game development: Trouble has arisen from crowdfunding (22cans now admits to overpromising on stretch goals), Early Access (the company clearly delivered its game too early), and struggles with bridging the PC/mobile gap (Naszynski has admitted that many design decisions the team is faced with only suit one of those platforms, not both.)
If you don't want to end up in a video like the one above, it's best to learn the lesson that Peter Molyneux is now faced with: Look before you leap.
Controversy began to swell around Godus when Naszynski wrote a forum post (brought to light by Rock Paper Shotgun) admitting that things for the game were "looking pretty grim," but that he's "starting to feel cautiously optimistic" about the project.
But what's been particularly thorny is that the studio now admits it may never fulfill some of the stretch goals from its Kickstarter, such as Linux support.
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