Is Godus A Lost Cause?

From how it seems like everything around Godus Wars' release was crafted to only make people enrage instead of allowing them to play Godus in public again...it sounds like that was the plan all along.

I'm sure they will play the victim very soon:

They will throw their hands in the air, act all teary-eyed and helpless, point to the steam reviews and say: "Do you see now? Do you see? See what kind of community we have to deal with here? The toxic community killed Godus, there is nothing we can do (and we tried for 3 years!). So the only choice we have is to shut down Godus for good."

22cans already voided this kind of thing from the start.

Eurogamer knew what they had as they've kept up with the whole matter, and it couldn't have illustrated the problems behind 22cans any better.

Report about PM's return to spotlight through a tweet that may of not been from a compromised account.  It's not like there aren't any ghostwriters around the office.  This may have caused 22cans to release what they had "early" but according to them "Combat Update" was supposed to have been out last summer...which meant that there should have been some exposure and promotional planning already in the works, waiting to be deployed, and yet we see this spectacular fail.  The different numbers between statements of how many were working on the development team (11 on one, 12 on another).  All of those were signs that it was written very quickly and with little planning.  That and the reason behind the swap of titles sounds like 22cans expects us all to be incredibly thick.

PM takes a moment to not speak to the press.

Eurogamer then presents the paywall, further disgrace to build upon going from one EA title to another as part of 22cans trying to escape their responsibilities while selling more they may or may not intend to keep.  I dunno...if anyone had a slow news day from then on out they could print up 22cans' laments.  I really don't see how 22cans can top this one.  Shifting blame after they intentionally deceived their community for yea...well, no, from the start...what kind of reaction could anyone expect to new lows being offered after years of a smirking mug offering excuses and fake apologies?

Go back towards when Simon tried to claim that people were "99%" saying that Godus was shit on the official forums when he had yet to be spotted ever posting upon them.  Still has yet to, last I checked.  People didn't believe him in the comments to those articles and the reprints all around.  In fact that failure to accept feedback just seemed to make it clear that 22cans just wanted to look like the British Phil Fish.  Or maybe Derek Smart, since his MMO is about on par with Godus' development.

There you go, a title straight from Dev Hell -  Promise: The FPS

As before, I cannot fault CyberGrim (Martin) for his efforts, which have been spectacular.

I can only fault 22cans for where they direct him, that allows some of the faults he works hard to address go unanswered, to offer bad PR to 22cans in turn as their support was starting to look like it was running on VALVe Time.  Turns out that 22cans were effectively dropping Godus to work on Godus Wars, and the work on Godus was to probably remove some of the editing bits from the main menu as noted elsewhere.  (With all else going on, the contents of these games really need to be examined.)

So now as long as 22cans have their attention on whatever Martin is working on then he'll be the most effective at that bug squashing for the public - one of the more rewarding moments of QA - and therefore be one of the bits of 22cans' production I can compliment.   We know how much of a fight Fabs had to stay working on Godus itself as well...

Now that I've mentioned it, 22cans will muck it up somehow like when I could compliment their support earlier on.  

I think GODUS is on life support. In a universe of infinite possibilities it is possible the GODUS will one day be a success but 22Cans will have to do something they've never done before - rapidly respond to feedback. I don't believe they can do this because it is not in their DNA but I hope that they can.

I don't think he even has a forum account there. Less than half of 22cans seems to, for that matter.

(fun note: if you view the 22 cans staff group over there, it still lists quite a few people who don't even work anymore there as staff)

Has anyone thought of the worrying possibility here ... that the team of interns put their heart and souls into Godus Wars? That this was the best they could do.

I think Godus is a lost cause because the people working oh the game are incompetent

I think Godus was a lost cause from the start. Basically because there was no idea. It was nothing more than a slogan "A new Populous". But there was no explanation beyond that. Populous was a fast-paced game. It was a war game. It was based on the then-novel concept of a world that the player could manipulate (easily). I think PM saw the success of Minecraft and thought he could grab some of that. The stepped environment of Godus has a distinctive look (Minecraft style) but is most definitely NOT suited to easy editing by the player. It's a pain in the arse. Nor is it suited to the proposed gameplay. Even flattening an area (a boring concept) is rendered extra tedious by the dragging mechanism.

There never was a great concept behind Godus. Just PM looking at games like Minecraft and trying to cash in. Without so much as going to the effort of coming up with an interesting game idea.

What was that idea? Beyond nostalgia. My stance is there was no idea beyond harping on past glories.

To  be clear:  I reject the idea that PM has amazing ideas that are somehow stymied by circumstance.   I think his ideas are poorly thought-out to begin with. And that is why the games are always disappointing.    The good games (like Populous) were designed by others (Glenn Corpes).

This emperor never had any clothes.

www.22cans.com/an-endorsement-a-video-meet-paul-and-a-wallpaper/

If only Godus were more of a free-form like that, where you had to discover people, cultivate their belief and colony, make impressive lands for them to live in, explore together...yeah, if only Godus were a game instead of a horrible marketing scheme.

Peter Molyneux is Electronic Arts.