Goodwill meter

Case-in-point. While it's not secret... notice how non-committal they are about saying whether combat will make it into mobile or not... they're kinda in a pickle with backers if they do (read "we're not dumbing down Godus for mobile, we promise", and financially if they don't (money spent on feature that won't pay out on mobile).

In the end they might take the PC combat and dumb it down significantly for mobile, but it illustrates how two-faced they've been about trying to make good on Kickstarter promises while squeezing their mobile customers for every cent they are worth, and why they might be "keeping secrets".

Keeping secrets from your backers is totally disrespectful towards the trust & financial support that those backers committed towards the project.

There is also the risk that features developed in secret will receive a poor reception, which has happened numerous times with this developer already. How they are still unable to learn from their mistakes continues to amaze me.

Feedback early in the pipeline can help correct the course of development before committing huge resources towards it, And as we already know, the resources for Godus are already stretched thin as is. Reducing your risk should be a primary concern at this point, therefore I don't believe they have the luxury of going off and doing secret development work at this point in time.

This is something even the bigger game developers get wrong, as a backer of star citizen I can tell you there are numerous instances where ships are announced, then the devs went dark, building in secret, only to present a finished product that has countless flaws which the community spot instantly, all of which could have been avoided if we had been kept in the loop. Keeping secrets in an environment where development is supposed to be out in the open can only lead to endless speculation, resentment, disappointment and possibly even anger.

The only positive that I can take from this is based only on speculation & conjecture, in that it was fabs project, and we all understand him to be someone who has a good conscience & character, as his leaving the studio was a result of his dislike for the direction it was going in, I doubt he would spend his remaining weeks working on a feature that would not in some way go towards improving Godus, especial after learning he requested to be put back on the Godus project after getting moved over to the betrayal against his will. But we shouldn't need to be speculating at this point, at 2.5 years in if your still having to speculate about things then something has gone seriously wrong somewhere.

Said it before, will say it again... Where it matters with such things 22Cans have approached the idea of crowdfunded projects and Early Access from the entirely wrong mindset from day 1 and rather than identifying that to be the case and it being something they can change, they seem to assume the problem is external sources beyond their ability to control or change.

One example of this is their reaction to the initial Early Access feedback in September/October 2013. They were getting a lot of critical but insightful feedback about what changes people playing the game wanted to see, where the game was found to be lacking and where the game was found to be good. They started reacting to this feedback, until realising they were spending all their time reacting to feedback and making changes based on what players were saying..... so they just closed their doors, refused to talk or provide any more builds and said "We're working on it, we totally understand what you want now and are going to deliver something you made clear you want" once and then slammed the door until around the new year where they finally did an update listing some of the awesome things to come before promptly slamming the door again until March.

Then March comes around, they show off the new build and the revamped Godus only for it to be the polar opposite of what much of the feedback was indicating. This time rather than react to feedback the stance was "We can either react to feedback and change the game, or we can just push forward and assume feedback will shift in our favour when people see the final thing".

From the point of first slamming their doors and going dark onwards it has really felt 22Cans have adopted a publisher orientated mentality, except without the oversight or accountability consequences that we the community can't enforce on them other than by being vocal, which 22Cans can just openly refuse to even take on-board.

They lock themselves inside and work on the game quietly to themselves, every 6-8 months they produce some long diatribe of nice sounding buzzwords to put their imaginary publishers mind at ease that things are going well and the project is shaping up well, no need to produce any state of the game builds for this imaginary publisher to review and enforce any changes needed, infact in this case it's better not to show their imaginary publisher anything in case they have something to say about it. All they have to do is stay locked up tight and do their thing whilst sporadically churning out PR pieces to assure their publisher that alls dandy. And by doing so, all will be well.

But this type of development environment does not, and can not function that way. The fact it took almost a year of constant harassment and pushing to even get the experimental branch up, and on multiple occasions 22Cans have opted to completely drop using it for work in progress builds on the grounds of "It's work in progress and we don't want you to see it until it's ready", just shows that unfortunately where it matters (producers and other decision makers who need to decide what needs to be done, by who and make sure it's properly done) 22Cans can't grasp a community involved development environment. The sad thing is, they can't even seem to admit to themselves that they can't. And instead it's the players fault, kickstarters fault, the press's fault... everyone's fault except how 22Cans managed themselves poorly given the situation they themselves choose to put themselves in.

There's a chance that could change, and people brought in will be able to go "Look, you guys fucked up working to this environment. Let's identify how WE need to change and get this going!", but if it hasn't happened in almost 2 years and the giant negativity explosions from all sides including press reactions to the game both PC and Mobile... then it'll either take a miracle or one hell of an impressive group of people introduced to retrain the veteran 22Canners.

I'm going to go to a three right now. I can always drop it back if they disappoint.

0->1 for now.

The DeNA situation is a bit of a odd one as DeNA kind of applies to one platform and not the other, however their involvement impacts 22Cans and how they do pretty much anything on both. But as the post was covering 22Cans in relation to working to a Early Access community involved development environment (So not mobile), they don't have a publisher they're accountable to for that.

The image/link Overpromise posted for example is strictly a product page for the mobile only version (See that it mentions "Also on PC" as a separate link and states it's a page for 'Godus iOS').

Personally I can't see DeNA giving two shits what 22Cans do with Godus PC, as long as before they bring any of it over to mobile they run it by DeNA and get the greenlight, hence why 22Cans aren't sure if combat will ever make it to mobile, as it's not really just their call.

I could perhaps see DeNA providing input such as raising questions about why 22Cans are investing on a platform that sees the least amount of return versus the mobile in-app sales.

I don't think DENA is the ultimate boogyman. A whole host of factors have distracted 22cans from the question of how can we make the best PC game we can make. I tend to think of DENA as evidence of Peter's dream of being the next King/Zygna eclipsing his dream of reinventing the God game than of DENA corrupting a previously pure Peter.

Considering how "PC" and "mobile" were basically turned into the same game, 22cans made the "only have a publisher for mobile" bit rather meaningless.

Apparently the mobile publisher has more control than we're led to believe, while there might be something in that lovely NDA 22cans has hidden behind before, that 22cans might have some contracted detail to make the mobile "on par" with the PC version.  What is one way of doing that?  Cutting down the PC version into a mobile game...while they offer false lip-service to the effect that "someday" it might become what people expect of a PC game.  After the big march to the rear with "2.2" and twaddling around since...that whole "only the publisher for mobile" looks like it might have some far-reaching effects, more than what the public narrative allows at least.

Of course, as you mentioned before, those who bought into Early Access got completely screwed by this bait and switch*, to which that I have to add 22cans' own actions really showed how much they've cared about the Kickstarter contract - even less.

Also, another year and another no "God of Gods" for the "re-imagining of the god game genre" into a mobile one-trick pony.

I doubt that Bryan will even get an apology video this year.  Maybe 22cans can send him an autographed bit of whatever like the only person to devote themselves to getting beyond the suck the game was inflicted with to participate in their Community Competition, Spiderweb.

* - In addition to how Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 might pertain to this (along with how the game is still being sold), I would suggest that senior employees of 22cans avoid the state of New York in the US - something about felonious contract fraud and PM openly admitting scienter of intentionally misrepresenting the details behind the Kickstarter to get people to pay into it - details that include FAR MORE than just asking for a lower amount, such as publisher involvement, which included the mobile as well. 

People often think that the publisher would have some design control because it would be more unheard-of for a publisher drop more money than the Kickstarter (by Peter's own words) on a developer and say "Yeah, whatever you give us will be fine."

Any publisher is going to want to know what they are buying, and want proof that the developer has an idea of how to get there, which includes all of the lovely little things they have kept hidden from their public narrative - a roadmap, milestones, design documents, among much more.

At the end of it all, we have to remember that 22cans are not really independent by this relationship, and are part of a contract with lawyers standing behind it if they were to cock-up their end of it.

A contract that obviously has meant more to Peter and 22cans than the one where they spoke to the faithful, collected them up...and then soundly shat upon them while continuing to flog the results of that abuse on revolving sales to acquire more naive purchases (also, by some of their actions, a potential violation of some consumer laws).

That 22cans replaced the original design with something more suitably...mobile...it seems to speak for itself in who/what calls the shots.

And by his own words used in Lord Ba'al's sig:  "The biggest responsibility of a designer, surely, is to think about the money." - Peter Molyneux

Mobile microtransaction money decided it.

Think about this as well, from the Steam store page:

Cross-platform development

Our development proceeds through sprints that may have differing platform focuses. As such, much of the gameplay available to you in v2.2 is the result of a recent mobile-focused sprint and we intend to progress to a PC-focused sprint within the coming months. Please take this into consideration, as while adjustments will continue to be made to the PC platform to account for the game's differing payment model (buy-to-play on PC & free-to-play on mobile), some areas of balance and design may retain certain elements of the mobile version for the time being.

"Mobile-focused sprint" went to PC anyways, so history would suggest that...we should be prepared for the inevitable facepalm when 22cans' elusiveness about Combat being PC-only turns out to be a bunch of crap for the likely 0.0.30 version on mobile.  On one hand, it would have to be, for that whole "God of Gods" thing.  That would unfortunately also mean that the PC game might never change, which explains some communication around some questions:

So when are they going to fix the broken foundations, or is that even a care for the PC version?  22cans has been silent or evasive about that bit, for sure.

The latter will also determine if this goodwill rating will ever really rise, because this community are generally the same faithful that 22cans shat upon for money.

Then did the same upon Steam.

But hey, good news!  Combat!