Furious Moo, what are you actually working towards?

You've made a lot of assumptions on my motivations despite me heading design for what's basically been 3 weeks. And just design mind you, I'm not the new Peter who can get things done by just saying so. Things are just moving slowly. A lot slower than I'd like tbh, it's somewhat frustrating. I still think of myself as a player first, professional developer second. I still put 30+ hrs a week into gaming despite a long working day and daily commute from London to Guildford.... I don't sleep much these days. I got into design because I felt that the best way to turn a game into what I actually wanted to play was by working on it myself. From the minute I played the alpha I could see the direction Godus was heading in and I didn't like it. It took half a year to develop contact with Peter personally before I was offered a design position (initially unpaid mind you, they weren't looking to fill a opening). Then another year working at 22cans to get to a position where I could get the chance to really influence the direction of Godus. I've had to be persistent, patient and not expect fast changes. Now, how far my influence actually extends despite what I have been told still remains to be seen. 

So the fist half of Jan was completing the work for the Asia launch, had all sorts of issues with that because of a new account management system our mobile publisher is introducing. This had been scheduled for some time and was totally out of my hands. On top of that production was sorting itself out because of staff turn over.
For the first real sprint of the new Godus team (which started mid Jan) I had to pick something straightforward because I knew we would be bogged down with re-organisation and under resourced. Hence the story. Which was actually pretty challenging because of what I actually had to work with in the game as it is now. If I had picked something like a resource system overhaul, I would have been told outright no.

As this was happening the decision makers in 22cans took notice and got involved. For a while it was looking pretty grim, there was a lot of pressure to just focus on maximizing revenue from mobile. Peter got involved and things started to turn around again. I've been in more meeting these last two weeks than I have in the last year. While we are still not done, the end is in sight and things are coming together. Essentially what's happening is this:
We compiled a long broad list of things we can do to the game (both mobile focused and pc focused) with items made up from a combination of community feedback, kickstarter obligations, publisher requests and my own ideas. We then had to score them based on difficulty of task, resources required and cost against returns. There's a few things which are taken into consideration when deciding what the returns of any item would be; is it direct revenue (like more cosmetic items for mobile), is it something that could potentially get us a steam feature (and bring in pc revenue) or is it something that would improve the company reputation. Using this matrix we are slowly producing a plan for the year.

Quite frankly it's been exhausting, but I'm starting to feel cautiously optimistic. If I had it my way I wouldn't bother with mobile, not worry about cost and just work on improving the pc experience, but that's never going to happen. What is good is that a lot of the things I want to do, things that would improve the pc game, I can make a case for them based on improving the company reputation and increased chance of a steam feature placement. It's been reassuring that those two criteria are being taken seriously because like you I had concerns that they would be dismissed.
There's things I can't talk about yet, but there are indications we will have more resources available in the next couple of months, perhaps as early as next sprint. Once this plan has been completed AND I get some assurances we'll have the necessary support to accomplish the tasks, we'll be making it public. When? Not sure, a week, maybe two, it's not up to me. If it doesn't pan out, well it won't be for the lack of my efforts.

Make no mistake though, I can't ignore mobile. It's the main source of revenue for the project and without it Godus is finished, simple as. You don't like the themed content and cosmetic stuff, but I absolutely love it and will be packing in as much as I possibly can. Why? Because it takes minimal time and effort on my part (setting up the Valentines days stuff took literally a couple of hours), no coding time and the art work is outsourced. A super easy win in terms of mobile maintenance freeing me up to do other things. And if I can adapt a pc feature into the mobile version, I'm certainly going to do that too.
It's going to be a juggling act and I'm betting a lot of my pc only proposals are going to be shot down and there will be things I will be told to work on that won't contribute to improving pc. If that's the case I'm just going to state that outright when the time comes.

If all goes well we are due to start a more ambitious sprint on the 16th, but more on that next week.

That were exactly my thoughts. It always seems as all kickstarter money went into Mobile Dev (and also the Provider money) while PC was just a hobby they compiled from the mobile sources in their spare time.

so not only kristine has left but jemma too which means you have no produces left?!!!!!

FuriousMoo, thanks for your considered and detailed response here. I know that you're genuinely trying to make a difference for Godus and it's refreshing to be given some honest information about what's going on in the studio, even when it isn't what we want to hear. I think at this point it's generally accepted that we're never going to like the reality of what is going on at 22Cans, so that's nothing new. It is definitely a positive change that someone at 22Cans is prepared to actually share this kind of information with us. From the community perspective 22Cans is, for the most part, a black box that is entirely inactive 95% of the time but occasionally does strange, infuriating and illogical things. It's almost impossible for us to sympathise with people like you and Dave without understanding some of the inner-workings. So when you're open with us like this it's really helpful for us.

Regarding the extent of your influence at 22Cans: I think this is partly what Matthew and George found so frustrating in their capacity as community managers. They were brought in to help with 22Cans reputation and to get the community back on-side, but they weren't given the resources to achieve this. They were also constantly being undermined by PM making decisions and announcements without involving them at all, and PM (or other "decision-makers" that you allude to) blatantly ignoring and contradicting their efforts. Consequently, who gets vilified by the community? The CMs, for apparently lying to us and being utterly ineffectual. And as professional company representatives, they can't really turn around and say "it's not MY fault, my colleagues screwed me over" even though that is obviously what happened.

A focus on mobile for the revenue is inevitable. I do wonder though, is Godus even a good mobile game? Maybe if it was actually a good mobile game the backlash wouldn't be quite what it is. I dunno. That's a matter of the bottom line, really. In a recent interview PM boldly claimed that Godus is making "tens of thousands of dollars a day" and that, to date, it has made "tens of millions of dollars". If this is true, is there really that much pressure on mobile right now? Maybe 22Cans could use the first 10 million dollars to work on the Trail, and then dedicate the second 10 million dollars half-and-half between mobile and PC development for Godus..? The initial Kickstarter was for like 500k, I'd have thought with 5 million dollars you could hire a massive team and do whatever.

Just kidding of course, we all know 22Cans doesn't have tens of millions of dollars. What a fucking joke. But this is what PM has been spewing in interviews, so you might want to casually ask this question next time someone talks about resource limitations.  

That interview actually scared me a little with his sounding excited at figuring out the mechanics of extracting money from people that are too distracted by "fun" to notice they're spending money. Just waiting for him to take the final jump and open a casino.

That interview was bizarre and shockingly eye-opening, showing a truer side of Peter that I only suspected existed, and hoped I was wrong.

At least, that's how many people are interpreting these articles and videos. Maybe it's a misinterpretation, or a misrepresentation of the truth (via journalistic bias or sensationalism), but I doubt it's the media making him into a deluded, ex-visionary, gone mad with power. It really appears tbat this is the real Peter Molyneaux.

The Peter in the most recent interviews seems almost possessed and without ethical emotion. The PM we're seeing has his golden, gemstone encrusted blinders on; it's all about money now (and presumably alawys has been). Not providing a quality product. Not creating customer loyalty. Just money. And the amazing part is that apparently he's become so bold and brazen, and deluded by a warped sense of reality - flaunting his immense ego and inane greed - that he actually had the balls to admit that he wants to create a way to passively extract customer's wallets from thier pockets; reading his statement over a few times, it's clear he's hoping to exploit naive or nostalgic people and take their money without them knowing or realising it's happening. That's just preposterously vile, all but proving this man is corrupted and not to be trusted.

Maybe we're misreading all of this.

Or maybe he's playing everyone - gamers, journaists, and stockholders alike - and has some heretofore hidden agenda that will revolutionise the gaming industry - and the world - and mark him as as certified visionary genius; but I think not, though I think that's how he sees himself.

Maybe he's been replaced by a robot or clone, controlled by the New World Order, and the real PM died years ago, or perhaps is locked away in a floating prison barge.

Maybe all of this is a really bad dream.

Maybe I'm wrong about all this (I can only wish).

But, at least FuriousMoo isn't Peter...

Or is he?

Is that a confirmation that Jemma is gone too?

So how many people who where part of 22cans during the development of godus have now left in total?

I've heard a rumour that Jack will also be leaving.

Further evidence of the addictive nature of "Forums".