Peter conference talk from a while ago.

How old is it?

Godus related highlights:
Have to plan from the start to make a game interesting/innovative after release, not expect its release state to be interesting/innovative enough to draw in users.

Kickstarter was "community", Early Access was "learn", limited mobile release was "refine", worldwide mobile launch was "release".

Kickstarter is better for games to develop in, not bring ideas from nothing to something.

Godus according to Molyneux:
"Godus has been fantastically successful."
280,000 5 star ratings.
90,000 concurrent players (mobile only?)
-Open world god game.
-Lands can be delightfully sculpted.
-Players 'care for' their followers.
-Players progress through ages of man.
-100 powers(?!) to unlock, powered by belief.
-Timed events to play through to gain rewards.
-Visit friends' worlds.
-Astari act as a challenge.

Doesn't think he'd do free to play/paid again for the same game again.

"PC audience really found it challenging to think they had a different game from the mobile audience."

"The game itself was just so complicated, there were so many moving systems, talking about 10,000 numbers to balance that would drive you absolutely insane. If I was going to do a free to play game again, then I would definitely focus on a few very meaningful systems.

The trouble is with an open world game like Godus, where every pixel of the land can change and the flow of people's progress can be radically different from one person to another person makes it insanely challenging to balance, (gets quieter) especially to balance around the monetization nature."

"So here we are now with Godus fully released. We've got a fantastic amazing team of people, incredibly passionate people, our choice now is simple. We split the company, most of us on the new IP, but a totally dedicated-about a quarter of the company, still remaining on Godus, because there are DAUs (daily average users) across all the formats of hundreds of thousands a day and it's making tens of, if not hundreds of thousands if it's a good day, of revenue so we have to keep that team there.

We hired those [original team] people to be innovational, to be daring about their approach to problems and then asking them to become, essentially, service people, that just put out content pack after content pack, is asking a lot, is asking them to change their personalities."

wow - we're just monkeys to make money off to Peter, its true.

engarde I think a pint of bath salts would kill you, would recommend you think again about that.

Speaking of people who have no shame add Aynen to that list. He just moved the steam version of this thread to off topic:

steamcommunity.com/app/232810/discussions/6/618457398974885371/

He must suffer from the same self serving distorted version of reality as Peter. Its really sad.

This predates that promose.

A smarter man would be embarrassed to do what Aynen and Muir do and Dave should be embarrassed to be their ring leader. What's the point in generating good will, which they have done successfully, just to do petty little things like moving that thread? It's like giving someone $10 and then stealing $2 when you know they are looking. It's just leaves us thinking you are very small silly people who don't even know how incompetent you are. Bizarre to have this happen while doing a decent job of communicating with the community and the development moving, if very slowly, in a positive direction.

Muir/Aynen if you want to get a big boy job I suggest you grow up because no serious company would let you trash their reputation with your idiocy like 22cans have.

Paraphrasing: "I define gamers as those who spend x amount of money a year on gaming."

Pretty much, yep. I guess he's not wrong, but damn that's a cold as hell way of putting it. It completely removes any sense of a passion for the hobby or desire for quality. The gamer is only interested in spending on gaming, not in discerning good from bad, which makes them no different from the average consumer, really. How can you make a product for anyone when your only idea of the audience is how much they spend? "Right, let's make a movie, any movie will do quality doesn't matter, but it has to fit the trends of what these suckers are buying, got it?"

His comment about defining gamers only by how much they spend is retarded, and provably so, It's possible to be a gamer and never spend any money on games at all, and i'm not just talking about piracy either.

Also if i spent £30 on games in a month, but someone else pays £60, by peters logic that would make them more of a gamer than me, but I could have brought many more games with that £30 from a bargain bin or a steam sale, than the guy who just brought that one AAA title for full price. You can't equate the amount someone spends on how much of a gamer they are. To do so is just painfully stupid.

From this presentation it is now clear that the reduced team size was only ever meant to take an ongoing technical support role, and that Godus was essentially feature complete at that point. It is clear from the way Peter is presenting here that he felt that Godus was finished.

The hiring of new staff was a direct result of the media shit storm, I'm in no doubt that if the media hadn't picked up this story, none of the current progress that is being made would have ever happened, all of the communities continued calls to action would have continued falling on deaf ears, nice to know that PM & 22 cans treat their community with such disdain.

Unfortunately what this means, is that even if they do finally get the game completed, it will forever leave a bad taste in the mouth, because deep down we know that they really don't care about us, the game is now only being worked on as a face saving exercise, to repair peters and 22 cans tarnished reputation, the motivating force behind completing the game should have been out of love and respect for their fans & backers, not love for themselves (not sure if i explained that correctly but that's sort of how i feel about the situation).

It's a real shame because I know there are some talented people, working very hard on this, that do have honest intentions, who do respect the community, but i'm afraid they will never be able to walk outside of this overbearing shadow that has been cast over the whole project.