General Godus discussion

For fucks sake....can we just say LAWSUIT!

Where are all my rewards from KS, not to mention a complete game.

He needs to finish what he promised before even thinking about a new game, or just call it a day, and give me my frakin money back.

In making this statement I assume peter has lost more money than anyone else on godus. If made money on the project then that raises serious questions about his ethics. The previous sentence is not intended to suggest that there weren't already serious questions about his ethics.

It's the one thing about 22Cans that's been consistently entertaining.

If Fabs on the steam boards is to be believed Peter is moving on to "start on a new project", taking the artists and such that have little to nothing left to do in Godus and start on something new.

However if the description as shown on the neogaf page above is to be believed, this "new game" is basicly what he wanted Godus to become.
Only mobile exclusive this time around.
That utopian concept of making a game where EVERYONE gets to play together.
Without chat or communications. A game that appeals to casuals and core games and so on.

Seems his initial failure wasn't good enough, he wants to try again.

PR are supposed to be able to handle the press. PM has not nearly fulfilled his KS legally bound obligations and has no business even thinking about what he wants after he finishes or or he needs to refund our frakin money. I don't believe a word of PM's spin anymore, not a word. ALL of his mindset should be a completing his KS promised game or open up his pocketbook to the backers if he wants to move on AT ALL!!

This is about resources. I don't think the VAST majority is acceptable, all of 22cans needs to be working on Godus. Why is he paying others still not needed for Godus to work on something else? Where is that money coming from and why is it not being put into finishing the game the backers were promised or refunding us? You LEGALLY owe us this and that must come before any resources are spent anywhere else. 

I get that. But our choice is "Begin something to take up the available time of our friends and colleagues so that when Godus is finished, they are still here and we have a head-start on the next game" or "Make people redundant because they aren't needed right now for the game we are currently developing". I think the latter is pretty harsh, and from a company lifespan perspective, it's pretty short sighted. I don't want to be one of those people that's told "hey, great work on game X. You did lots of overtime, but we don't need you any more. Bye."

Also, not all human resources are fungible. If we were completely done with coding (which we aren't) then I would not be able to be used on Godus, as I can't art. As it is, we're mostly done with art right now, so we've only got a couple of artists on the project. All of Godus' development tasks are covered by staff right now. Not all the resources at 22cans are required to cover those tasks.

While I believe its fair to say that in game development, especially in the later period of a project. You reach a point where part of the staff is no longer needed.
And then you have to make the choice, do we let these people go or do we set them on a new project.

There is the risk of spreading yourself too thin too soon. And Godus is not "finished" - not by a long shot.
So its a logical conclusion that a company that has been known for spreading themselves too thin and having to put projects on hold for that very reason, should be thinking twice about taking on additional projects.


To me, the most worrisome part is that the description given for "The Trail" seems to be the very things that Peter wanted to get out of Godus.
Bring together the casual and core gamer audiences, keep things simple so you don't scare people off, keep direct communications to a minimum in an attempt to avoid conflict.
Honestly if I wouldn't know better, I would say that the description IS the description of Godus mobile.

And considering how that went, I'm kinda worried. Why walk into that same trap a second time when the first time went so 'well'?


So, I don't think its that strange that Godus backers like Qetesh are worried here. They have yet to see their project delivered. And we're talking about people that paid hundreds of dollars or more in some cases that have yet to see those rewards delivered almost 2 years down the line.
Hubworld, familiars and a variety of other unique rewards seem to have become a matter of principle. "Oh, yea... We still need to do that... I guess we'll just dedicate a 2-week sprint to that and quickly knock them out."
That doesn't particularly speak of a worked out part of the game, but rather of an afterthought.

Which leads me to believe that right now Godus is more or less on an obligated route. "Lets complete what we are obligated to complete so we can put this project behind us."
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that that is what you are doing - I'm saying that that is what it looks and feels like to me from an outsiders perspective.
Peter has never danced around the fact that he doesn't particularly enjoy the way that Godus has gone. The interaction with the PC community in particular.
And it feels to me that right now, his own inability to communicate is being pushed off on us again. With us being "the boogymen" and "the bullies" to his creative vision.


Like I mentioned above, the description for "The Trail" looks EXACTLY like the outline of Godus. Minus the PC part...
Coincidence?

Another thing that strikes me as odd/interesting is what we've been told through various people on the opinion within 22cans.
While Peter seems to have a strong desire to make a certain kind of game, I've gotten the impression that a lot of the employees are infact quite interested in making Godus that PC game it set out to be on the kickstarter.
I can't help but believe that such a split in mindset within a company may not necessarily lead to good decisions?


Anyway, I'm just following some trails of thought here. Maybe I'm completely wrong, who knows.

To be a bit harsh, if 22cans is going to play "it's a business card", then you can't have it both ways. If they do fail to fulfill their obligation for financial reason and have appropriated funds to another project then they are making their own noose for the courtroom of hangmen. 

You can't cry we could not finish due to money while diverting resources to another channel. Once again, PM owes this legal obligation and now he is taking resources from Godus to pursue another pipe dream. He would never get away with this from actual stock holders so he is just smacking us backers in the face again. 

What I would really, really like to see at this point is some kind of coherent description of what Godus will be once it's 'done' (and I know the PM is going for the whole thing of 'done' being an ambiguous concept and Godus is kinda gonna be always in development like Minecraft or whatever). There must be a longterm goal the team is working towards. Will Hubworlds still happen? Will we still end up in the Space age? Wayworld seems to have turned up when surely what the team really needed to be working on was more civilisation progression.

One reason that I care is that I no longer want to play Godus in Early Access. I'm going to revisit it once its properly released and not before.