develop-online.net: 22Cans names Simon Phillips as new CEO

Cool. I only wish I had more time

Ill try and keep light on all the BS and not flood this thread (Dave / Colin will sort out a better way of trying to bring more detail) but we want to keep an open mind on formats in the future, nothing is ruled out. The combat stuff being developed right now is very, very PC focussed. Combat's a pretty big task in itself and despite the general opinion being that its slower because it's only got a small team on it, it wouldn't really go much quicker with more people on it. Will it go to mobile? Possibly at some point. Let's get the PC combat working well first then we'll see where we are. On the note about the team, there's a misconception that having lesser 'experienced' people on it is a problem. The guys working on it are incredibly capable and have the full support (constantly) of everyone in the studio, that's from code, art, design and production etc. Interns come with a scarily good amount of experience and talent these days

I guess a lot of these opinions were conceived from the daily dev updates, which I thought, being honest and with full respect to the guys producing them, were a bit boring, pointless and ultimately a bit patronising in the end (As I'm sure a lot of you are aware, development is a long repetitive process, that sounds far more exciting than it actually is). Hence they stopped. We'll find a better way of communicating what the Godus team is doing and how best to present that to the communities in good time. We remain very committed to Godus and committed to actually producing good quality updates for it.

Cheers,
Simon

I guess this means I can hold off on sending that email to Peter, for now.

I'll just drop this link here to bring it to attention because someone in the open board is not quite happy.

Part of the problem with adding combat to Godus as it currently exists is that it has no impact.  The underlying functionality of the game makes combat nothing more than an empty time occupier.  Its biggest impact is to keep a player busy rather than add strategy to the game.  The worst case scenario if a player fails to engage in combat is for the game to come to a standstill.  There is no loss condition to build off of from the basest level.  Any attempts to discuss this have been ignored or avoided.  It's a cracked foundation to build upon.

As for the issue about "experienced" people, there are a number of problems that us outsiders perceive from what we have been told.  First off, this game was promoted off of the backgrounds and skill sets of some famous names.  Seeing them not taking an active role calls into question what's actually going on.  Second, it's not unreasonable for the public to believe that pulling people familiar with the code base and replacing them with new hires and interns will cause problems.  Third, when a complete unknown (who has no professional history to show and came in as an unpaid volunteer for the first year at 22Cans) replaces a well-known figure that was a major aspect of Kickstarting the project, it's silly to imagine that it won't impact the development. 

"Support" is a vague word.  When the shakeup happened in December, the amount of input from the original members of the Godus team was pretty sketchy.  We hear lots of things about what's supposedly happening but don't see much proof that it's the reality.  The last 6 months have seen very little traction, despite the claim that the things being worked on were supposedly smaller features to show that the newly formed team "could do the job".  The daily updates are only as good as the results they produce.  It's pretty disheartening to read back through them and look at where Godus is now.  Commitment sounds great, but results are all we really want at this point.

I wish I could be more welcoming to our new faces but we've been down this road so many times I just don't have the energy to be too enthusiastic.  Godus is fundamentally flawed.  It needs serious work if it's going to become a mediocre pc title.  Nothing we've seen in development looks like it's going to make things better.  On top of that, all indications from outside point to this remaining a mobile title and there just isn't the talent, backing, or desire to seriously change the status quo.

If you can bring something to the table, we'd all lost to see it.  We've been waiting for a long long time...

All hail the new overlord, may their reign involve slightly less boxing off behind closed doors whilst pointing their finger screaming at the nearest object that it's all their fault, than the last!

Also may they attempt to properly engage the community and be frank with them, having perhaps realised from the previous overlords actions that skirting around committing to clear answers be they good news or bad news is what drags things on rather than definite "Yeah, it's a lost cause based on what you want. Sorry".

Personally my main concern is less that combat is taking so long to do, but that combat is the only thing being done and it has been regarded as the priority at present.

Can't speak for any internal justifications for it, maybe it's being used as an example to try sell the idea for the PTB at 22Cans to be more open to significant injections of new features into the game. Or maybe it's something that was tasked to a WIP sub-team as a "Prove you can do this" mission before they're allowed to attack the game freely.... who knows.

But with all the things that could be picked, from all the pre-existing areas Godus could really do with some fundamental fleshing out, that the decision was made to essentially bolt on combat to me comes across as taking a foundation made of soggy rotten cardboard and trying to build a house of cards on top of it... it'll probably hold long enough to get the job done, but it'll eventually collapse in the near future.

To give one example:

We're faced with a civilisation of people that are souless. They do not adapt, learn, react, evolve or have any suggestion of sentience about them at all. Not even the illusion of any of those things exists.

The people who started off living in tiny tents are on the exact same civilisation and cultural level as the people we're supposed to believe later have mastered agriculture, mineral extraction and now military tactics and waging war. And yet when you sit back and look at it, they haven't have they. They don't understand any of those things.

A big hand in the sky goes "Wake up lad, I've placed your houses together and painted you green. It's time to go to this plot and build a farm", "And you, I've placed your houses together and painted you grey. It's time to go to this plot and build a mine". And the big hand in the sky has to keep doing this on a hourly or even minutely basis to make sure farmers realise they have to wake up and set up fields to make sure they don't starve, or to wake up miners to make sure they don't run out of raw materials to function.


Well ok they'll never starve as people don't procreate unless the big hand in the sky tells them to move out of their parents house and get their own place. 

But without the big hand in the sky.... life just ceases to carry on. It grinds to a halt and nothing ever happens. Without the big hand in the sky, your people will forever exist as a snapshot of how they were when you left them, the monkeys you've trained to do a one very specific and limited routine will continue to loop through that routine, but that is all.

This game to my knowledge still intends to be a game that extends across a half dozen or more epochs of civilisation. Yet... the civilisation never actually leaves the primordial era. Instead you're babysitting primates that you've trained to repeat one set routine and that is their only function in life. And that's how the game progresses..... it's called the "Stone age", "Bronze Age", "Imperial Age" and so forth, but the only thing actually evolving and showing any signs of change is the big hand in the sky.

Just throwing on more toys and paths for the big hand in the sky seems to be the entirely wrong focus. If this is meant to be a game about the relationship of a people and their god and how the two shape each other and evolve. There first needs to be an actual people that show some degree of sentience simulated to change.


Otherwise it's just a game about a zoo keeper finding new tricks to teach their extremely lobotomised monkey. And the only thing it will ever be about is just a zoo keeper.

Even when multiplayer eventually gets tackled, it won't be players pitting their civilisations against each other and seeing which one survives. It'll be warring primates being told to just smash whatever the big hand in the sky hands them into the other primates. Why? Because that's the basic action they were programmed to do by big hand in the sky. They don't understand what they're doing. They don't CARE what they're doing... they're just following the routine until the big hand in the sky points them in another direction. 

Where's the entire relationship dynamic between a living and self-aware civilisation and their god? Will it ever actually exist? Or is this game set to be lobotomist zoo keeper?

And if the latter, how is the lobotomist zoo keeper ever meant to feel anything but detached from the whole thing and seeing it as essentially pointless after the novelty factor of being able to program lobotomised chimps to follow one sit routine in life wears off?

The Backer rewards always form a large part of the future priorities of tasks. We don't have those priorities finalised and probably won't for a few months. They will depend on a number of factors such as feedback on combat (when and if that is considered shippable) and the constant commercial reality of them.

I know that a number of things such as the Art book and Documentary are almost completely ready to ship.

Simon

A lot of good points there Spiderweb.

If they would have hired Buddy Rich, I would be impressed...




(The joke is that Simon Phillips is a famous drummer...)


Basically, this news means nothing.
In fact ANY statement by 22cans, that doesn't clarify which direction the game is taken, is an exercise in futility.
"we are still working on the game" is as "clear" as the may 2014 announcement of the "PC sprint".

In other words, credibility, there is NONE left. ZERO Credibility.
Credit rating C (Obligations rated C are the lowest rated and are typically in default, with little prospect for

recovery of principal or interest.)