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

Exactly...that there is a team which can only focus upon one narrow aspect of the game at a time...not exactly very reassuring if we're to expect that there will actually be a PC version someday...or in which year are we to finally expect this to be re-released as a PC title?

Bluntly, it looks like they're just doing that for show while the rest of 22cans are off working on The Trail as the next attempt for a cash cow as soon as possible - as I doubt that The Trail's team are only working upon one small section at a time within a roped-off area.

On that note, I know the community would like to know what is possibly being considered for what we have been told before: "Combat, Multiplayer, ??, The PC title will definitely be different!"

That area isn't too reassuring at all, so if 22cans has any explanation for that...it has been something the community has been waiting for - for a few months now.

This is not transparent development.

So on THAT note...

Does 22cans intend to finally participate in the development which was stated in the Kickstarter and is a required part of continuing to participate in the Steam Early Access program?

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?

Unfortunately we don't have the luxury of doing things for show, its pretty expensive. 'Attempt for a cash cow' is a great description of business in general
The trail team works pretty much in the same way, although now with a slightly more production bias as does Godus. 

*Puts away his torch and pitchfork* OK.

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

Im very much in agreement with sentiment that combat in the absence of a connection to an economy and strategic objectives is pointless. There is also the question of symetry versus asymmetry. Are we fighting an enemy playing by the same rules or different rules? Moo couldn't or wouldn't engage with these questions but they are very important.

Simon has been dealt a shitty hand, I hope he can do something good with it.