Godus was… a bit of a mess, to be honest, and not the first time that Peter Molyneux’s ambitious promises haven’t quite been fulfilled. According to the veteran developer, that’s partly down to the Kickstarter process.
“What I’ve learned is that doing Kickstarter and Steam Early Access, before you’ve got something which is defined and playable, is a hugely risky undertaking that can be very destructive to the final quality of the game,” said Molyneux in an interview with TechRadar.
That might raise a few eyebrows, as Molyneux had something of a reputation for hyperbolic declarations even before god-sim Godus was Kickstarted to the tune of $450,000 back in 2012.
“And if I had my time again,” Molyneux continues, “I wouldn’t do Kickstarter at the start of development, I would do it at the end of development or towards the end of development. I’m not saying I would never do Kickstarter again, but if I was to do Kickstarter again, I would say ‘look, we’ve done half the game, you can download this demo, you can play the game.”
There were a few controversies during Godus’ journey to launch, including the lack of a promised Linux version (the game’s engine doesn’t support Linux) and a move towards freemium that wasn’t hinted at in the initial pitch. Molyneux says that it’s easy to over-promise when pitching through Kickstarter.
“There’s this overwhelming urge to over-promise because it’s such a harsh rule: if you’re one penny short of your target then you don’t get it. And of course in this instance, the behaviour is incredibly destructive, which is ‘Christ, we’ve only got 10 days to go and we’ve got to make £100,000, for **’s sake, lets just say anything’. So I’m not sure I would do that again.”
