Jack Attridge, co-creator of Godus, is leaving Peter Molyneux’s 22Cans to pursue his own game development path. He started the process back in January, before the rather contentious interview between RPS and Molyneux.
Attridge is preparing a ”parting gift” for 22Cans, his former boss and mentor, and backers of Godus in the form of a documentary about the developer since its founding, up until the recent unpleasantness.
”I’ve been filming on my GoPro around the studio over the last couple of years. It cuts quite close to the bone; it’s quite a revealing documentary. It was very emotional for Peter and I, sitting down and watching that together. I’ve handed that off to the team and we’ll see what happens with it,” he told The Guardian.
If there’s one lesson to be learned from his time with Peter Molyneux it’s keeping quiet until you’re ready to show something, which is why The Guardian only got a glimpse of a tech demo for his new project.
”I vowed that I’m not going to say anything about this new game until we can show it,” Attridge told them. “It’s really tempting to show it off and talk about it now because we think we’ve got something magical on our hands. We’ve shown only two or three people for feedback so far. We want people to be able to see it and to feel it and to understand that it is the product in front of them and not something else.”
Unfortunately the PC version of Godus hasn’t materialised anywhere near to what the original vision was back during its Kickstarter campaign, with multiplayer possibly getting cut altogether from recent updates from 22Cans. A mobile version has fared much better, which doesn’t exactly inspire PC backers.
”My approach is a result of my work with Peter over the last few years. Peter’s a massively passionate guy and he can’t contain himself when he gets excited about something. Because of iterative development, an idea can start in one form and take a long road by the time it’s done. In spite of traditional PR practices, Peter can’t help himself, he just loves getting out there from the beginning and talking about everything he’s working on. You see his ideas before they’re fully developed and sometimes they just don’t come to pass.”
Jack doesn’t regret his time at 22Cans: “Ultimately there are many careers where you cannot feel emotions on either side of the spectrum to that degree. If you asked any one of us, I think we would say that we’d rather risk facing tough times than to feel nothing at all.”
He also remarked his departure from the studio, and Peter Molyneux himself, was a hard time.
“Working with Peter is a bit like a relationship, almost like a marriage, and us splitting up was almost like a divorce,” he said. “While it was so hard to start that conversation after all those years, I think he recognises that it’s time for me to move on. He even offered to let me develop my new game in his house. While it was a really awkward moment, it has been totally amicable.”
“It would have been a real shame to leave on bad terms.”
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