Monday, 26 October 2015

Year 3: Research report: Godus

Godus


Godus is a game from the controversial figure Peter Molyneux and the game itself has a controversial history. Abit of history about this game first the developers 22 cans originally created a game called curiosity and was designed as a social experiment in which all the players around the world would work towards destroying tiny cubes to find out what was in the center of a giant cube the game was released on "26 of May 2013" Wikipedia: Curiosity (2015). The winner curiosity "Bryan Hendersonn" Wikipedia: Curiosity (2015) was given the opportunity to become a major component in the game got us where he would be allowed to affect  the game as well as Profit-sharing from the game. Unfortunately this ended badly as miscommunication from the company  to the winner and very little was given to him as a reward is also in raids the community surrounding the game curiosity as they felt it was a scam.

Goduds is a game that has been described by Peter Molyneux as a spiritual successor to his previous game populous. In the game the player  acts like a god and actively tries to increase the population of their community through the system they will gain belief from the community once this has gone the player can move on to new areas and explore. the player can also explore multiple islands but has to gather up ships and resources in order to make the journey to discover new lands.

The game was released "20th of December 2013" Wikipedia: Godus (2015) and currently that this states 27 October 2015 the game has sold "308,000 copies" Steamspy: Godus (2015) at the cost of £15 each quickly calculating this equals to £4.6 million in revenue.  Also the game had a Kickstarter a page where "17,184 backers pledged £526,563 the help bring this project to life" Kickstarter: Project Godus (2015) meaning that this game was successful financially as it was able to raise at least £5 million in revenue. so with a financial success like this obvious that the game had no financial troubles I could be completely easily with a competent development team. But this is where the controversy of this game comes in as it seems the developers had many problems due to internal conflicts between the development team and Peter Molyneux.

If the game is a financial excess time to look into user and reviews of the game to see if it was a success with the community. First off looking into the steam community reviews and it shows/away that the community doesn't seem to like this game so much. There are a total of 5000 reviews on this game with "1800  positive" and "3300 negative" Steam store: Godus (2015). mostly reviews are centered on the game being designed for mobile platform not the PC and I deliberately scammed the community into thinking that would be a full PC game. As well as another issue raised is the lack of content being added into the game and the lack of and bug fixes for the game.

The website Metacritic gave a user score of Godus "1.6" Metacritic: Godus (2015) most of the complaints from the reviews revolve around the lack of content and false promises the developers said about the game and have not implemented even though the game has almost been out for two years.

On the website Gamespot a review by "Daniel Starkey" Gamespot; Godus early access review (2014). He often praises the art style and atmosphere of the game but often talked about the gameplay of not offering the challenge "nothing else in Goddess is limited by time or is in any way dangerous to anything or anyone, and so the possibility of failure in the voyage of discovery isn't a comfortable fit" Gamespot; Godus early access review (2014).  he also claims based on his review of the game is over 50% complete "developers toucans say on the game's splash screen that is currently at 49% complete, and that feels about right" Gamespot; Godus early access review (2014) state being a year into its developments this not after a good sign.

 Good points
it seems the goal is set a goal for itself that was too high for to achieve with the time and the development team at heart. It seems to have them promised to be a bigger better game than it turned out to be and this is where it's downfall is the most showing.
.Good graphics: the graphics are the unique art style which looks nice and vibrant adverts in well to the idea of a God game
.Nice peaceful atmosphere: The music and atmosphere set by the game is calming and peaceful
.Ambition: though it led through the bad reputation of the game the ambition to create some and fall short is still an apple tree for a small development team is something that should be admired that they at least tried to create something grand.

 Bad points
It is clearly obvious that the reason this game failed was the promise of a lot more content than it could deliver and with the financial success of the game is only the developers fault that the use promises of content on offer filled. of the writing of  this document the game is now after two years and many are still complaining about the lack of content and I think this point the game will not be updated any more and  that had its time to place in all the content promise and is not delivered. personally I think a game like this is more damaging to early access than a game that flout lies about self as this game promise the community so much and on the delivered only due to its ineptitude as development company.

Godus as a game had great potential to become something that unity to rally behind  it could adapt to them. what would the mistrust of the winner of the curiosity game as well as the lack of content delivered the game has completely lost its trust from the community and at this point has no way to personally I think that the community should trust this developer again as they had their chance to implement a lot of content into the game but I've yet not delivered. It is a shame because the ambition of a game like this could have been great ledger shows that even with vast amounts of money and early access game can still fail.


Bibliography

.Wikipedia (2015) Wikipedia: Curiosity [online] available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_%E2%80%93_What%27s_Inside_the_Cube%3F

.Wikipedia (2015) Wikipedia: Godus [online] available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godus

.Gamesindustry.biz (2015) Gamespy: Godus [online] available from: http://steamspy.com/app/232810

.Kickstarter (2015) Kickstarter: Project Godus [online] available from: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/22cans/project-godus/description

.Valve (2015) Steam store: Godus [online] available from: http://store.steampowered.com/app/232810/

.Metacritic (2015) Metacritic: Godus [online] available from: http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/godus

.Gamespot (2014) Gamespot: Godus early access review [online] available from: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/godus-early-access-review/1100-6418467/


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