Well, I guess this was inevitable. Peter Molyneux is attempting to remake Populous. Which means that Planitia could easily become superfluous.
Now, I don’t resent Peter one bit for this. In fact, I kind of knew it was coming. A few months ago I watched a presentation Peter gave about the development of the original Populous, and at the end, he showed off a multiplayer version he’d been working on with massive islands. That drew a great deal of applause, so it was fairly natural that Peter would try to go forward with that project.
What I don’t like is what is happening to the project. Godus, at this rate, will not get funded.
There are a lot of people who feel that Peter has broken past promises and thus can’t be trusted with this project. And Peter isn’t helping anything by making similar promises for Godus; he swore there would be a tech demo out on Friday, for instance…it has not seen daylight yet. And if it doesn’t come out within the next couple of days, it will be too late for that tech demo to sway people into supporting the Kickstarter.
But the general consensus I’m getting is that people are effectively punishing Peter, in a sort of inverse to how they rewarded Tim Schafer. That makes me…uncomfortable. It seems a little unfair to punish everyone at Peter’s company – as well as the many people who would love to see a Populous remake – because of Peter himself. In this case, I think Peter can be trusted. It’s a small company making a small game for a relatively small amount of money. I’d like to see more people take the risk and fund Godus.
Don’t worry. I’m sure Godus will be different enough from Planitia that both can justify their existence. As an example, lots of people enjoy Torchlight 2 even though Diablo 3 is out there.
I think he can be trusted in this case. He’s not making any outrageous claims like he did for the Fable games or Black and White. It looks like a pretty straight forward modern version of Populus.
BTW, I saw that Conquest Frontier Wars is getting on Gog next month. Any chance that if that does well it will fund Conquest 2?
Well, that WAS the plan (along with the Kickstarter), but unless sales of Conquest on GoG net us a couple hundred thou it’s not going to happen.
Of course, every sale of Conquest on GoG does directly put money into my pocket, so…here’s hoping it’s popular!
Yeah, I don’t get what all the backlash against Peter is about either. I LIKE that he shares his heartfelt vision for his games, unfiltered, to people. I LIKE that he is ambitious in his designs, even beyond the point of the designs being fully realizable.
We need more of that in the industry, not less.