Regarding Molyneux and Godus

I've touched on this issue a couple of times on Twitter, and seen a lot of other people's responses/reaction to certain musings on the topic, and there's a whole bunch of stuff about it that really bothers me. What you're about to read is written under zero pretence of "journalism", this is stone-cold rock-hard personal opinion about someone I don't like and how I see the world. With that said; PETER MOLYNEUX, and more specifically the Godus scandal. Not everyone would consider it a "scandal" but I'm willing to coin it that. 

If you have no idea what I'm on about Rock, Paper, Shotgun have a great writeup about the situation HERE.

Let's just go ahead and jump to the bottom of that post and address this little snippet taken from an interview with Molyneux:

“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 fuck’s sake, lets just say anything’. So I’m not sure I would do that again.”

What we have here is paper thin justification for intentionally lying to people to take their money. I can't speak for everyone reading this and certainly not on behalf of people who have used crowdfunding for projects before, but I cannot relate to the idea of deliberately embellishing a project to take people's money. When the Kickstarter was launched there was no video, and not that much of anything outside of some concept stuff and the name "Peter Molyneux" attached, if that wasn't enough to convince people to fund the project maybe you should have just accepted that? Change up your presentation and try again later, or perhaps downsize the project if it's too big in scale to get honestly funded, or seek other forms of funding since y'know; YOU'RE PETER MOLYNEUX.

I don't have any respect for intentionally embellishing a project to take people's money. I don't have any respect for taking money off students, however small, in promise of services you will never provide. And most importantly, I have no respect for anyone who may admire this kind of behaviour and consider it symptoms of "passion".

I think the part of this that's the most disgusting is not even the fact that Molyneux essentially admits to embellishing his project to get funding, but the fact he blames Kickstarter for it. This isn't some inherent flaw in his character that makes him accountable for his own actions, no no no, it's the Kickstarter that did it! Doesn't matter that there's thousands of great projects that have been successfully funded, professionally handled and satisfied backers, Kickstarter is brain poison that triggers the devil inside anyone who opts to use it! Rather than take responsibility for what he's done Molyneux opts to take a dump on the concept of crowdfunding itself, a wonderful and extremely useful option for upcoming artists and unique projects, rather than let his already tattered public persona take a hit. Now thanks to hack funded projects like Godus Kickstarter and crowdfunding has a publicity black mark on it which could take years to fully shake off, thanks Pete!

Let's talk about Peter Molyneux's public persona for a little bit; the "overambitious" artist and auteur who loves videogames so huggy buggy much and just lets his passion overtake him sometimes. Let's pretend this is 100% the truth for now, why is this something everyone admires SO MUCH? I hear all the time wherever Molyneux is criticised or accused of being a snake oil salesman about how "nice" he is and how he's just "delusional". First off, what the hell does "nice" even mean? Nice isn't a personality trait, it's a state of mind literally any human being on the planet is capable of being or not being at any given time. And as far as "delusional" goes, well if that's true then that means the man is perfectly happy to churn a lot of money into impossible ideas because he has no grip on reality, endangering studios and their employees while simultaneously marketing the game to the public on a false premise. Even if this all stems from a genuine place of error, not a solitary word of what I just said is admirable!

Personally, and this is absolutely merely a personal opinion, the Godus thing has placed me firmly on the side who thinks Molyneux isn't entirely genuine. I'm not necessarily saying he isn't a pleasant guy who would be fun to talk about games with, nor that he doesn't genuinely love and want to make videogames, but his public persona is a work of marketing. It's actively mocked and become essentially self-referential now, it's pushed out there as a safety net to convey the message "Hey! I'm an overambitious artist! If my next game is disappointing then at least it'll be interesting! And if it's complete trash well oops, that's just my glorious VISION getting out of hand again!" We should tickle on for a few more paragraphs about questionable things Molyneux has said and done in the past as well as times where he's contradicted himself before and after projects, but it'd be superfluous. To me, the fact the man is perfectly willing to bury crowdfunding and an entire generation of creators to preserve his own image reveals something very dark and insincere about him.

I'm not a huge fan of anything Molyneux has made anyway, but I will never support any of his work again.