Jack Attridge, co-creator of the widely controversial game Godus, a game brought up by Peter Molyneux’s independent studio 22Cans, has left the company.
Attridge states that this move away from 22Cans and the Godus project is unrelated to the controversial interviews given by Molyneux in the early parts of 2015, where it was revealed that many key features of the Kickstarter-backed projects would likely not be developed for the PC version of the release. In an interview with The Guardian, Attridge revealed that his desire to leave was announced before the interviews that Molyneux received so much ire for.
It was January that I said to Peter I was looking to leave 22Cans and go off to start my own thing,I was really worried that it might be perceived that I was leaving the studio because of that. It really is a shame because that felt like such a terrible time for us to part ways.
Attridge promises two things with his leaving from the Godus project: a game all his own and a documentary of the Godus development process. The game he showed privately is merely a tech-demo, and Attridge actively refuses to show his project until he is sure that the features within it are not over-hyped. Learning from the mistakes of Godus‘ over-promised features, he insists that while it is tempting to show off what has already been created, he would rather show it off when it’s ready. “While it’s really hard to contain ourselves, we made that our philosophy: let’s not say a word until things are finalised,” Attridge says.
The more significant final contribution to Godus will be the documentary Attridge has helped film. Using a GoPro, he recorded a great deal of footage over the two-year development cycle of Godus. It is being touted as insightful on the difficult process to great Godus, which was promised as the spiritual successor to the ever-famous Populous, which inherently invented the god-game genre Molyneux had become so famous for with the release of Black & White during his tenure at Lionhead Studios and EA.
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”.
https://youtu.be/tNKodEzqDBc
Godus remains in early-access with continuing development. While the game hasn’t been fully released yet, it has been promised that the likelihood that all of the desired Kickstarter backers’ content will be put into the game is unlikely. While Godus remains in development, it sits at a “mostly negative” rating on Steam, and stands as an example of high-profile Kickstarter failures.
