Molyneux: games are yet to reach mass audiences

Peter Molyneux has called on the games industry to extend its reach beyond established gamers.

Speaking remotely at the Montreal International Game Summit, as reported by GamesIndustry, Molyneux said games had only partially lived up to their promise.

“Back in the '80s, the dream that we all had in this industry was that we would be truly another form of entertainment,” he said.

“You know what? To a certain extent we failed on that dream. We failed in it because we've made some fantastic experiences for a very small number of people.

"Now is the opportunity to make fantastic, amazing, unique experiences, to use all this technology to make amazing, delightful, incredible worlds for millions of people.”

Whether those millions of people deserve it is another matter; Curiosity's audience certainly presents an argument for both sides of that debate.

“Far and away, the most number of single pictures have been penises,” Molyneux said of those who carve images on the cube. On the upside, there are whole groups of users who devote themselves to turning these doodles into other, less genitally-focused images - a pretty clever trick - and those who spend hours tapping out impressively detailed artworks. So that's nice.

Molyneux admitted earlier that 22 Cans wasn't prepared for how popular Curiosity was at launch; it had 50,000 players within three hours of launch, now boasts almost 300,000 players per day for a total user base of 2 million, and had generated over 500 million taps.