Godus mobile publisher DeNA has "no creative control, no influence on the PC version," says Molyneux
Peter Molyneux has said Godus mobile publisher DeNA will have no creative control over the game, and have no influence on the PC version of the game which was backed by crowd funding on Kickstarter.
Speaking with RPS, Molyneux said he will "listen" to the firm when it comes to pricing the mobile version, "because they have more experience."
"DeNA have no influence whatsoever on the design of the game, on the pricing of the PC version, on the release date of the PC version, nothing at all," he told RPS. "That was one of the criteria we had. What I would say is that I would be a fool if I didn’t listen to them about pricing on mobile. There’s nothing in the contract that does that. I think you have to listen to people like that because they have a lot more experience than you.
"No real concrete decisions have been made on that as of yet, because we’re obsessing very much about the PC version at the moment.
"I’m obsessing about what we’re charging on the PC. It has to be the right price for the right experience. One of the big questions I want to ask the people who play the alpha and beta version is, what do you reckon we should charge for this game? And we’ll get our pricing structure from that. "
Molyneux said he's obsessing over what to charge for the PC version as it's usually retail which sets the price of games, especially on console.
"The whole metaphor of how we charge for games, especially in this world of the different ways of getting money for people, is changing very radically," he said. "I love the idea of, rather than saying, 'Everything on Steam is $19.95, so we’ll be $19.95,' I much prefer the idea of getting the people who pledged to help us with that pricing decision. Maybe that goes terribly wrong and it ends up that Godus is 2,000 pounds a copy, or 20 pence a copy, or maybe, just maybe, this is a way to start judging the price.
"We have no expert marketing people here. We don’t even have particularly great financial people here. We’re trying to find one of those people, by the way. So it seems like the best people to ask are those people."
Still, while looking for "financial people," Molyneux plans to keep 22Cans small and not make the same "horrible, terrible, tragic mistake" he made with Lionhead.
"I forgot who Lionhead should be. You have to define who you are, and what we are is obsessive developers," he said. "That’s what we should be. That’s what we should stay. If we try and make ourselves into something more than that or different from that, then we lost that obsessional, passionate quality that is the thing that makes a game great.
"Lionhead grew to like 300 people. We just forgot who we were. We forgot why we were. We forgot what was important. If we can stay small, as 22Cans, and if we can stay obsessive about one thing and make that one thing brilliant and amazing, then we can stand up and hold our heads about the parapet and be proud.
"But if we start diluting it, then bad things happen. That’s my view."
You can read the entire interview through the link, and watch out for Dave's conversation with the man himself later this week.
Godus is expected on PC in September.