Molyneux: Godus Is "Invest-To-Play," Not F2P

Cognimancer

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Molyneux: Godus Is "Invest-To-Play," Not F2P



Peter Molyneux's Godus can be played for free, but don't call it free-to-play: he finds that term a bit disingenuous.

The upcoming deity-simulator Godus will be downloadable for free. Once downloaded, you can play it, and you don't have to pay any money until later in the game experience. You might be understandably tempted to classify it as "free to play," then - but its creator Peter Molyneux would reject that label. According to him, in his trademark grandiose style, Godus will be monetized in a way "that hasn't existed before."

"There cannot be a term that is less true," Molyneux says of free-to-play. "What we need is a new term. And that term is more like 'invest-to-play.' What really are we doing? We are tempting people to invest some of their money into a game."

That might seem like the same thing, but the key difference to Molyneux is the way that F2P games are built around their payment models. "We're saying: 'Be patient or pay money,'" he says. "That's not a delightful mechanic. That's not going to get people to invest their money."

Transparent money-grubbing just soiled the reputation of Dungeon Keeper, a series that Molyneux created earlier in his career. "I wanted to play [Dungeon Keeper] and keep on playing and keep on playing," Molyneux says. "But I just kept getting beaten up for being an impatient gamer."

Godus, then, aims to avoid the pitfalls of over-eager monetization, despite nominally sharing a business model. For now, Molyneux is keeping quiet about how exactly his plan will be different.

Source: Pocket Gamer [http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/Android/Godus/news.asp?c=57324&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PocketGamerLatestAdditions+%28Pocket+Gamer+-+Latest+additions%29]

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blitz609

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Sep 11, 2008
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Just watch, this game will truly be free to play. Never trust what old Pete has to say.
 

soandnb

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L34dP1LL said:
There's already a term "coined" (see what I did there?) for this, it's pay to win.
I usually associate Pay-to-Win with games that offer you advantages for coughing up real-world money. Molyneux's term seems like it describes the F2P genre much more accurately than the term "Free-to-Play", since most games in the genre do not offer much "play" unless you pay money.
 

Smooth Operator

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So instead of addressing the issues they just intend to come up with new unknown ways to describe it to keep the public from realizing what a trash heap they ended up funding... great.
 

TheIceQueen

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Sep 15, 2013
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My issue with this strategy is where you have to pay later in the game experience. That's just another way of getting the player invested in a game and shackling them to make them feel as though they have to pay to keep progressing, which is just not something I want in a game.

I've dealt with a game that was like that once. Perfect World was like that. The lower levels were fairly easy to deal with, but by the later game stages, you were shackled and unable to do anything unless you put in a disproportionate amount of effort in an economy that's trashed or to just buy money. It wasn't even the fact that it was Pay To Win. It was the fact that you just couldn't get anywhere without paying. It's one thing to offer unfair advantages to those who pay. It's another thing to make it so that you have to pay just to keep up with, not with the other players, but with the game itself.

And that's the sort of thing that scares me here.
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
This sounds like the old shareware method, give you a few levels for free then you have to buy the rest.
 

TiberiusEsuriens

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Molyneux would be a great guy to just hang out with; he has so many noble ideas with a strong imagination. Even with that Curiosity cube thingy I believe his intentions were always pure. Unfortunately I don't think his products have ever actually lived up to his reputation, which has now become his reputation in and of itself.

The "Invest-to-Play" model IS very solid though. Hearthstone is a game I haven't payed into at all, but just by playing a few games each day I've slowly collected a TON of cards (many of which are Epics and Legendaries). It's not punishing me by making me take some time as I still get plenty, but I have thought to myself on many occasions, "Man this is fun! I'd love to throw a few dollars their way for making a solid game and get more cards while I'm at it." The big difference between F2P and I2P is that F2P asks you to pay in order to have fun, while I2P says, "If you're having fun throw a few bucks our way to have even more."

It's all about whether the devs purposely block off core aspects of the game with a pay-wall.
 

Yeager942

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If only Godus wasn't a terrible game right now. :\

I hope it gets better but I really regret backing it.
 

Evil Smurf

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Worgen said:
This sounds like the old shareware method, give you a few levels for free then you have to buy the rest.
If it's as good as Jazz Jackrabbit, I won't mind. I miss MegaEpic from the 90s.
 

Adam Jensen_v1legacy

I never asked for this
Sep 8, 2011
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I wish he would just shut the fuck up and stop making games. His games are terrible and he's one of the biggest liars in the industry these days. Nothing he says ever makes any sense. He'd make a good politician.
 

TwoSidesOneCoin

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L34dP1LL said:
There's already a term "coined" (see what I did there?) for this, it's pay to win.
Here I was going to post something similar to that. Don't know why people ever flocked to this guy, but then again I never did get into the Fable series at all.

/meh
 

-Dragmire-

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Mar 29, 2011
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These new styles of development feel weird to me. When designing a game, the question was usually, "This is the idea for the game we want to make. Now, how can we make money doing this?" while now it seems to be, "This is the way we want to charge people to play. Now, let's design a game around that pricing model.". I understand that these methods need to be considered when designing a game but it has never felt so core to the experience.
 

BrotherRool

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Oct 31, 2008
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All the stuff I've heard people talk about this game suggests it's already got wait-to-play mechanics. And are we really going to believe this kind of thing from the guy who made Curiosity?

It's really typical Moleyneux to tell us that he's going to revolutionise payment methods without having any solid foundation for his words
 

Braedan

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cursedseishi said:
He better trash the whole game now, then. The mobile version is exactly what he says he doesn't like, and has already been done in the game. Unless, of course, Totalbiscuit was lying in the video he did for the game. Besides, at least he is right about "invest to play", he got a bunch of people to invest in a F2P mobile game thanks to the fact he misled and only announced it well after the project's success.


And I believe he seriously needs to look into what "invests" means. And all this just after I said something nice about him too... godang Molyneux.
Uh... He had nothing to do with the latest dungeon keeper besides the fact that he made dungeon keeper 1.

Ot: Peter is a man who manages to speak so much, but say absolutely nothing.
 

Nurb

Cynical bastard
Dec 9, 2008
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More like "pay or grind".

I'd rather buy a game and enjoy it, not have resources and time spent on mechanics to "encourage" you to pay with nickle and dime BS
 

rembrandtqeinstein

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Generally the mechanic of waiting realtime for something in game to happen is a bad one and should NEVER exist in a single player game.

And any game that has that mechanic for single player is pretty much guaranteed to be a bad game.

For multiplayer it can be part of the gameplay but allowing players to buy out of the wait in multiplayer is another sign of bad, greedy, design.

Imagine if starcraft let people build buildings or units instantly for x moneys. It would be completely unbalanced to the point of being unplayable.