Addressing a packed house at the opening keynote at PAX in downtown Seattle this morning, game designer and developer Peter Molyneux gave the first public demo of “Godus,” the upcoming god game from his 22cans studio.
Watching from the audience today, the game looked great, and completely engrossing. Molyneux demonstrated how to reshape the land and use special powers to foster a civilization, build a following and ultimately go to war with the followers of other “gods” through the online multiplayer capabilities of the game.
Molyneux, who previously led Microsoft’s Lionhead Studios, said his new studio has taken its cues in part from Minecraft, making a persistent virtual world the size of Jupiter. The actions of each player on the planet will affect others, such as changing wind currents by reshaping land.
Some people are predicting mayhem and war across the virtual planet, but not Molyneux.
“I have a prediction even more depressing than that,” he said. “My prediction is, all you guys, you’re just going to be nice — sycophantically nice to each other. And it makes me sick. When we made Fable, we spent hours, we spent months and years crafting the evil side of Fable, and only 10 percent of people actually did the evil side. Come on, you’re supposed to be gamers!”
Molyneux announced on stage at PAX that the game will be available as a beta starting Sept. 13 through the Steam early access program. Godus will run on both Windows and Mac.
