Hmmm.
Could this scheme fall foul of gambling laws? It's not clear from the article whether there's any actual skill involved.
Peter Molyneux's new studio 22Cans is ready to launch its first game, Curiosity, an app that looks at how social media is used to spread information, apparently. The Bafta fellow revealed details about the unique game, in which players contribute towards chiselling away at a black cube in a virtual room, causing it to fracture …
Sounds maybe exciting but more like a lot of work for no reward.
What he thinks will happen... "truly amazing, absolutely unique, social media, AI, incredible never-seen-before crowdsourced solutions"
What will actually happen... black cube has one or two random bits chipped off by inquisitive passers-by who go "wtf?"
Or some creative soul figures out how to turn the iron drill into a depleted uranium one and solves it immediately
Interesting idea or experiment. I've never bought DLC that was purely cosmetic (for example weapon skin packs in Gears of War 3) or for something that was eventually unlockable (car packs in NFS:Hot Pursuit) but obviously people do, not sure anyone will spend 50K on a piece of DLC though, I guess he's maybe going to find out the optimum pricing point for DLC add ons and work round that.
If someone does buy the 50K piece will it be bought "by my son, by accident, he's only 2 months old, I must of left my login details on the system"
So it's basically a game requiring no skill, where you just tap at a cube until your break your finger or your screen (or your mouse and finger if using a computer rather than a phone.) How dull.
Also what happens when this one person gets into the cube and finds out the "amazing" secret inside? I'm guessing a new cube appears and you just start again. Yawn.
I don't think so, I'm fairly sure the article covers this, but once the cube has been broken, that's it, the "game" is over. The idea is that only one person can find out the big secret, and then Peter and his merry band of data miners trawl the social networks to find out how the news spreads.
I'm not sure how to feel about this.
Molyneux is brilliant at coming up with concepts and novel ideas.
Implementation, not so much.
Black & White was a brilliant game, struggling to break out from a shell of terrible implementation. Fable failed to live up to the promise of Project Ego. So I feel rather ambivalent to the guy these days. Also I'd dearly love to see a properly-implemented version of Black and White with the bugs polished out, modern physics instead of the clunky engine the original had, more nuance to the choice about being a good or evil god, etc.
"Game" is going a bit far isn't it?
What between my real job and this, the tedium can never end!
I can go to work for the promise of one day having something awesome to show for it.
Then i can come home to continue with this and one day have something to show for it!
There is zero chance of dissapointment in either case, clearly.
I think i'll pass.
Also, it contains a picture of Molyneux himself, i am sure of it.
I think I've just figured it out.
The Box Will Never Open
Seriously, go with me on this. This has sod all to do with how quickly a single point of information can spread around the world, this is an experiment to see how much money gullible idiots will spunk on NOTHING. What's the bet that the upgraded "tools" people pay for wear out after an hour, a day, a week or whatever? And they have to buy them again, and again, and again.
Maybe there is a side experiment running whereby they are tracking to see how long it takes from someone linking their FaceBook / Twitter account to the game and them posting the phrase "Fuck this shit!".
In other news, a well known gaming industry personality has come up with a licence to print money.
Its got people talking already, and Im pretty sure thats his goal, to track how communication (or lack thereof) is working anymore in the age of supposed instantaneous communication. For a game designer he sure has a hell of a sociological bent. This sort of reminds me of this particular arthouse USB game, I forget the title of it, that users are supposed to play through til they die and then pass it on though in practice it didnt work out the way it was intended.
The free money's just an added bonus as far as he's concerned, Im sure.