Peter Molyneux announces Curiosity – Video Games Update
Peter Molyneux, founder of the indie studio 22 Cans, has announced the first game from the studio called Curiosity.
Molyneux was the co-founder of Bullfrog studios, the company behind the popular game Syndicate, which was acquired by Electronic Arts and changed to Electronic Arts UK. Peter left Bullfrog in 1997 to form his own company called Lionhead Studios.
Lionhead was behind the popular Black & White games and the Xbox exclusive fantasy Role Playing Game series, Fable. Microsoft acquired Lionhead in 2006 and on June 4, 2009 Peter Molyneux was promoted as Creative Director at Microsoft Games Studios even though
he kept working on Fable: the Journey with Lionhead Studios.
Molyneux announced after the completion of Fable: The Journey that he will be leaving Lionhead and Microsoft Games Studios to form his own new studio once again called 22 Cans.
Peter explained that the new studio will develop 22 experiments to see how gamers interact with social media. The first one, being called ‘Curiosity’, will be a Massively Multiplayer Online which will have £50,000 worth of DLC.
The game will feature a virtual room with just a large black cube inside. Players will be able to tap it to crack it open. The cracks made on the cube by a player will be seen by everyone. Once the cube cracks open, only the last player to tap it will get
to see what’s inside.
Peter went on to describe the second stage of the game which will be the DLC stage. In this stage players can upgrade their chisels with real money and that will help them crack the cube faster. An Iron chisel would cost 59p where as a Diamond chisel would
cost £50,000.
“This is not a money-making exercise; it is a test about the psychology of monetisation. There’s only one black cube in the whole world, and everybody who’s tapping and chipping and sculpting away at this cube is trying to find out what is in the middle.
I’m not going to tell anyone,” said Peter while defending the DLC.
Peter Molyneux has been known to hype the games he’s developing and make a lot of empty promises with the fans that he cannot keep. It is unclear if gamers will be ‘curious’ enough to shell out £50,000 just to see what’s inside a Virtual Cube. It won’t be
worth the £50,000 unless it's Black & White 3 so better to just wait for someone else to do it.
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