For those that doesn't know, Peter Molyneux, former head of Bullfrog and of Lionhead Studios is now asking for your help in funding his "innovative reinvention" of Populous — Godus — via Kickstarter.
Seeing as Molyneux has sold off his two development studios to large publishers (Bullfrog to EA in the mid-90s and Lionhead to Microsoft earlier this year), shouldn't he be able to finance Godus himself?
This concern is answered by the game designer in an interview with Kotaku, Molyneux explains why that's not happening, how he has "finite" resources and how doesn't have enough money to fund 22Cans all the time.
I am not by any measure a hugely wealthy individual. I live in a nice house. I have two cars. My son goes to a nice school. We take one holiday a year. By anybody's measure, you wouldn't call me wealthy. I think the confusion is that for every game I've done, I have received vast, huge riches of royalties from. In fact, most of the royalties from my games have gone into continuing to fund the company. And then with every company I've sold, the philosophy has been the same, that I've shared the ownership of the company with the people who are involved in it.
I certainly don't have enough money to fund 22cans for all time. I've used a lot of my money to fund the company in March of this year, and to recruit probably the best team that I've ever worked with and to release Curiosity but like all resources they're finite. I think the assumption that I'm richer than Mark Zuckerberg and that we both own Europe has hurt our Kickstarter campaign.
Futhermore, Molyneux reveals that he wasn't even the majority stakeholder at Lionhead and added, "With Lionhead, I can't remember the percentage of my share but it was way, way less than 50%. I was just the front man and I believed that the talent was the people behind the scenes."
Erm, I dunno, Peter. I mean, having a nice house, two cars and your kid going to a nice school kinda paints you out to be wealthy. Not Donald Trump or Bill Gates wealthy, but wealthy enough that people questioning why you can't finance your game by yourself seems to be a little warranted.
Will you be donating money to help finance Godus or do you think Molyneux just doesn't want to risk his own money in funding his next project?
