WhatsInTheCube
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Curiosity ends; Winner will become Godus' god
We've been following the saga of 22Cans' Curiosity ever since it started last year, and after speeding up the project just recently, Peter Molyneux has announced via Twitter today that it's now done. The last cube has been tapped by a winner in Scotland named Bryan Henderson, and the prize is that Henderson will become the actual god of Godus, which is Molyneux's next game in the works. As you can hear in the winner's video, Henderson will get to help decide the rules of the game going forward, and there's a little monetary compensation as well: He'll get a cut of the proceeds whenever someone spends money in Godus. Thus ends the saga, then, of what's in the cube. Or maybe not -- the app is still live in the App Store, and the last cube currently is showing a Twitter search of the hashtag #whatsinthecube. 22Cans has finished its experiment, and while the cube didn't exactly become a mainstream phenomenon as Molyneux may have hoped, the project, we heard, was profitable, and considering that someone did reach the end, I'd call it a success. We'll have to wait and see what Godus looks like when finished, and then if Molyneux has any other social, experimental ideas like this in the works going forward.
22Cans speeds up the Curiosity cube
Peter Molyneux's 22Cans studio put out Curiosity on iOS last year, as a sort of a social game-slash-experiment. The idea was that hundreds of thousands of people would be able to download the app, and then use it chip away (by tapping) on a virtual cube, unearthing layer after layer of virtual cubes, with only one person getting the chance to eventually tap on the center. Originally, the project was scheduled to end sometime next year, but that's become too long for 22Cans: The company has decided to update the app down to the last 50 layers. "I think six months is a long time for this to go on," Molyneux has told Wired. "We're on the cusp of it being forgotten about." That's certainly true -- the iOS market moves quickly, and Curiosity never really did catch players' attention the way 22Cans hoped it would. But Molyneux believes that even though the app may have fallen down many players' priority lists, the project is worth following through on. "It is life-changing in any measurable way," he says about the reward hidden at the center of the cube. "I'm telling you, you want this." Interesting. Curiosity has also been playing with monetization, offering in-app purchases to both remove cubes from the game more quickly, and even offering to put them back on for a certain price. But for all of its experimenting, Molyneux says the game has only made "a few tens of thousands" of British pounds. 22Cans is also expected to announce another new title -- the company is currently working on a followup to Populous called Godus, which it ran a successful Kickstarter campaign for, and boosting Curiosity's interest will help them promote the next title after that. So if interest picks up again, it may not be long at all before we finally see these last 50 layers chipped away. And then, we'll all get to finally find out just "what's in the cube."
22 Cans talks Curiosity: What's in the Cube and more
22 Cans is Peter Molyneux's latest endeavor -- a smaller indie game company from the creator of titles like Populous, Black and White and Fable that's putting together more experimental games on platforms like iOS. The company's first title is Curiosity, a game/experience that arrived on the App Store a little while ago. And now the developers are doing some interviews talking about how Curiosity is doing, and what's next for 22 Cans going forward. Jack Attridge is up first; he's a game designer at 22 Cans, and he recently talked with 148Apps about how Curiosity has changed during development. Initially, it was very straightforward (and the game is still very simple): Players would just tap away "cublets" off of a gigantic cube, in a sort of massively multiplayer attack of destruction. But the devs found that the game needed even more rewards, so they added in combo bonuses and a clear screen bonus for clearing cubes completely off of the iPhone or iPad's screen. He hints at what's next with the game as well: "There is something that people tapping on the cube are doing, and are already involved in that they are unaware of," says Attridge. "I can't say what that is yet, but in the future...that tapping will have counted for something." We're not sure what that means, but Curiosity has been interesting so far, and odds are it will continue to be so. Over on RockPaperShotgun, Molyneux himself chimes in to say that 22 Cans has been overwhelmed by the reaction to Curiosity, both in terms of its servers being overrun, and Molyneux's own emotional state (at one point in the interview, he reportedly breaks down and cries when considering just what he wants the experiment to mean to the world). 22 Cans has also just launched a Kickstarter for another game, called Project Godus and supposedly based on Populous itself, so Molyneux talks about how he's approaching game design these days. It sounds much more agile and responsive than the big titles he's worked on in the past. Both interviews are definitely worth reading, especially if you've been as fascinated by the experiment behind Curiosity as I am. It'll be interesting to see what happens with the 22 Cans model as it continues forward.
Daily iPhone App: Curiosity makes you wonder what is in the cube
Curiosity, a free app that arrived on the App Store last night, is more of an experiment than a game. It's developed by a company called 22 Cans, which is Peter Molyneux's latest endeavor. Molyneux is the famous creator of classic games like Dungeon Keeper, Populous, and Fable. Now he's built 22 Cans to work on smaller, more experimental projects. Curiosity is definitely that. As you can see in the video below, it's essentially a collaborative destruction engine, tasking thousands of users around the world with chipping away at a large virtual cube, in hopes of discovering what's at its center. That's the whole game, really. When you log in (optionally with a Facebook account), you can tap away at various surfaces on the cube, and clear them out to earn coins. The coins let you buy various implements to destroy the cube with additional effectiveness. All 50,000 players (the total when I logged in to play) will continue to hack away at the cube's many layers until its center revealed. Some text that appears in the game's introduction reveals a twist: only one player will discover what's in the cube (because presumably only one player will get to hack away at the final square in the middle). Of course, no one knows who that will be. If you're curious and want to help find out, Curiosity is a free universal download on the App Store right now.
