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Brit wins Curiosity, becomes a god in Molyneux's next game

A man in Edinburgh has won Peter Molyneux's Curiosity, and will lay down the rules for the forthcoming game Godus.

Joe Svetlik Reporter
Joe has been writing about consumer tech for nearly seven years now, but his liking for all things shiny goes back to the Gameboy he received aged eight (and that he still plays on at family gatherings, much to the annoyance of his parents). His pride and joy is an Infocus projector, whose 80-inch picture elevates movie nights to a whole new level.
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Joe Svetlik
2 min read

Peter Molyneux's multiplayer experiment Curiosity came to an end last night, with the winner being announced as Bryan Henderson from Edinburgh. So, what was the prize? Henderson has been bestowed god status, quite literally. He'll become the ruler of Godus, Molyneux's next title, laying down the rules, deciding how many people can play, and even sharing in the game's profit.

Curiosity required players to tap away at billions of tiles on a cube online. For six months. Over 150 days, 25 billion cubelets were destroyed, Molyneux said in a video announcing the prize, which I've embedded after the break.

In the video that was sent to Henderson and since posted online, Molyneux appears to be inside the cube. Addressing Henderson, Molyneux says, "You will have fame, you will have fortune, and you will have the power to introduce morals into a game," adding that the prize says "as much about the effort as about the outcome.

"This idea of allowing one human being to be the god of an entire game genre came to us many years ago, and it's only now, when we're all connected, when the whole of the gaming universe is connected together, that we have the power to do it."

Godus is an "innovative reinvention" of Molyneux's legendary Populous, which launched back in 1989. Godus was funded on crowdsourcing site Kickstarter, and will be out on PC, Mac, Android and iOS in September.

The prize for winning Curiosity was a closely guarded secret since the game launched in November last year. Last night, gamers were frantically refreshing the Twitter hashtag #whatsinsidethecube, while staff at Molyneux's 22Cans verified the winner was a human rather than a bot, and that he or she was happy to share what the prize was.

What do you think of the prize? Is it life-changing, as Molyneux says? Or a bit of a letdown after all that hype? Let me know in the comments, or on Facebook.