"You, the person who has reached the centre will be the god of all people who are playing Godus. [Molyneux's upcoming god game.]
You will decide on the rules the game is played by. [...] Every time people spend money you will get a small piece of that pie."
Commercial? They are paying the winner, plus letting him/her be an intrinsic part of the game.
This is a lot more than I expected. I was thinking it'd be something trivial and self-promotional, like some autographed copies of Godus, or maybe a vintage Black & White t-shirt.
“People are going to hate me for this,” Henderson told Wired in a phone interview, “but I only registered for the game earlier this morning, about an hour before I won the thing.”
I initially thought that looked a bit like a lame attempt to get money while "provoking dialog about what makes game a game" or something arty farty like that, because he makes it sound like that.
Now it seems it's a rather clever attempt at crowd funding.
I am not sure why there is so much hate and vitriol against Peter Molynuex's ... uh, what did you say, "arty farty". On the comments for the Engadget article, there were lots and lots of incessant comments about his pretentiousness. People reacting with cringes. What is up with that? It's like listening to a bunch of middle school kids at an art museum.
That doesn't answer anything. I know what pretentious means.
What I don't understand is why people _don't_ think what Molyneux is doing is important, or have culture. Why do people _feel_ hatred and shame for him?
Feels like a kickstarted lottery, in a way. But since the winner didn't really know what the prize would be, the precise regulatory environment such a thing would operate in is pretty grey!
There may be a good reason; the servers for the game ultimately decide what user tapped on the final cube. It's likely the servers were in the UK and thus latency would put US players at a disadvantage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qhzb9OUWrXU
Reminds me a little of 'ready player one' on a much smaller scale. I hope they think it was worth all that time tapping.