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Peter Molyneux's got a problem, and that problem is Molyneux himself. Discussing his games becomes impossible without discussing the man himself, a public figure who is, depending on your own view, a dreamer, an innovator, a liar or just a plain fraud. It's something of a pity that Molyneux the man, fantastic spinner of soundbites that he is, has often eclipsed the games he's played a part in making. It's even more of a shame when the game that he's now working on looks to be the most interesting thing Molyneux's put his name to in years. So I headed into a meeting with Molyneux in Cologne determined not to write about the man himself, and instead to put the focus on Godus, the culmination of the dream that sent him away from the corporate world of Microsoft and towards the more independently minded environment he finds himself in at 22 Cans. That change is explicit in our surroundings - it doesn't seem that long ago when Molyneux was taking the stage at Microsoft's conferences, but now he's taking meetings in his own hotel room, where he answers the door himself and demonstrates the game on a shabby set-up on a glass table where his tobacco vaporiser lies next to his MacBook Pro.
So yeah, it's hard to write about Godus without writing about Molyneux himself, but there's probably a good reason for that. Molyneux's put so much of himself into Godus, for better or worse, and it feels like his most personal endeavour in some time. "The whole story of the game started about three years ago when I started to see things like FarmVille and CityVille and all the others come out and being described as god games," he explains. "It made me sort of childishly angry. I'm not saying that was the only reason to leave Microsoft, but the opportunity to say those aren't god games, for me god games are something different, and wouldn't it be amazing to reinvent that whole genre?"
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