Game developer Peter Molyneux is known for his groundbreaking “god games” Populous and Black And White, for the classic roleplaying series Fable, and for a chaotic crowdfunding campaign that involved asking people to tap a mysterious cube that might make them a god inside a game that has now been in Steam Early Access for eight years. As of this weekend, you can add one more item to the list: NFT game developer.
On Saturday in Las Vegas, Molyneux announced a partnership with cryptocurrency gaming platform Gala Games. Gala and Molyneux’s development company 22Cans will work together to launch Legacy, a management game that Molyneux first announced in 2019. As explained in a blog post, Legacy will incorporate a new digital currency called LegacyCoin (on the Ethereum blockchain) and players will join the game by buying a non-fungible token, or NFT, called “Land.” Once they join, they can form a business in the game, build a town around that business, and compete or cooperate with other players to increase their LegacyCoin funds. It’s supposed to sit in the same broad “play to earn” genre as the better-known Axie Infinity but with the kinds of moral choices and management systems for which Molyneux is known.
Molyneux is probably the most accomplished developer to make a serious foray into crypto gaming, although publishers like Ubisoft have launched NFT sales for cosmetic items. But over the past decade, he also became known for making huge undelivered promises around the crowdfunded title Godus, retreating briefly from the public eye in 2015 after a Rock Paper Shotgun interviewer suggested he was a “pathological liar.” (Among other things, Godus was supposed to share its profits with a player who was declared its god — something that didn’t happen.) He’s either an odd fit or the perfect fit for NFT gaming, a sector that’s often described as overhyped.
