Does God Hate Populous?

I recently sent a Tweet to veteran game designer Peter Molyneux, creator of many god games including the fantastic Populous, making the point that God would hate playing his god games because they would be too much of a busman’s holiday. I got no reply – which I can only assume meant that Peter Molyneux was too upset to face typing anything back.

Remember Peter - God hates Populous, it's too much of a busman's holiday. @petermolydeux — Normal Joe (@iamnormal0) May 30, 2013

For those not familiar with the term, a ‘busman’s holiday’ is an English expression from the 1980′s which assumed that a bus driver wouldn’t enjoy going on holiday because it would mean he’d have to take a lengthy bus trip – possibly to a place he has been driving his bus every day.

But was I right in my assumption? Would God hate Populous?

Timing:

First off, god is love. He loves everything – even bad things. He even loves the bloody devil for god’s sake. I mean – Jesus Christ, that’s a whole lot of love isn’t it? Jesus loved his neighbour, he loved everyone. But I think the mere fact that god sent his only son down over 2,000 years ago – a time when computer games were limited in terms of graphics and very basic in terms of game play just proves that God just wasn’t a big fan of computer games. If he were then he’d probably have sent Jesus down at the time of the Dreamcast / N64 / PS2 – heady days indeed.

‘But’, I hear you say, god doesn’t obey the rules of time. He’s probably played all computer games to death, he’s done 200 full seasons on Championship manager, won everything, taken Grimsby Town to the Champions league final and even got Man United Relegated without losing his job before the end of the season (not easy, believe me).

People play people sims

God games are taking the experience of being a god and applying it to a game. This sounds like an interesting idea for people to play with, but just as people wouldn’t want to play at being people, god wouldn’t want to play god, right? That would just be boring…

Oh yes…the sims. So perhaps people do like to play at being people. It’s strange though, I feel as though God, if a person, would not be a sims playing person. That’s probably because I picture god as an old man sat on a rock looking down on earth. Old men who sit on rocks don’t play the sims, teenage human girls play sims. Then again…god’s whole ‘life’ project thing is a lot like the sims isn’t it? He created the universe…sims is just a scaled down version of that. May be he’d love it – it would be a bit like going back to Battlefield 1943 after playing Battlefield 4, a nice bit of simple gaming. May be my picture of god is wrong and he’s most like a teenage girl.

Cheating?

Now, the beauty of gaming is often the challenge that it presents. In Populous when it’s too easy it quickly loses its appeal. When you get a cheat for your favourite game for about 5 minutes it’s amazing fun, but quickly it becomes tired and boring. Imagine if you had god’s powers. It would be like having the ultimate cheat for every game. You’d complete it without ever having had to look at the screen. You’d smash Sonic 1 in about 3 minutes and Sonic 2 would probably only take about 4 minutes. Online you’d dominate the l@m3r n00bs constantly. Populous would feel restrictive “OMG?! I can’t even turn them all into frogs?! This sucksssssss”.

Overall

I stand by my original comment. I just don’t think that God would enjoy Populous. I’m sorry that this upsets Peter Molyneux so much, but it’s a fact. Hopefully Peter can create a game about creating gods which god can get more on board with. If not, just don’t worry about it Peter – you made a really long boring competition with a cube in it. Just be happy about that.

Note: I love Molyneux games:- Populous was one of my favourite games as a kid and I’m looking forward to new game ‘Godus’. 

Originally posted on my blog here.