The new CEO of developer 22cans, Simon Phillips, is quickly working to repair the developer’s image after low morale and broken promises threatened to sink it earlier this year. Phillips spoke of his plans in an interview with Eurogamer.
Peter Molyneux, famed Fable creator, hired Simon Phillips to oversee the business side of 22cans while Molyneux himself will move aside to focus on design. The company caused upset in February when it promised that the player who won Curiosity would be entitled to certain revenues from Godus, the company’s god game. Bryan Henderson, the 20-year-old Scot who won Curiosity, never received his promised reward, and public outcry drove morale down for both Molyneux and his company. Phillips’ job was to raise it up again.
“I was so excited…It was a good opportunity to work with someone who was so passionate about games and so clever with design, which is the thing I’d been missing for so many years. I love the business side of games, but I found myself being excited in a way I hadn’t felt in 20 years,” Phillips said.
Despite additional setbacks in the following months–the departure of Godus co-creator and Moleyneux’s proclaimed “protege” Dan Atttridge in April, for one–Phillips remained, and still remains, optimistic. He said his focus on 22cans’ financial workings allows Molyneux to focus on game design.
“Don’t try and do everything,” Phillips said. “Don’t try and glue it all back together because it’s just going to crumble down. You need to make games. That’s what you enjoy. I quite like business. I’ll do the business. And it seems to be working quite well so far.”
Molyneux has since shifted his attention to The Trail, a new project that Molyneux has yet to talk about at length. He hasn’t spoken to press in a while, and until he needs to step back into the limelight again, Phillips thinks the designer will stay in the background.
And as for Henderson, the Curiosity winner who came away with almost nothing–Phillips works to make amends there as well.
“It would be so easy for us to go, let’s just sort Bryan out,” Phillips said. “That’s a bit of a cop-out. I’ve made it my goal to talk to him and say, ‘Look, we know we fu***d up with this, let’s try and do something.’ I’m in contact with him now. It’s my remit to talk to him.
“We can either do it. Or we can’t do it. Or we don’t know. It falls into one of those categories.”
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