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''Curiosity – What's Inside the Cube?'' was an experimental
video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...
by
Peter Molyneux Peter Douglas Molyneux (; born 5 May 1959) is an English video game designer and programmer. He created the god games '' Populous'', ''Dungeon Keeper'', and '' Black & White'', as well as ''Theme Park'', the ''Fable'' series, '' Curiosity: Wh ...
's studio 22cans. Originally called ''Curiosity'', the game was later renamed to avoid confusion with the
Mars rover A Mars rover is a remote-controlled motor vehicle designed to travel on the surface of Mars. Rovers have several advantages over stationary landers: they examine more territory, they can be directed to interesting features, they can place them ...
. The social experiment ended on 26 May 2013 and was won by Bryan Henderson from Edinburgh, Scotland. The game was met with controversy after the reward ended up being less "life-changing" than claimed, and ultimately nearly nonexistent due to the commercial failure of '' Godus''.


Background

''Curiosity'' was a multiplayer
social experiment A social experiment is a method of psychological or sociological research that observes people's reactions to certain situations or events. The experiment depends on a particular social approach where the main source of information is the parti ...
. The game setting was a featureless and
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white room in the middle of which floated a giant
cube A cube or regular hexahedron is a three-dimensional space, three-dimensional solid object in geometry, which is bounded by six congruent square (geometry), square faces, a type of polyhedron. It has twelve congruent edges and eight vertices. It i ...
made of billions of smaller cubes ("cubelets") and white, floating text across each layer, usually topic related (
hashtag A hashtag is a metadata tag operator that is prefaced by the hash symbol, ''#''. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services–especially Twitter and Tumblr–as a form of user-generated tagging that enable ...
, notifications etc.), with small messages. Players tapped the cubelets to dig through the surface of each layer and reveal the next layer below. The goal was to reach the center and to discover what was inside the cube. Each layer, which had a distinct look or design, contained a clue as to what was in the centre of the cube. Each cubelet destroyed by a player awarded them coins. Coins could be spent on tools that temporarily enhanced the player's abilities, such as picks ranging from iron to steel to diamond that increased the number of cubelets destroyed with each tap, or
firecracker A firecracker (cracker, noise maker, banger) is a small explosive device primarily designed to produce a large amount of noise, especially in the form of a loud bang, usually for celebration or entertainment; any visual effect is incidental to ...
s that could be laid on the cube in long strings to chain together explosions. 22cans added more gameplay mechanics as the players progressed through the cube. Version 2, released on 7 December, included three new features: Draw mode, Badgers and Golden Badgers, as well as a page graphing various statistics about the cube against time. In addition, Peter Molyneux suggested there may be more to the game than it would seem: "There is something we haven't told everybody about when you play the cube. When you play the cube you're also doing something else. You don't realise you're doing it. ../nowiki> You're not just doing things in the cube. You don't realise it but you're doing something in something else as well at the same time." Peter Molyneux claimed that "what is inside the cube is life-changingly amazing by any definition". Critics stated that the game designer might be over-promising. When it was suggested to him that he should "tone down the enthusiasm", he responded: "I don’t want to believe less in something. I want to make something that is worthy of the emotion behind it." According to the statistics pages available in-game from version 2, as of 8 December the game had over three million users. 22cans did not anticipate such widespread interest in the game, and were not prepared to handle the extreme load, causing connectivity issues to persist from launch day to nearly a week afterwards. The floating text across the layers usually carried the hashtag for this 'game experiment', ''#Curiosity'', or short, informal messages from the staff.


Release

The game was submitted to
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on 28 September 2012. The game was intended to be released at 00:22 (12:22 AM) on 7 November 2012, but Apple released the game without the knowledge of 22cans early on 6 November. The Android version was also released on 6 November. On launch day the application was unable to connect to the official
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for the majority of users. Since its launch on
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, reviews were polarized with about a third of users rating 5
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and two-thirds rating 1 star. Reviews consistently improved since version 2, which introduced 3 new gameplay features, was released on the Android store on 7 December. The game was intended to be released for tablets and PCs, but by 9 November 2012 Molyneux revealed that due to the popularity of the game and the strain on 22cans' servers, the company would be unable to support a PC release without the help of a publisher. ''Curiosity'' was ultimately only available on mobile devices.


Reception

The
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version received "mixed or average" reviews according to the
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website
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.


Layers

Each layer of the cube had a distinct look or design, usually alternating between photos and plain colours. Developers said the cube originally contained around 69 billion cubelets. As of April 2013, there were approximately 50 layers remaining, consisting of 3.6 billion cubelets. The last layer was removed and the cube completed on 26 May 2013.


Completion

On 26 May 2013, 22cans and Peter Molyneux announced via Twitter that the last layer had been removed and the Cube had been opened, revealing the prize video to the winning player that had removed the final layer. The winner was identified as
Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...
resident Bryan Henderson, who was given the option to either keep the knowledge of the contents of the cube to himself or share it with the public. Molyneux announced that Henderson opted to share the prize. Prior to the game's completion, Molyneux regularly described the prize as "life-changing," though clarified it would not be "a huge mountain of cash ..an amazing sports car ..or '' Half-Life 3''." According to the video 22cans posted on YouTube the day that the experiment ended, the cube awarded Henderson with the role of "god of gods" within 22cans' upcoming
god game A god game is an artificial life game that casts the player in the position of controlling the game on a large scale, as an entity with divine and supernatural powers, as a great leader, or with no specified character (as in ''Spore''), and pla ...
, '' Godus'', and 1% of all of the revenue earned by ''Godus''. Henderson's role within ''Godus'' would grant him the ability to reign over other players, with the ability to "intrinsically decide on the rules that the game is played by." In a 2012 interview with ''
Rock Paper Shotgun ''Rock Paper Shotgun'' is a British video game journalism website. It was launched in July 2007 to focus on PC game, PC games and was acquired by Gamer Network, a network of sites led by ''Eurogamer'', in May 2017. History ''Rock Paper S ...
'', Molyneux declared the prize would last for five to ten years. After the revelation of the prize, Molyneux said the award would last six months, and that after six months, Henderson could be overthrown by other players in his 'god of gods' role. Over 18 months later, Henderson reported little to no contact from 22cans. Speaking to ''
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'', Molyneux explained that the person in charge of keeping in contact with Henderson left the company and no one was ever reassigned the position, an act which Molyneux called "inexcusable". In March 2017, Molyneux stated that ''Godus'' was not profitable and Henderson would therefore not receive money. As of 14 December 2023, ''Godus'' is no longer available for purchase on PC, never having left
early access Early access, also known as alpha access, alpha founding, paid alpha, or game preview, is a funding model in the video game industry by which consumers can purchase and play a game in the various pre-release Software release life cycle, developm ...
. The 'god of gods' role was never implemented and Henderson never received his due prize. Upon learning about the controversy, indie publisher
Devolver Digital Devolver Digital, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Austin, Texas, specializing in the publishing of indie games. The company was founded in June 2009 by Nigel Lowrie, Harry Miller, Graeme Struthers, Rick Stults, and Mike Wil ...
and developer Roll7 decided to include Henderson as a non-playable character in their 2015 release '' Not a Hero''.


References


External links


Curiosity, Cubes & Numbers
– Calculations about the size of the cube.
Curiosity Cube Stats
– Estimate of the time remaining until completion of the cube.

– Progress of cubelet destruction over time. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Curiosity - What's Inside the Cube? 2012 video games Android (operating system) games IOS games Multiplayer online games Video games developed in the United Kingdom Video game controversies