E3 2012: Molyneux’s New Game Has $77,800 DLC

Before you read any further: this isn’t a joke. Peter Molyneux’s new game Curiosity will feature a piece of DLC priced at £50,000 GBP. At the time of writing that’s $77,885 USD.

So expect oodles of new maps, playable characters, outfits, weapons, cat armor, cars, missions, quests, tracks, enemies, bosses, oh, no…it’s a chisel.

Curiosity was revealed to New Scientist by Molyneux as a social experiment, his first project since the well-documented departure from Microsoft’s Lionhead Studios.

The game, shown off for the first time at this week’s E3, features a virtual room and in it a single black cube. As you chip away at the cube it begins to fracture. It’s also possible for others to chip away at this cube, and with this you’ll see the cracks they’re making. Eventually, or so the plan goes, the core will be reached and the insides revealed, though only the player that makes the final tap will actually get to see whatever this mysterious center holds.

22Cans will record the social media spreading of news of the reveal in order to learn about the psychology of social media sharing. The results will then be fed back into another title Molyneux will release a couple of years later.

The game will feature a multitude of chisels to buy at various strengths and prices. An iron chisel is apparently 10 times more powerful than the one you start with and will set you back 59 pence (around 92 cents). The top of the range, aforementioned $77,885 chisel is 100,000 times more powerful, and is a limited edition: strictly 1 of 1.

“It’s an insane amount of money,” Molyneux understated. “This is not a money-making exercise; it is a test about the psychology of monetization.” Will one person buy the chisel, or will players club together to share its power?

Curiosity is coming to PC and mobile platforms, features one-click purchasing (okay, that’s not true), and is the first of 22Cans’ “22 Experiments”. It’s likely to be released sometime in July.