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I think Minecraft is a pretty unique case based on it being incredibly successful and it being a game. The article was written in 2011 but even back then he ha
by nickjj 6y ago
I think Minecraft is a pretty unique case based on it being incredibly successful and it being a game.
The article was written in 2011 but even back then he had over a million individual sales. I forgot how much it cost back then but at $20 you're looking at $20 million in its first year. As a solo developer I can't imagine a world where I would be upset about piracy if I had multi-generational wealth after incrementally developing a game for 2 years.
His story is really inspiring tho, it definitely has a ship fast mantra about it if you follow the timeline of its first public release to 1.0'ing.
But it being a game is also interesting when talking about piracy. There's a lot of ancillary value in having more exposure. If someone pirates your game but streams it or creates videos around it and those videos get millions of views there's millions of chances someone will buy the game. It becomes organic advertising. Also, the value isn't something you can copy (like a book or video course) and reap the rewards from. The value is the experience of playing the game.
- franciscop 6y agoIIRC it was $5 on the alpha, $10 on the beta and $20 on the final version. I recall getting sad that I waited too long until buying it and it was already out of the alpha.
- wsinks 6y agoI remember playing it on alpha and I realize that it was one of the coolest software phenomenons ever. I bought it early and was well rewarded. What a fascinating story, especially to all the minecraft clones
- zorked 6y agoI bought it for $5 on alpha, mostly because I thought Notch was being a bit of a fool trying to sell a hugely pixelated game that ran on the JVM but I thought that he might need a little moral support and that I could be one of the very few people who would ever pay to play it. If only I knew.
- jmiskovic 6y agoNotch's quote from this article is very relevant: “If you just make your game and keep adding to it, the people who copyright infringed would buy it the next week”. This was huge factor for early Minecraft to become such success. Pirated sources were always few versions behind and fear of missing out was strong. I find it strange that it didn't inspire more studios to follow similar open style of development.
- ssully 6y agoI am not sure if I would say Minecraft is the impetus, but a large (if not a majority) of games that come out these days are follow an "early access" style development that Minecraft did. Even large AAA games, while not "early access", have content release plans and are constantly adding new features.