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After watching Minecraft: The Story of Mojang [1] I was left with the impression that no one at Mojang really knows how to run a business, but since the cash fr

After watching Minecraft: The Story of Mojang [1] I was left with the impression that no one at Mojang really knows how to run a business, but since the cash from Minecraft just keeps coming in, everybody at Mojang is just having a great time. In this sense they a very much a like a startup learning to become a company, but without the financial pressure. It will be interesting to see if Minecraft will be a one-hit wonder for Mojang or if they will be able to grow into a company with sustainable profits from multiple IPs. [1] http://www.2playerproductions.com/projects/minecraft http://www.2playerproductions.com/projects/minecraft

jebblue 13y ago
Personally I don't care if they never produce another hit, Minecraft is amazing and rarely does such an awesome game come along.
- imnoexpertbut 13y ago
  it's all about the gameplay.
michaelgrafl 13y ago
I thought 0x10c seemed really promising, both aesthetically and conceptually. I don't know anything about any of their other games. I don't think I'd like them much. The abortion of 0x10c is a real bummer though. I hope they had better reasons than just running out of excitement for it.
VLM 13y ago
WRT multiple IPs, I am interested to see how they interact with the mods ecosystem over time. Not so much can they make a twitter app or a 2-d platformer or something equally unrelated. I don't want a blocky minecraft looking pacman clone, at all. I'd pay more for the RailCraft mod than I paid for minecraft itself, in terms of enjoyment per $. Of course the RC mod is free ... Also I use buildcraft mod although the gold pipes suck for steam distribution, and I'd pay for buildcraft, although thats free. Thermal expansion has better steam distribution... The great mothership recently released a new minecraft version, which amounted to a couple new flowers and some biomes for people who don't mine, and nothing at all for anyone who does anything below the surface. Its called Minecraft, gentlemen, not fuzzy bunny craft so lose the giant mushroom biome please, and beg borrow or steal the buildcraft, railcraft, forestry, applied energetics, universal electricity, and a couple other mods so people who mine in MINEcraft actually have something fun to do rather than admiring double height grass blocks and mesa biomes. The other thing which is hilarious from a guy who's been into computers since 1981 is the mods ecosystem is from a software engineering / systems administration standpoint just a tiny bit more advanced than the msdos era, actually pretty close to my historical digging into MVS/360. So its 2013 and apt and dpkg and friends have existed since the very early 90s, but in 2013 the way you handle version dependence and bug tracking and distribution is you manually visit adware download spam sites and click 50 times to download a tiny mod, and then track version compatibility manually by visiting 50 decentralized web forums. Oh and don't get me started on people who think a 15 minute youtube video with awful video and music counts as the only form of "documentation" required. Dudes, its 2013 almost 2014 not the era of msdos 3.11 and warez BBS systems? It really does suck after using Linux since the early 90s and downshifting back to 1985, even though I run minecraft on linux (both client and server). Mojang should implement a minecraft mod store with a payment system thats trustworthy/reliable and very fast with excellent versioning compatibility. I'd pay $40 for railcraft and mojang can keep $10 of it and everyone else will be happy as long as I get $40 of actual service, like its very fast and completely transparent and highly reliable and effective and perhaps dare I ask, effectively and centrally documented and centrally bug tracked?
- digibri 13y ago
  My understanding is that the team at Mojang is seriously committed to their new mod-based vision; but that there are many technical hurdles they must overcome to achieve their goals. Just looking at the patch notes for the 1.7, 1.7.1, and 1.7.2, it looks to me that they did some significant code refactoring and expanded the capabilities of the core systems. Additionally, they seem to have added new features to really enhance the multiplayer experience. Among the changes I see as significant (either from improving the social experience, or from technical difficulty) are: + Achievements are now world specific + Gaining achievements now announced to other players + Servers can now have a “server-icon.png” that is displayed in the multiplayer list + You can see who’s online before joining, just hover the player count number in the server list + Links in chat are now clickable + Click on somebody’s name to send a private message + Added Stained Glass + Added a bunch of new graphics options + Added some shader tests (click on the “Super Secret Settings” a couple of times…) * You can now have multiple resource packs loaded at the same time * Resource packs can now hold sound effects * Servers can recommend resource packs * Network code has been rewritten * Sound manager has been rewritten
  - VLM 13y ago
    There may be interesting organizational hurdles, as subjectively the community, or at least the mod community, or the users of the most popular mods, appear to implement changes showing they believe the best way to enhance the multiplayer experience is new sets of blocks doing cool new things with new varieties of technology, whereas most of the listed "upgrades" boil down to making a nice chat system. Make the game more fun with more toys, vs lets make an app to socialize oh and there's also a game attached or something. I think this frictional point is where most of the interesting action will happen in the near term evolution of MC and Mojang.
    - asiekierka 13y ago
      Actually, most of the changes revolve around "let's make it easier for modders to make mods" and "let's work on areas that we neglected". Private messaging systems are used a LOT on servers.
hedwall 13y ago
they released scrolls a couple of months ago and it already paid for the two year of development it had. I do believe mojang will be creating some interesting things in the coming years.

jebblue 13y ago

Personally I don't care if they never produce another hit, Minecraft is amazing and rarely does such an awesome game come along.

imnoexpertbut 13y ago
it's all about the gameplay.

michaelgrafl 13y ago

I thought 0x10c seemed really promising, both aesthetically and conceptually. I don't know anything about any of their other games. I don't think I'd like them much. The abortion of 0x10c is a real bummer though. I hope they had better reasons than just running out of excitement for it.

VLM 13y ago

WRT multiple IPs, I am interested to see how they interact with the mods ecosystem over time. Not so much can they make a twitter app or a 2-d platformer or something equally unrelated. I don't want a blocky minecraft looking pacman clone, at all. I'd pay more for the RailCraft mod than I paid for minecraft itself, in terms of enjoyment per $. Of course the RC mod is free ... Also I use buildcraft mod although the gold pipes suck for steam distribution, and I'd pay for buildcraft, although thats free. Thermal expansion has better steam distribution... The great mothership recently released a new minecraft version, which amounted to a couple new flowers and some biomes for people who don't mine, and nothing at all for anyone who does anything below the surface. Its called Minecraft, gentlemen, not fuzzy bunny craft so lose the giant mushroom biome please, and beg borrow or steal the buildcraft, railcraft, forestry, applied energetics, universal electricity, and a couple other mods so people who mine in MINEcraft actually have something fun to do rather than admiring double height grass blocks and mesa biomes. The other thing which is hilarious from a guy who's been into computers since 1981 is the mods ecosystem is from a software engineering / systems administration standpoint just a tiny bit more advanced than the msdos era, actually pretty close to my historical digging into MVS/360. So its 2013 and apt and dpkg and friends have existed since the very early 90s, but in 2013 the way you handle version dependence and bug tracking and distribution is you manually visit adware download spam sites and click 50 times to download a tiny mod, and then track version compatibility manually by visiting 50 decentralized web forums. Oh and don't get me started on people who think a 15 minute youtube video with awful video and music counts as the only form of "documentation" required. Dudes, its 2013 almost 2014 not the era of msdos 3.11 and warez BBS systems? It really does suck after using Linux since the early 90s and downshifting back to 1985, even though I run minecraft on linux (both client and server). Mojang should implement a minecraft mod store with a payment system thats trustworthy/reliable and very fast with excellent versioning compatibility. I'd pay $40 for railcraft and mojang can keep $10 of it and everyone else will be happy as long as I get $40 of actual service, like its very fast and completely transparent and highly reliable and effective and perhaps dare I ask, effectively and centrally documented and centrally bug tracked?

digibri 13y ago
My understanding is that the team at Mojang is seriously committed to their new mod-based vision; but that there are many technical hurdles they must overcome to achieve their goals. Just looking at the patch notes for the 1.7, 1.7.1, and 1.7.2, it looks to me that they did some significant code refactoring and expanded the capabilities of the core systems. Additionally, they seem to have added new features to really enhance the multiplayer experience. Among the changes I see as significant (either from improving the social experience, or from technical difficulty) are: + Achievements are now world specific + Gaining achievements now announced to other players + Servers can now have a “server-icon.png” that is displayed in the multiplayer list + You can see who’s online before joining, just hover the player count number in the server list + Links in chat are now clickable + Click on somebody’s name to send a private message + Added Stained Glass + Added a bunch of new graphics options + Added some shader tests (click on the “Super Secret Settings” a couple of times…) * You can now have multiple resource packs loaded at the same time * Resource packs can now hold sound effects * Servers can recommend resource packs * Network code has been rewritten * Sound manager has been rewritten
- VLM 13y ago
  There may be interesting organizational hurdles, as subjectively the community, or at least the mod community, or the users of the most popular mods, appear to implement changes showing they believe the best way to enhance the multiplayer experience is new sets of blocks doing cool new things with new varieties of technology, whereas most of the listed "upgrades" boil down to making a nice chat system. Make the game more fun with more toys, vs lets make an app to socialize oh and there's also a game attached or something. I think this frictional point is where most of the interesting action will happen in the near term evolution of MC and Mojang.
  - asiekierka 13y ago
    Actually, most of the changes revolve around "let's make it easier for modders to make mods" and "let's work on areas that we neglected". Private messaging systems are used a LOT on servers.

hedwall 13y ago

they released scrolls a couple of months ago and it already paid for the two year of development it had. I do believe mojang will be creating some interesting things in the coming years.