6 ms·

I'd rather be a successful programmer than a stellar one (probably).

gnarbarian 12y ago
Of course! "perfect is the enemy of good" Minecraft itself was a clone of the game "infiniminer". Whose developer had given up and stopped work after the source code was stolen. When I think of the rise of Minecraft I am drawn to a few things he did differently. 1) He set up a way for customers to pay him for the game early (as soon as he had a minimum viable product). This gave him tons of feedback, money to keep working, and incentive to keep going because people were constantly asking him for features and tweaks. 2) He employed a simple and fun mechanic that allowed users to create their own things in the game (forts castles etc). 3) all of the content is procedurally generated. So every time you play it you get a different experience to some extent. 4) From very early on you would get weekly updates pushed out constantly adding new features. For most people new things were being added far faster than they could get bored with them. 5) it ran everywhere. 6) He didn't focus on graphics. He made design choices that would drastically simplify development at the expense of quality and/or performance. This lent itself to a blocky 'style' that was both easy to handle and visually unique. What do you guys think? am I missing anything?
- 59nadir 12y ago
  > 6) He didn't focus on graphics. He made design choices that would drastically simplify development at the expense of quality and/or performance. This lent itself to a blocky 'style' that was both easy to handle and visually unique. This one is widely considered to be false. There have been numerous catastrophic overhauls of many of Minecraft's sub-systems because they are very poorly designed, leading to stalled overhauls and whatnot. The architecture of systems was definitely not Notch's strong suit. That he chose an easy way to structure the world is only one of many design choices.
  - jdmichal 12y ago
    This is why the "mod kit" is still a pending feature. And at this point would probably be too late considering the amount of community work put into creating their own environments.
  - gnarbarian 12y ago
    I agree 100% but there were many choices he DID make which simplified his job regardless of how poorly they were ultimately implemented such as: * Everything is forced into a cube * No dynamic lighting * No Shaders * 16x16 Textures * Water/lava is not volumetric * No AI * He used Java * barely any physics (removing the bottom segment of a tree does not make the top fall down) and on and on and on.
enneff 12y ago
While he is no doubt a programmer it is his superb game design skills that brought him to success.
- swah 12y ago
  His taste, if you will?
  - TillE 12y ago
    In the case of Minecraft, sure. Its design is mostly just a case of having the right idea and running with it. Making a few critical early choices that have shaped everything. That "taste" wouldn't necessarily translate to the nitty-gritty game design skills necessary for a complex strategy, card, or board game, for example. But hey, it's enough. Not all of us can be Reiner Knizia.

Of course! "perfect is the enemy of good" Minecraft itself was a clone of the game "infiniminer". Whose developer had given up and stopped work after the source code was stolen. When I think of the rise of Minecraft I am drawn to a few things he did differently. 1) He set up a way for customers to pay him for the game early (as soon as he had a minimum viable product). This gave him tons of feedback, money to keep working, and incentive to keep going because people were constantly asking him for features and tweaks. 2) He employed a simple and fun mechanic that allowed users to create their own things in the game (forts castles etc). 3) all of the content is procedurally generated. So every time you play it you get a different experience to some extent. 4) From very early on you would get weekly updates pushed out constantly adding new features. For most people new things were being added far faster than they could get bored with them. 5) it ran everywhere. 6) He didn't focus on graphics. He made design choices that would drastically simplify development at the expense of quality and/or performance. This lent itself to a blocky 'style' that was both easy to handle and visually unique. What do you guys think? am I missing anything?

59nadir 12y ago
> 6) He didn't focus on graphics. He made design choices that would drastically simplify development at the expense of quality and/or performance. This lent itself to a blocky 'style' that was both easy to handle and visually unique. This one is widely considered to be false. There have been numerous catastrophic overhauls of many of Minecraft's sub-systems because they are very poorly designed, leading to stalled overhauls and whatnot. The architecture of systems was definitely not Notch's strong suit. That he chose an easy way to structure the world is only one of many design choices.
- jdmichal 12y ago
  This is why the "mod kit" is still a pending feature. And at this point would probably be too late considering the amount of community work put into creating their own environments.
- gnarbarian 12y ago
  I agree 100% but there were many choices he DID make which simplified his job regardless of how poorly they were ultimately implemented such as: * Everything is forced into a cube * No dynamic lighting * No Shaders * 16x16 Textures * Water/lava is not volumetric * No AI * He used Java * barely any physics (removing the bottom segment of a tree does not make the top fall down) and on and on and on.

enneff 12y ago

While he is no doubt a programmer it is his superb game design skills that brought him to success.

swah 12y ago
His taste, if you will?
- TillE 12y ago
  In the case of Minecraft, sure. Its design is mostly just a case of having the right idea and running with it. Making a few critical early choices that have shaped everything. That "taste" wouldn't necessarily translate to the nitty-gritty game design skills necessary for a complex strategy, card, or board game, for example. But hey, it's enough. Not all of us can be Reiner Knizia.