5 ms·

Lego had the opportunity to buy digital lego ( http://blockland.us/ http://blockland.us/ ) Blockland's creator went to Lego to see if they were interested in h

Lego had the opportunity to buy digital lego ( http://blockland.us/ http://blockland.us/ ) Blockland's creator went to Lego to see if they were interested in his game while he was working on the retail version, but for whatever reason no deal was made and Blockland was released without external branding. This all happened much earlier than Minecraft: Blockland was featured on the Screen Savers in 2005, and had a retail release in 2007, two years before Minecraft development started. I think Minecraft goes beyond digital lego though. There are many little pieces of minecraft's design which came together to make a game better than one would expect. I honestly wonder how many of those choices were intentionally done by Notch, and how many were arbitrary choices which happened to be right.

sitkack 12y ago
Minecraft was at the right place at the right time, it had already occurred in nearly identical forms earlier yet failed to "pop". http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Infiniminer http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Infiniminer
- cookiecaper 12y ago
  I think there's a tendency in people to assume that massively successful properties like Minecraft become massively successful because they're special or innovative. While this may play a role, it is rarely the only important factor, and sometimes is not a relevant factor at all. The reality is that Minecraft's explosive popularity is the result of a perfect storm of all kinds of fickle conditions. It doesn't mean that Notch made the "right" arbitrary choices, as some posters in this thread have intimated; it just means that the choices he made didn't preclude the other externalities from converging. I think the two biggest factors in Minecraft's success were a) notch's responsiveness and availability to the community on reddit and twitter and b) Mojang's decision to have the game ported to Xbox. Neither of these have much to do with the specific design decisions in Minecraft itself (many of which were frankly terrible and are still only gradually being reversed).
  - jeffmk 12y ago
    What are some examples of poor design decisions that were made?
    - DanBC 12y ago
      Modding is a very popular part of Minecraft. TO mod Minecraft you have to:- i) find the right mod - it has to be for the correct version of Minecraft ii) Locate the Minecraft jar; expand it. iii) Copy the mod into the correct folder iv) Delete a file (if you haven't already) v) recompress vi) test vii) do all this again for the next mod you want to apply A better mod interface would be lovely.
      - electromagnetic 12y ago
        Compare this to a game like KSP where modding is also very popular. Installing a mod is generally: extract rar to game folder. Step two is play the game.
      - Havvy 12y ago
        Modding hasn't been like that for over two years nowadays. These days it's: 1) Download the MinecraftForge Installer and run it. 2) Find the right mods you want. 3) Copy the mod into the correct folder. 4) Change configuration (if you want) 5) Test Furthermore, you can use various launchers such as the Feed The Beast launcher where you download the launcher, run it, pick a pack that it'll download and then run with a very low chance (< 1%) of there being problems. Oh, and you can also join servers that are configured to that modpack too without doing anything.
        josephlord 12y ago
        You miss the bits where you pray the mod isn't carrying anything malicious and you hunt around for a version that is compatible with the engine version you are running.
        Rapzid 12y ago
        That's a lot of copying. Sounds like minecraft could do with a proper package manager. Maybe Microsoft will give it nuget support(har har).
- scott_karana 12y ago
  While Infiniminer was an acknowledged inspiration of Minecraft's, I think it's fair to say that Minecraft is a fork (schism is maybe more accurate), since the focus of the game was changed towards the creative/exploratory aspects, instead of the "competitive mining" aspect.
  - voidlogic 12y ago
    Infiniminer was written in C#, so calling Minecraft a fork isn't fair since they don't share a common source lineage. However, saying Infiniminer was the inspiration for Minecraft or that early Minecraft was a Infiniminer clone seems more fair.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
The idea isn't really the thing though is it? The basic idea is the product being worked on in Douglas Coupland's Microserfs released in 1995 (Blockland launched 2004, Minecraft 2011). As you say, it's the design and execution.
foobarian 12y ago
The thing about Minecraft is, it's a lot like Beatles music. It's a simple game with straightforward gameplay, but it comes together so well, it's extremely catchy and fun. There is the random drop element with blocks. There is the creative element with building. There are the exploration and social elements. Then there are the monsters that come out at night, the rush to build a shelter etc. And let's not forget creepers. I think there wasn't a single monster in the history of video games that scared me more than a creeper coming from behind with the "sssss" sound. These design decisions could have been lucky, but I think it really takes a person who "gets it" like Notch, who spent years up to that point thinking about and building games to internalize what makes a game fun, and turn it into something that comes together like Minecraft.
Avshalom 12y ago
At the time Lego would have been just pulling out of near bankruptcy that probably contributed to not jumping on blockland and/or doing more to make their own digital lego (the steady trickle of games have always been lego themed rather than lego-like).

sitkack 12y ago

Minecraft was at the right place at the right time, it had already occurred in nearly identical forms earlier yet failed to "pop". http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Infiniminer http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Infiniminer

cookiecaper 12y ago
I think there's a tendency in people to assume that massively successful properties like Minecraft become massively successful because they're special or innovative. While this may play a role, it is rarely the only important factor, and sometimes is not a relevant factor at all. The reality is that Minecraft's explosive popularity is the result of a perfect storm of all kinds of fickle conditions. It doesn't mean that Notch made the "right" arbitrary choices, as some posters in this thread have intimated; it just means that the choices he made didn't preclude the other externalities from converging. I think the two biggest factors in Minecraft's success were a) notch's responsiveness and availability to the community on reddit and twitter and b) Mojang's decision to have the game ported to Xbox. Neither of these have much to do with the specific design decisions in Minecraft itself (many of which were frankly terrible and are still only gradually being reversed).
- jeffmk 12y ago
  What are some examples of poor design decisions that were made?
  - DanBC 12y ago
    Modding is a very popular part of Minecraft. TO mod Minecraft you have to:- i) find the right mod - it has to be for the correct version of Minecraft ii) Locate the Minecraft jar; expand it. iii) Copy the mod into the correct folder iv) Delete a file (if you haven't already) v) recompress vi) test vii) do all this again for the next mod you want to apply A better mod interface would be lovely.
    - electromagnetic 12y ago
      Compare this to a game like KSP where modding is also very popular. Installing a mod is generally: extract rar to game folder. Step two is play the game.
    - Havvy 12y ago
      Modding hasn't been like that for over two years nowadays. These days it's: 1) Download the MinecraftForge Installer and run it. 2) Find the right mods you want. 3) Copy the mod into the correct folder. 4) Change configuration (if you want) 5) Test Furthermore, you can use various launchers such as the Feed The Beast launcher where you download the launcher, run it, pick a pack that it'll download and then run with a very low chance (< 1%) of there being problems. Oh, and you can also join servers that are configured to that modpack too without doing anything.
      - josephlord 12y ago
        You miss the bits where you pray the mod isn't carrying anything malicious and you hunt around for a version that is compatible with the engine version you are running.
      - Rapzid 12y ago
        That's a lot of copying. Sounds like minecraft could do with a proper package manager. Maybe Microsoft will give it nuget support(har har).
scott_karana 12y ago
While Infiniminer was an acknowledged inspiration of Minecraft's, I think it's fair to say that Minecraft is a fork (schism is maybe more accurate), since the focus of the game was changed towards the creative/exploratory aspects, instead of the "competitive mining" aspect.
- voidlogic 12y ago
  Infiniminer was written in C#, so calling Minecraft a fork isn't fair since they don't share a common source lineage. However, saying Infiniminer was the inspiration for Minecraft or that early Minecraft was a Infiniminer clone seems more fair.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

Tyrannosaurs 12y ago

The idea isn't really the thing though is it? The basic idea is the product being worked on in Douglas Coupland's Microserfs released in 1995 (Blockland launched 2004, Minecraft 2011). As you say, it's the design and execution.

foobarian 12y ago

The thing about Minecraft is, it's a lot like Beatles music. It's a simple game with straightforward gameplay, but it comes together so well, it's extremely catchy and fun. There is the random drop element with blocks. There is the creative element with building. There are the exploration and social elements. Then there are the monsters that come out at night, the rush to build a shelter etc. And let's not forget creepers. I think there wasn't a single monster in the history of video games that scared me more than a creeper coming from behind with the "sssss" sound. These design decisions could have been lucky, but I think it really takes a person who "gets it" like Notch, who spent years up to that point thinking about and building games to internalize what makes a game fun, and turn it into something that comes together like Minecraft.

Avshalom 12y ago

At the time Lego would have been just pulling out of near bankruptcy that probably contributed to not jumping on blockland and/or doing more to make their own digital lego (the steady trickle of games have always been lego themed rather than lego-like).