4 ms·

How Notch marketed Minecraft

21 points by dean 12y ago

realgirl 12y ago
Wow, this article is far off base. While Notch certainly marketed himself a bit, his success really took off when Penny Arcade posted the iconic comic. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/09/17 http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/09/17 http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2010/09/17/mine-all-mine-part-one http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2010/09/17/mine-all-mi... And, let's not forget part two: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/09/20/mine-all-mine-part-two http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/09/20/mine-all-mine-p... http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2010/09/20/mine-all-mine-part-two http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2010/09/20/mine-all-mi...
- koonsolo 12y ago
  Author of the article in question here. Are you sure? The articles you refer to are just after the "PayPal Freezes $750K in MineCraft Dev's Account" news. This last part was of course, spread by Notch himself (another example of awesome marketing). But let's agree, by then, Minecraft had already made $750K, which seems quite successful to me. And this was all before Minecraft hit the major new sites. Seems I left this part out of the article (I should probably update it). http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/09/10/paypal-freezes-minecraft-devs-600k-euros/ http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/09/10/paypal-freezes-mi..., http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/103385-PayPal-Freezes-750K-in-MineCraft-Devs-Account http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/103385-PayPal-Free...
  - realgirl 12y ago
    I stand corrected. :) Yeah, I would've mentioned something about the penny arcade article at least. I don't remember seeing anything about Notch or Minecraft in general discussion etc. until the comic went live. For that matter, I'd be very interested in seeing a graph of Minecraft's earnings from the early days, I imagine the spike was insane. Minor edit: Yeah I would've mentioned something about how the marketing he did reached a self-sustaining cycle. Where suddenly the big spin about minecraft wasn't just that it was a good indie game, but an unusually successful good indie game.
- jzelinskie 12y ago
  In my mind the big selling moment was the "free weekend" during alpha that occurred because of a bug with the auth servers. He just decided to make the game free until it was fixed. During that time, it got a decent amount of publicity on reddit and tons of people got hooked. Come time that the auth servers were fixed, everyone bought the game instantly.
  - realgirl 12y ago
    I just think Notch did a lot of things right overall. God, I remember that weekend. I remember thinking that it was nice for once dealing with a company (or an individual) that seemed to care about the players. I was so used to game software/network bugs being badly handled. Notch just always came off as a 'good guy Greg' of sorts, simply because he respected his users. Heck, even in the recent Molyneux interview on RPS Notch's I almost want to call it 'sportsmanship' is briefly mentioned. ("He didn’t take anyone’s money before making it with promises he didn’t keep.") I think that more than most Notch's imprint is all over the current Indie Renaissance. The unprecedented success of Minecraft really shattered that ceiling. More than that I really respect him for walking away from Microsoft and the monolith that Minecraft is now in order to build more games. I think it is incredibly brave (although I imagine there was more to his leaving than was publicly disclosed).
Giorgi 12y ago
Yeah, I think Reddit is to "blame".

21 points by dean 12y ago

Wow, this article is far off base. While Notch certainly marketed himself a bit, his success really took off when Penny Arcade posted the iconic comic. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/09/17 http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/09/17 http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2010/09/17/mine-all-mine-part-one http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2010/09/17/mine-all-mi... And, let's not forget part two: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/09/20/mine-all-mine-part-two http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/09/20/mine-all-mine-p... http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2010/09/20/mine-all-mine-part-two http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2010/09/20/mine-all-mi...

koonsolo 12y ago
Author of the article in question here. Are you sure? The articles you refer to are just after the "PayPal Freezes $750K in MineCraft Dev's Account" news. This last part was of course, spread by Notch himself (another example of awesome marketing). But let's agree, by then, Minecraft had already made $750K, which seems quite successful to me. And this was all before Minecraft hit the major new sites. Seems I left this part out of the article (I should probably update it). http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/09/10/paypal-freezes-minecraft-devs-600k-euros/ http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/09/10/paypal-freezes-mi..., http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/103385-PayPal-Freezes-750K-in-MineCraft-Devs-Account http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/103385-PayPal-Free...
- realgirl 12y ago
  I stand corrected. :) Yeah, I would've mentioned something about the penny arcade article at least. I don't remember seeing anything about Notch or Minecraft in general discussion etc. until the comic went live. For that matter, I'd be very interested in seeing a graph of Minecraft's earnings from the early days, I imagine the spike was insane. Minor edit: Yeah I would've mentioned something about how the marketing he did reached a self-sustaining cycle. Where suddenly the big spin about minecraft wasn't just that it was a good indie game, but an unusually successful good indie game.
jzelinskie 12y ago
In my mind the big selling moment was the "free weekend" during alpha that occurred because of a bug with the auth servers. He just decided to make the game free until it was fixed. During that time, it got a decent amount of publicity on reddit and tons of people got hooked. Come time that the auth servers were fixed, everyone bought the game instantly.
- realgirl 12y ago
  I just think Notch did a lot of things right overall. God, I remember that weekend. I remember thinking that it was nice for once dealing with a company (or an individual) that seemed to care about the players. I was so used to game software/network bugs being badly handled. Notch just always came off as a 'good guy Greg' of sorts, simply because he respected his users. Heck, even in the recent Molyneux interview on RPS Notch's I almost want to call it 'sportsmanship' is briefly mentioned. ("He didn’t take anyone’s money before making it with promises he didn’t keep.") I think that more than most Notch's imprint is all over the current Indie Renaissance. The unprecedented success of Minecraft really shattered that ceiling. More than that I really respect him for walking away from Microsoft and the monolith that Minecraft is now in order to build more games. I think it is incredibly brave (although I imagine there was more to his leaving than was publicly disclosed).

Giorgi 12y ago

Yeah, I think Reddit is to "blame".