Friday, July 6, 2012

Really wish Indie Game The Movie touched on Minecraft

I think probably one the most successful indie development stories was from Minecraft, by Mojang. I figure the reason none of the development was covered was because the studio was in Stockholm, Sweden. 

Markus Persson, otherwise known as 'Notch' was the head developer for Minecraft. One of the things I think he did right was release the game as he developed each release. We talked about the hype phase that developers enter, where the idea has been presented, but development will take much longer. Supporters grow restless and some lose faith in the development when they can't see what's going on. Notch released each of his builds (not the first few, I believe) to the public to keep interest in his game. One big downfall to this method is the influx of 'cool ideas' people wanted to add to the game. Instead of being overwhelmed by constant contact of 'oh notch, it wud b so cool if u added litesabeers 2 minecraft, thums up so he sees!!1! XD', Notch simply continued developing, and supported a forum where a mod tool could add these crazy mods people wanted to their own versions of the game, not the official release. 

Some of the things people modded actually did end up being added to the game, however. I thought of this when we were talking about how users will talk to developers and give feedback and in some cases, change (or add to) the ending of a game. The mod in question that was added was the piston mod, which added some of the first real 'physics' to the game.
Heres the modded pistons:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cogNi2kKwko
And here's the actual pistons added to the game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieR0Dau8vcw

Anyway, I thought it would really be interesting to see a documentary on the development and following of this game alone. If you haven't played it yet, it's great. I take breaks from studying and play because it's so relaxing and i feel like it's the equivalent of playing Sudoku or something.

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