Unfortunately, this article doesn't seem to offer any insights into what factors made the game so successful, or even really present much new information that couldn't be found in one of the many other links on HN over the last several months.<p>See, e.g.:
[1]<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1740289" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1740289</a>
[2]<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2107773" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2107773</a>
[3]<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1718023" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1718023</a>
As the other commentors mentioned, there's nothing improbable about it -- but there shouldn't even be anything too <i>surprising</i> about it. It's not even as if Minecraft is the first time this happened <i>or</i> the most extreme case of it happening. It's probably the most widely-publicized example though, at least among the tech media.<p>Of course, this doesn't at all reduce the value of Minecraft's success -- it's just that Minecraft is not some singular magical exception in a world of failures. This has happened before, and it'll happen again, and it'll happen bigger.
I feel like I rage on titles all too often, but I can't resist this one, particularly since this one comes from businessweek which is currently putting a grotesque pop-up to win 1000$ for a survey in my face.<p>There's nothing _improbable_ about the rise of minecraft. It hit the right notes, took the right steps. What it was, was _unexpected,_ particularly to an audience/demographic (excuse the coming absurdly broad brush I swear it's just for hyperbolic humor) that relies on men in suits making decisions about what sells and what doesn't.<p>Hopefully I got over my pedantic streak for the day via that one word.