Are there honestly any Mojang haters in the world? These guys are just great.<p>1. Minecraft is an absolute work of art as a standalone game. The possibilities are endless and it works everywhere. It's simple to play yet is possible of incredible complexity.<p>2. Relative to the playtime, the game is actually very inexpensive, especially if you got the beta/alpha discount<p>3. Notch really seems like just about the most pleasant guy in the world and really just wears his passion on his sleeve. He's an easy guy to like.<p>4. Notch and everyone at Mojang really love video games and it shows. I always really respected guys like Kurt Cobain and Flea growing up because they always tried to give credit and lend their popularity to fellow musicians and influences. Everyone at Mojang does this and are surely leading kids toward a lot of great games. They even support the Minecraft clones.<p>5. It's been covered but Notch has used the massive profits of Minecraft in smart ways to build Mojang slowly and really help out the developers who make it possible. Great bunch of developers too, very public and responsive. They are also smart about what actually gets added to Minecraft.<p>6. Best community in gaming currently, hands down. The user made stuff is jaw dropping.<p>7. They continue to spend most of their resources working on Minecraft despite the fact that they are both working on other games now and could sit on their thumbs and rake in the cash on Minecraft if they wanted. Let users fix the bugs. You know, like Bethesda does.<p>8. Cutest mersh ever.
The amazing thing about this game is that I'm using it to teach my girls how to program with it. Its a great tool because it allows them to see the value in writing code by getting real results quickly.<p>The oldest one wanted to create pink wood to build herself a pink wood house. Why? Well duh, its pink (her words). We quickly dug the source code and had a pink wood block in a short time. She was so happy and learned about Java. A double win in my book.
Sorry for my meta-snark, but:<p>This is an example of bad editing of the title. The original one was much more descriptive and got to the core of what is interesting about this article. The edit has made the title bland and uninformative.
The actual amounts were 1500 MM SEK revenue (236 MM USD), and a 640 MM SEK (100 M USD) licensing fee/royalty to Notch, leaving that 580 MM (92 MM USD) profit. So that's 92 million on top of 100 million in effectively dividends to Notch (by pulling out that amount, he must be one of the Swedes paying most tax!)
I still don't understand the appeal, which is obviously my problem, because there is certainly appeal. I've given the game some time, and I consider myself quite an avid gamer, but I just don't find it all that fun, interesting or entertaining.<p>Can someone explain why this thing exploded how it did?
Couldn't have happened to a greater bunch of indie gamers.<p>Also from the article here: "Markus Persson gave away his part, about 27 million, to the employees."
Check out Mojang's next project: <a href="http://0x10c.com/" rel="nofollow">http://0x10c.com/</a><p>Minecraft-sized space game? Where you have to program your ship?<p>Yes please!
Wow, it just almost seems impossible that an indie game can be that successful. It's unfortunate that it's such a rarity, I'm sure there are hundreds of great games out there that languish.<p>If anyone wonders, the PC version is not the best seller (currently) for Mojang. The XBox version sells more than the PC version and the Pocket Edition (iOS, Android) sells more than both combined[1].<p>[1] <a href="http://www.mojang.com/2013/01/christmas-stat-attack/" rel="nofollow">http://www.mojang.com/2013/01/christmas-stat-attack/</a>
Swedish to English translation: <a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=sv&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fit24.idg.se%2F2.2275%2F1.490017%2Fmojangs-monstervinst" rel="nofollow">http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=sv&tl...</a>
We've been tracking Minecraft's public sales over time: <a href="http://minecraft-sales.herokuapp.com" rel="nofollow">http://minecraft-sales.herokuapp.com</a>. That's <i>only</i> for the PC version. We estimate that sales of Minecraft across other platforms at least double that revenue.
Gotta love these guys, great game too, something I play with the kids and we all love it.<p>A great documentary you can download with ads on it from PirateBay, or buy a full copy:<p>PB Free with Ads:
<a href="http://thepiratebay.se/search/story%20of%20mojang" rel="nofollow">http://thepiratebay.se/search/story%20of%20mojang</a><p>Purchase for $8 (US):
<a href="http://redux.com/minecraft-movie" rel="nofollow">http://redux.com/minecraft-movie</a>
Ooops, I paid twice - gift for son of my cousin (yay!) and for myself. How he could go on an adventure and I would not follow? Also, trying to login while he was offline felt so cheap.<p>After we started building together I tried to destroy our island in many ways, including dying with handfuls of equipment, but am getting better fast.<p>P.S. Not that I didn't want to play MC in the first place...
My son plays several games online including Minecraft, League of Legends, Clash of Clans and Lost Saga. Minecraft is the only one out of these which doesn't have any pernicious "in app purchase" or online game credit system. I totally admire the fact that Mojang haven't stooped to this level of trying to gouge money from their customers pockets.
Its gratifying to see Notch benefit from some really creative work. I do not believe that Minecraft, as a building game, would not have been touched by any of the 'major' studios had he proposed it to them directly. The games industry is a bit crusty in that way.
My wife and I play Minecraft with our two sons and their friends, and we have a blast with it. We have a family server running on an old Mac mini, a whitelist for family and friends to jump on whenever they want. Minecraft is absolutely brilliant.
I remember when I bought Minecraft, at the time Minecraft had grossed less than 100 Euros. I wish I could go back and tell myself that the game was going to gross 1,500,000,000 SEK... hah.
A hypothetical question I'd like to have some possible answer to:<p>What would've happened if Minecraft were made open source? How would that alternative reality be different from our current one?
One thing I wish I could do is import mesh models into Minecraft. Just so I can write scientific papers featuring Minecraft visualizations and analysis ;)