{"id":1003,"date":"2010-09-23T23:09:55","date_gmt":"2010-09-23T23:09:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chocobeam.me\/playground\/2010\/09\/minecraft-cheers-me-up\/"},"modified":"2010-09-23T23:09:55","modified_gmt":"2010-09-23T23:09:55","slug":"minecraft-cheers-me-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/2010\/09\/minecraft-cheers-me-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Minecraft cheers me up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font face=\"Arial\">   <\/p>\n<p>You certainly have heard of <a href=\"http:\/\/minecraft.net\/\" target=\"_blank\">Minecraft<\/a>. The game is in alpha, it\u2019s made by one main developer with the help of some people.<\/p>\n<p>As a description, it\u2019s a world-building game mixed with a rpg system through a first person view. The world is huge and randomized.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Minecraft\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/18828270@N00\/5018127958\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Minecraft\" src=\"http:\/\/static.flickr.com\/4133\/5018127958_2b9cfbec9b.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"358\" \/><\/a>       <br \/><em>The world is mine<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The website is telling us nothing special, the YouTube video just makes you think <em>\u201cwhat the hell is this shit\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>And yet after about a year of development <a href=\"http:\/\/texyt.com\/minecraft+persson+notch+indie+game+success+00127\" target=\"_blank\">Minecraft racks up 250 000$-a-day<\/a> of sales via Paypal. Yeah. I can\u2019t fucking imagine that either but I\u2019m just so happy for him, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mojang.com\/notch\/\" target=\"_blank\">Markus Persson<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Rock, Paper Shotgun has a Minecraft diary (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rockpapershotgun.com\/2010\/09\/14\/minecraft-mine-the-gap-day-1\/\" target=\"_blank\">1<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rockpapershotgun.com\/2010\/09\/15\/minecraft-mine-the-gap-day-2\/\" target=\"_blank\">2<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rockpapershotgun.com\/2010\/09\/16\/minecraft-mine-the-gap-day-3\/\" target=\"_blank\">3<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rockpapershotgun.com\/2010\/09\/17\/minecraft-mine-the-gap-day-4\/\" target=\"_blank\">4<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rockpapershotgun.com\/2010\/09\/20\/minecraft-mine-the-gap-day-5\/\" target=\"_blank\">5<\/a>) and it\u2019s just fascinating. You can see how much a deep gameplay combined with consistent mechanics and freedom to the player is more addictive than crack.<\/p>\n<p>But what really cheers me up with Minecraft\u2019s success is that it kicks off pre-conceived ideas with hard facts: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The personal computer is awesome. Nothing like that would have been possible on a closed platform like consoles are. And there\u2019s a ton of free PC games out there, there\u2019s billions of free flash games. Minecraft just didn\u2019t care and made it through nonetheless.        <\/li>\n<li>There is no such thing as a target market in games (and overall in the entertainment business, it\u2019s been made up). Build your game with a strong vision and the market will be here, whoever they are, little girls, gay nerds, Irak vets. It doesn\u2019t matter.        <\/li>\n<li>The best Technical mantra: Minecraft works on any PC of the last five years finger in the nose (WoW anyone?). It\u2019s a Java game. Works anywhere and beyond.        <\/li>\n<li>Visually interesting and quite original while being the most rudimentary ever (8bits 3D).        <\/li>\n<li>Single player is important.&#160; <\/li>\n<li>The only channel of marketing\/PR has been word of mouth. Word of mouth made this man with his little team and his Java game millionaire. Read that twice and try to find any product in the world that makes people really wealthy without them spending an insane amount of money to make that happen. I don\u2019t know one. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Lessons learned:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Indie game developers are concerned about getting attention for their games. But it seems that if your game is original and deep (and really, this is the hardest part here) it will find its way. Remember, Minecraft is not even finished yet! The thing is we see the market the wrong way, we see it as traditional publishing sees it: you need to make a lot of noise so that a large part of people are hearing about your product and eventually a share of them are going to buy the game. With word of mouth over the internet, it doesn\u2019t work this way: it ramps up with people aggregating and buying from anywhere in the world, silently. It\u2019s a discrete process, totally the opposite of what marketing\/PR are doing these days: being obnoxiously in your face all the time, screaming. Trying to sell an indie game this way is not going to work. Never.        <\/li>\n<li>The insane amount of resources used in games for visuals and 3D is a waste. Focus on your gameplay, more and more and again. Open your game to people early and build what they want too. Nothing better than real world beta test. I mean, we can\u2019t stress that enough.        <\/li>\n<li>Minecraft\u2019s business model is neat: play for free in your browser, pay for the premium version that makes you able to download a client. It\u2019s kind of scary to go this way but it doesn\u2019t stop people to buy a copy at 10euros. As of today, 27,27% of registered users have bought the game. That\u2019s just insane. On XBLA if the rate of players buying a game goes over 10% developers jizz in their pants. Point is: in a direct relationship like that, trust and don\u2019t screw your users. They will do the same to you. They will buy your game. They will talk about it. They will be more fan of your game than you ever will.        <\/li>\n<li>The power of communities. Reddit, a news website funnier than Digg was in 2005 mixed with an extraordinary powerful community ala 4chan (without the nsfw tag) played a big role in Minecraft\u2019s success. Don\u2019t go to them to sell your stuff you moron! Just focus on your game and if it\u2019s good enough, a community, somewhere, is going to take action and spread the word. It worked well for Minecraft, the one-man Java game from Sweden. And it\u2019s the case with every success with digital distribution and indie games. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So while people are wondering about the 3DS CPU or how the Bioshock Infinite \u201cgameplay-rollercoaster-without-AI-lol\u201d video is amazing, while the mobile market looks like an awful <a href=\"http:\/\/www.urbandictionary.com\/define.php?term=clusterfuck\" target=\"_blank\">clusterfuck<\/a> as the Facebook game thing, a dude from Sweden shows us that you can make some \u201csubstantial\u201d money today with a solid Java game for browsers and PCs.<\/p>\n<p>Jesus fucking Christ. Now that\u2019s something.<\/p>\n<p> <\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You certainly have heard of Minecraft. The game is in alpha, it\u2019s made by one main developer with the help of some people. As a description, it\u2019s a world-building game mixed with a rpg system through a first person view. The world is huge and randomized. The world is mine The website is telling us [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}