Rumour confirmed: Microsoft Purchase Minecraft for $2.5B (Post#122)

[Shifty Geezer]

Lego has had multiple building creator type games, and none have reached mammoth interest. I think one of the reasons MC has done so well is because you are limited to one block shape, making editing much easier (plus steps or whatever). A true creator game with loads of block options that looks much prettier will be more effort to use and likely lose the instant appeal of MC's simplicity. I think that's a core issue that many games trying to be bigger and better miss. Less can be more.

 

[zed]

As well as the chops to build out the customizability that MC has, being able to self host servers etc..
Good luck to LEGO if they can replicate MC's infrastructure/engineering chops!

joke post? The world famous company is massive, profitable i.e. it made > $1 billion profit last year, Im pretty sure they can afford any talent they want, perhaps notch is out of their pricerange now, but Im sure they can afford some other swedish similarily skilled programmers

Lego has had multiple building creator type games, and none have reached mammoth interest.

The franchise in total has sold more than eg minecraft,halo,uncharted etc
i.e. theyve done quite well, I think a minecraft style game with the official lego brand behind could do very well

 

[holsty101]

Lego Star Wars Minecraft edition

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Lego Star Wars Minecraft edition

More likely Minecraft 2015 Student Edition, Minecraft 2015 Home Edition and Minecraft 2015 Ultimate Edition

Sent from my iPhone using Forum Runner.

 

[holsty101]

lol yeah prolly more likely.

 

[dobwal]

Lego has had multiple building creator type games, and none have reached mammoth interest. I think one of the reasons MC has done so well is because you are limited to one block shape, making editing much easier (plus steps or whatever). A true creator game with loads of block options that looks much prettier will be more effort to use and likely lose the instant appeal of MC's simplicity. I think that's a core issue that many games trying to be bigger and better miss. Less can be more.

You could take MC and simply scale the avatar to be 4X as large, enlarge of FOV and then have the game default to work in square sets of 4 blocks (with options down to a single block). You end up with minecraft but with a finer grain of construction material, allowing for a more detailed world. But without fundamentally changing how MC is played.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

You could take MC and simply scale the avatar to be 4X as large, enlarge of FOV and then have the game default to work in square sets of 4 blocks (with options down to a single block). You end up with minecraft but with a finer grain of construction material, allowing for a more detailed world. But without fundamentally changing how MC is played.

That is far from simple. Minecraft has a lot of interactive elements in the world that aren't a full block (1x1x1) in size but which are centred on a block or connect between the space between two blocks. Making each 1x1x1 block into 8 individual blocks would break (or at least hugely complicate) a ton of Minecraft elements. There are already 'blocks' which aren't full blocks, e.g. stair blocks, slabs, doors, trapdoors, panes, bars, ladders, hoppers, pistons, plates, fences gates, buttons, levels, redstone items, tracks, it goes on and on. There are actually probably more individual non-fullblock items than full blocks. Minecraft item placement works because of the coarse granularity of items within the game world, not despite of it

At a basic level you're effectively increasing basic world complexity by 8 times as much, requiring 8 times as much processing for everything. Minecraft would no longer run in cheap computers because both RAM and processing would go through the roof.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The most important comparison to me seems to be MC versus other creators. MC is huge not because it's a game, but because people make stuff with it. Now there have been plenty of attempts of creative applications/games, such as LBP and Microsoft's efforts I forget the name of, and even that EA LBP rip off (create, says Google searchign for "EA LBP Rip off"!), and they haven't seen the same response. That to me is due to complexity, and this amazingly fine line between too complex and too limited. Like Flappy Bird. That game was only the success it was because it happened to hit this perfect sweet spot (whether by design or chance), where it was just difficult enough to be a challenge, but just easy enough to encourage another play. If it was a tiny bit harder, so the player died five times instead of three before clearing the first gate, it'd have likely frustrated too much.

I think MC has exactly that right balance, whether by chance or design. It has just enough granularity to enable creation of what people envisage, but not too much to take too long or be too complex. The skill set is universal and people won't be in any way ashamed of their creation, whereas something like a free-form 3D sculpturing programme will see a lot of users get disappointed in their inability to create their vision or creations comparable to the best on show. As such, I don't know that the formula can be changed at all without pushing the balance too far one way and losing the audience. An 2x2x2 resolution increase is going to increase block placing effort by 8, or at least add sculpting time to remove blocks from larger 2x2x2 blocks. It's going to add more choices which could lead to more frustration from users. It'll be very interesting to see where it goes and how it changes and how people respond. It's certainly a responsibility I'm glad I don't have!

 

[dobwal]

That is far from simple. Minecraft has a lot of interactive elements in the world that aren't a full block (1x1x1) in size but which are centred on a block or connect between the space between two blocks. Making each 1x1x1 block into 8 individual blocks would break (or at least hugely complicate) a ton of Minecraft elements. There are already 'blocks' which aren't full blocks, e.g. stair blocks, slabs, doors, trapdoors, panes, bars, ladders, hoppers, pistons, plates, fences gates, buttons, levels, redstone items, tracks, it goes on and on. There are actually probably more individual non-fullblock items than full blocks. Minecraft item placement works because of the coarse granularity of items within the game world, not despite of it

At a basic level you're effectively increasing basic world complexity by 8 times as much, requiring 8 times as much processing for everything. Minecraft would no longer run in cheap computers because both RAM and processing would go through the roof.

"Stair blocks, slabs, doors, trapdoors, panes, bars, ladders, hoppers, pistons, plates, fences gates, buttons, levels, redstone items, tracks, it goes on and on" could all be scaled to be 4 X as large.

Its not like a MC 2 would show up tomorrow. Plus, MC was built for common setups of 2009. A MC2 hasn't even been hinted, so its probably years away.

An MC2 wouldn't necessarily need 8 X the processing power if you simply treated both the standard big block as a 1x1x1 and it 1/4th little brother as a 1X1X1. If MC suddenly introduced a 1/4 size block, requirements wouldn't go up to 8X the processing power unless people suddenly built their whole world using them exclusively.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

"An MC2 wouldn't necessarily need 8 X the processing power if you simply treated both the standard big block as a 1x1x1 and it 1/4th little brother as a 1X1X1. If MC suddenly introduced a 1/4 size block, requirements wouldn't go up to 8X the processing power unless people suddenly built their whole world using them exclusively.

I think you should look at the Minecraft code. What you're proposing is akin to splitting the bit into 8 octobits, with an 8 fold increase in RAM required, but still expecting the the computer work as it did before but while wanting to exploit the use of these new octobits.

Minecraft's entire game code is based upon rendering of the smallest rendering element - the block. Making them smaller just increases the amount of data it has to manage for any given environment. A less complicated approach would be just to offer 64x possible variations of the 2x2x2 resolution block. But for every block type. That's how stars and slabs came to be.

 

[zed]

The most important comparison to me seems to be MC versus other creators. MC is huge not because it's a game, but because people make stuff with it.

Heres the original game, that minecraft is based on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zachary_Barth

Infiniminer is an open source multi-player block-based sandbox building and digging game, in which the player is a miner searching for minerals by carving tunnels through procedurally generated maps and building structures. According to the author Barth, it was based on the earlier games Infinifrag, Team Fortress, and Motherload by XGen Studios.[7][1]
Infiniminer was originally intended to be played as a team-based competitive game, where the goal is to locate and excavate precious metals, and bring your findings to the surface to earn points for your team.[8] However, as the game gained popularity, players gravitated towards the emergent gameplay functionality of building in-world objects, instead of the stated design goal of competition.

Now I imagine if Lego offered this guy/s some cash and told them to use lego blocks/branding are you saying its not going to attract a similar size of interest, you know? lego that ubiquitous toy

btw watching my nephew playing this game the other day on the ipad, I thought it was minecraft it wasnt it was some clone, but looked exactly like minecraft

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Now I imagine if Lego offered this guy/s some cash and told them to use lego blocks/branding are you saying its not going to attract a similar size of interest, you know? lego that ubiquitous toy

It wouldn't be Lego if it didn't look and work like Lego. Minecraft is more like Duplo bricks. Also, with an entrenched leader, a rival who offers nothing new isn't going to be worth squat. If you want to usurp an entrenched leader, you need a major game-plan beyond 'let's do what they do'.

 

[DJ12]

Lego were in talks with Blocklands creator years ago to buy it, this never came to fruition*. Fast forward a bit and say a few hypotheticals such as Sony buy it and get Lego on board and you have a ready made Minecraft replacement, that looks a little better and could potentially be a big seller.

* According to Wikipeidia

 

[holsty101]

[Sony] must not allow a mine[strike]shaft[/strike]craft gap!

(no prizes for guessing what I watched the other night...)

 

[MfA]

Well that's what Landmark is for.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Xbox chief promises to bring 'Minecraft' to Windows Phone

From The Verge article:

Microsoft's Xbox chief, Phil Spencer, has confirmed that Minecraft will be heading to Windows Phone. It's not a surprising move given Microsoft's recent acquisition of the popular title, but the software maker didn't promise to bring Minecraft to Windows Phone in its original announcement. Spencer's confirmation means Microsoft will likely be working on porting the game across once the deal is finalized, and it may even arrive for Surface RT and Windows RT users.

No surprise.