Book Review: Minecraft 77
Minecraft: The Unlikely Tale of Markus ‘Notch’ Persson and the Game that Changed Everything | |
author | Daniel Goldberg and Linus Larsson (translated by Jennifer Hawkins) |
pages | 256 |
publisher | Seven Stories Press |
rating | 7/10 |
reviewer | Nick Kolakowski |
ISBN | 1609805372 (ISBN-10); 978-1609805371 (ISBN-13) |
summary | Markus 'Notch' Persson's development from isolated coder to famous game developer. |
He certainly has the money to make many of his empire dreams come true, as Minecraft remains a strong seller more than four years after its Alpha debut. The game features a "survival" mode, in which the blocky hero attempts to survive against hordes of enemies, as well as a "creative" mode where players can mine blocks and use them to build pretty much any structure. The latter mode has unleashed some spectacular displays of creativity, including enormous replicas of the Egyptian Pyramids and the Empire State Building.
While the authors clearly had some access to Persson, they didn’t use that face-to-face time to plunge deeply into his character: there’s precious little insight into how his occasionally messy childhood informed his worldview, for example, or the duality that clearly exists between his more insular self and his ambition to build a massive company that, at its heart, rests on interactions between millions of people. On the other hand, by avoiding the plunge into that psychological thicket, they also prevent their work from falling into the tedious armchair-psychiatry that’s doomed many a biography.
The book is at its best when describing the Swedish gaming industry (from its giants down to the indie studios), and how Minecraft went from bedroom-developer project to worldwide phenomenon. That’s almost enough to overlook how much of a cipher Persson remains, even in the final pages.
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Re:It just doesn't sound... (Score:5, Informative)
Nor merited. The guy made a single video game, that's his life's accomplishment. What else really needs to be said?
Now a book on John Carmack, Warren Spector, Will Wright, Sid Meyer, Peter Molyneux, Cliff Bleszinski or even John Romero might actually be interesting and warranted.
Minecraft was done a hundred times before (Score:2, Informative)
Minecraft was helped by a few converging factors that the previous ones (openly admitted by Persson) lacked.
One: Youtube. Especially the affiliate links algorithm. This meant that people who had a lot of follow-on watches and had people watch a long stream got more money. And minecraft was something that they could record playing and get people watching.
Two: Minecraft is shit. Really. Without going to a wiki, try to play the game. How are you suposed to even know you're meant to PUCH A TREE to break a block? How do you know you're meant to press "E" to open your inventory and then put that block of wood into the four-square bit to turn it into wood and THEN put those four bits of wood on those four spots to make a crafting bench with then you can build an axe. After putting it down. And how do you know how to make an axe? What sensible person would think that a wooden axe would chop wood? Then we get into all the other recipies. So minecraft is shit. So you need to watch someone else play to find out how the hell you're supposed to play (or read a wiki. But that's reading, so natch). This means point #1 is important to even play the game.
Three: Derivatives are allowed. You can see a lot of companies threatening LPers who are "making money off our game" by recording them playing it and getting ad revenue. Minecraft were 100% clear that you can make an LP from the start. Making #2 a safe decision.
Four: Freely sharing, multiple platform play. Especially in alpha/beta, that meant that word-of-mouth meant people could *try* the game. Find out about point #2, see others making good with point #1 and know they too can do it because of point #3.
Five: Modding. Of course other games had this. E.g. Half Life, Doom, et al. But this helped a lot because of point #2, Minecraft being shit. So people modded things in like Industrial Craft or MineFactory or Forestry or Buildcraft to make a more interesting and deeper game, including mods like TMI or NEI that at least allowed you to find the recipies, and boy did these mods add a shitload of frankly illogical recipies. The use of these new items and why you'd install them of course required more LP and mod spotlights to demonstrate and inform people of these new things and how to use them. Meaning more LP content and more players.
1.6 has damaged Minecraft Vanilla because they're trying to make the game deeper by making people have to move and explore the procedurally generated world, but their "solution" is all stick and a removal of all carrots to make the stick bigger. Food now more important, this is actually a good idea, but you're likely going to spend a long time farming and creepers blow shit up, including your farm. Nice. And then you'll be eating bread, more bread, even more bread. Brill. They also ramp up the mob spawning to force you to move to reduce the spawn rate back to something you're not having to go out and spam hit a million mobs to be able to farm yet more wheat for bread so you can afford to mine or craft. Problem is, there's not a lot above ground to see, and moving "house" is hard because
a) the day is 5 minutes long and you HAVE to get to bed or monsters spawn still, during which time you can walk directly 600 blocks. But this isn't exploring.
b) all that stuff you had has to be ferried and your inventory isn't big enough for more than a chest's worth of stuff.
c) you have to camp between the old and new place every night.
1.7 isn't addressing this and is likely only going to make it worse.
Modders are falling behind and 90% of good gameplay is from the mods. Add that you're gaining little or nothing (and potentially losing more) and why are you upgrading? Maybe 1.7 will allow a framework that allows modders to more easily move from 1.5+ to 1.7 and thereafter have an easier time going to later versions. Maybe. But at the moment, it's losing momentum and that momentum was why Minecraft made money.