What a weird episode. After the high energy of The Last Place You Look, this one slows down the action shortly into it, and it doesn’t really pick back up until the very end, which feels like the end of a season. But then, there’s still another episode after this.
It’s hard to fault Telltale for switching up the formula a bit, but it feels like the first season is essentially complete at this point, and anything that could happen during the final episode will just be a lead-in to the next season. It might be better if this were just a four-episode series.
Minecraft: Story Mode: A Block and a Hard Place (iOS, Mac, PC [reviewed], PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One) Developer: Telltale Games Publisher: Telltale Games Released: December 22, 2015 (Mac, PC) MSRP: $4.99, $24.99 (Season Pass) Rig: AMD Phenom II X2 555 @ 3.2 GHz, with 4GB of RAM, ATI Radeon HD 5700, Windows 7 64-bit
Where the first two episodes in the season induced apathy, this one causes ambivalence. It’s a fine distinction: I was struggling to care about Jesse and his friends at first; now I care enough but find myself disappointed with the final result. For every beat Minecraft: Story Mode hits well, it stumbles once or twice.
On the one hand, the more deliberate progression of this episode can be a good thing. It opens up the gameplay to include actual (albeit easy) puzzles along with the standard dialogue trees and quick-time events. Also, without lulls in the action, it could be bombastic to the point of grating. If it’s always high energy, then it’s all the same.
On the other hand, the plodding of the first half of this episode is as dull as can be. There’s a horse travel montage near the beginning illustrating just how far it is to get to the Farlands, and protagonist Jesse has the option of the classic whine “Are we there yet?” Even with the cuts of the montage, I felt the same. I get it; it’s far. Let’s move on.
Once the action finally does pick up at the end, it still treads a questionable path. The full story about The Order of the Stone is revealed, and it plays out as foreshadowed. It’s always a little awkward when a story treats something like an earth-shattering reveal when most would see it coming from the hints in previous episodes. Perhaps if I had led the life Jesse did, it would have been more impactful.
Then, almost as if checking off all the Telltale boxes, we get another character death. This loss feels more important than the one in the third episode, since it’s a likable character. Death in children’s entertainment is nothing new (see: Bambi, The Land Before Time, Transformers [1986]), but it generally comes with a purpose. While we’ll have to wait for the fifth episode, my sneaking suspicion is the only reason this death was written in was a cynical attempt at eliciting emotion.
The really strange part of the whole scene is that in the middle of the mourning (when I have a full pout on my face), Story Mode lets loose a visual gag referencing the source material. Admittedly, it’s probably the funniest thing in the whole episode — so few of the jokes are worth even a chuckle — but it feels wrong to have it punctuate the rest of the sad scene so bluntly.
With the Wither Storm properly defeated, Jesse and the gang are proclaimed to be the new Order of the Stone, and A Block and a Hard Place ends with the vague promise of new adventures coming in the next episode. Unless it’s tightly written and self-contained, I’m not interested. More likely, the last episode will open up a can of worms that won’t get resolved until Season Two.
This episode could very well be considered the finale for the first season. It wraps up the Wither Storm saga, it answers the questions about the Order of the Stone, and it delivers a semi-happy, hopeful ending for the crew. If only it did that without an utterly boring first half and the clumsy insertion of mandatory Telltale story elements, it might have also been a good ending.
It seemed like an insane gamble: Spend millions upon millions of your personal fortune to build a house that’s so off-the-charts indulgent – $200,000 “candy wall,” $1 million-plus security system, quarter-million-dollar sculptures (plural) – that the Los Angeles Times won’t feel too hyperbolic declaring it “L.A.’s most extreme home.”
Then charge $85 million (£57m) for it and let the market have its way.
That the market certainly did. The 23,000-square-foot Beverly Hills gargantumansion notoriously sold a year ago for $70 million (£47m) — cash — to Minecraft founder Markus “Notch” Persson, a Swede who sold his Mojang game company to Microsoft and crossed into the billionaire club. Notch reportedly outbid Beyonce and Jay-Z.
Yahoo Real Estate spoke at length with Bruce Makowsky, the ultra-rich man who put a sizable chunk of his personal money and reputation on the line to build the spec house.
And we have to say, the way Makowsky explained his venture, we started to see his logic (though we wouldn’t have gambled our millions … lesson one, perhaps, in why we still don’t have any).
But first you had to think like a billionaire.
The property occupies just shy of an acre in Beverly Hills’ Trousdale Estates.
More Money Than Time
Makowsky had no problem thinking like a billionaire. He wasn’t one, but he wasn’t far off, members of his team told Yahoo Real Estate. He made his fortune in handbags and other women’s accessories, which you might have seen everywhere from QVC to Bloomingdale’s.
“I have a big mega-yacht and toys and planes,” Makowsky told us. “I kind of understand what very wealthy people want.”
Take yachts. (Bear with us, because this circles back to his real estate thinking.) He sat in the Beverly Hills gargantumansion with a prospective buyer who had a mutual interest in boats – who had, in fact, ordered up a 300-footer, at a cost of about $200 million (£136m). Makowsky asked how often the visitor sailed. About eight weeks a year, the visitor replied. The operating costs on that yacht were about $8 million (£5m) a year, or a million for each week of use.
Admittedly, we’re not sailors, but that seems mind-boggling: a boat that’s about twice as expensive as the most expensive mansion ever sold in America (and a mansion comes with land!).
What is so special about a $200 million yacht? we asked Makowsky.
He said that, in a nutshell, “every detail inside that boat is spectacular.” Every single detail. You don’t spend a couple hundred million on a yacht, hire a world-class chef and then tell a guest who wants pizza that you’re out of pepperoni, he said. On a billionaire’s yacht, you can’t ever be out of pepperoni; your fridge had better be big, and it’d better be stocked with every staple imaginable, plus some ingredients you’d barely dream of.
We’ll be honest. We weren’t entirely convinced that 24-hour personal pizzas equal $200 million of special. So he cited too the punishing saltwater, the unremitting barrage of ocean waves, the systems and craftsmanship required to keep the boat afloat.
As he spoke, though, it dawned on us that maybe the truth is something he can’t say out loud, at least not to a non-billionaire: Maybe yachts aren’t exactly $200 million worth of special, but to a billionaire, does that really matter?
“A lot of the wealthy people have more money than time,” he said, and “wealthy people are getting wealthier.”
There’s a backlog for mega-yachts that’s “incredible right now,” Makowsky told us. “I have a big boat – and I take it down to St. Bart’s and I’m the smallest boat in the marina.”
The Lure of the New
So you’re a billionaire, and you’ve spent $200 million on a yacht and $100 million on a jet and maybe a few million on your car collection. By now you may be making money almost faster than you can spend it: At a measly 1 percent interest, a billion dollars would generate $10 million a year.
Your real estate agent, meanwhile, keeps showing you houses that are $20 million, $30 million, maybe $50 million. They don’t knock your Cervelt socks off. Compared to the kind of money you’ve been spending, they might even seem a little, well, piddling.
And while 10,000 square feet may have been considered a big house a decade ago, that attitude has changed among the super-rich, who now demand “super-large,” Makowsky said. The mansion he built is more than twice that size.
There are “a lot of nice homes” out there, “but they’re tired,” he said. “Nothing brand-new.”
Is newness that important to the ultra-wealthy? we asked.
“They want to feel like they’re the first person in that house. … They want to feel like it’s theirs,” he said. That’s why, he said, he didn’t hold any open houses, or even one of the parties that’s become more common for high-end L.A. real estate. He wanted to preserve its untouchability.
Makowsky was emphatic. “People. Want. New.”
The natural conclusion might seem that they should build their own dream house, tailored to their tastes and desires. But remember to think like a billionaire who has more money than time. (And remember, too, that billionaires might easily own a dozen ultra-luxury properties at once; that’s how many homes most Americans have in a lifetime. As ultra-high-end developer Nile Niami says: “Nobody buys a 100,000-square-foot house as their principal residence to use every day.”)
They’d have to scout out the perfect lot – and in Los Angeles, promontories with downtown-to-ocean views are so coveted that a nearby family reportedly refused an offer of $75 million for their house, which developers intended to bulldoze. Then they’d have to get all the necessary local permissions and build the place. It takes “four to six years to do what we did here,” Makowsky said.
Not only that, they’d have to devote time and attention to all the hundreds of details that accumulate as luxury. On a yacht, luxury is made up of sea-hardiness, of masterful design in deceptively limited space, of laid-in pizza supplies. At the mansion Makowsky built, it’s mirrors placed so that wherever you are in the master bath, you can see downtown Los Angeles behind you, right down to the mirror backing within the medicine cabinet; it’s the drawers you open to discover they’re lined with crocodile; it’s “the most beautiful hangers” dangling in the closet.
Makowsky’s idea, in other words, was to “bring mega-yachts to land,” packaged up and ready to go, right down to the administrative staffing.
Which was an interesting proposition, because if billionaires were willing to spend $200 million plus $8 million a year on a boat they rarely used, what would their limit be for the right house?
‘The Air Is Absolutely Thin Up There’
The particular audacity of Makowsky’s venture is that the spec house Notch bought represented only Phase 1. Two more estates were in the works, and he said they’d be even more expensive. “I want to be like the Four Seasons of residential building,” he told us.
We think it’d take nerves of steel to build one spec house priced so high. How many billionaire prospects could there be?
“The air is absolutely thin up there,” he acknowledges, but he says 4,000 people worldwide are worth at least $500 million. Forbes counts a record 1,645 billionaires on the planet.
Meanwhile, brand-new, ultra-high-end houses like his are scarce. “Other than Donald Trump building something down in Palm Beach, this is the second-highest[-cost] spec house ever built in the United States.” We checked with Zillow, and only about 30 homes nationwide are publicly listed at more than $50 million. Just seven of them are asking $75 million or more. (Important caveat: This doesn’t include so-called “pocket” or “whisper” listings, or any other kind of off-market listing.)
The PC/Mac version of Mojang’s sandbox game Minecraft has now sold 22 million copies, according to the sales ticker on the title’s official website. In the last 24 hours, almost 14,500 copies of the hugely popular game were sold. The game passed 22 million over the recent holiday weekend, according to IGN.
PC was Minecraft’s first platform, but the game has since spread to PlayStation and Xbox consoles, as well as mobile devices. That is to say, sales of Minecraft on PC/Mac represent just a portion of the game’s overall success. The game is regularly a top-performer on consoles, while App Annie’s charts show that the iOS and Android versions of Minecraft are also at the top for their respective platforms.
Just today, Microsoft announced that Minecraft is the highest-grossing paid game in the Windows 10 store. It’s held the No. 1 spot since the game launched there in July 2015. Microsoft also said nearly 1 million existing Minecraft players made use of the offer to get the Windows 10 version free.
This time, they weren’t really explictly teaching me anything about “Minecraft,” but I learned something anyway: “Minecraft” is a lot more than a video game. It’s a cultural touchstone; a thing that so many kids have in common that it just becomes a part of their lives.
This Christmas, we were joined by the kids’ cousins, who live a few hours down the road, meaning that they only see each other a handful of times per year. “Minecraft” gave them a common language. They just had to pull out their iPads, and they were off and playing.
Oh, sure, they play more action-oriented games like “N.O.V.A. 3,” a first-person shooter with robots in the “Titanfall” mold. Or they have this car racing game that I can never seem to remember the title of.
But they always come back to “Minecraft,” where they work together to build things, explore caves, and cause the ocassional explosion, forest fire, or massive volcanic eruption. Even though they were attached to their screens, they were still managing to spend quality time with each other.
(Reddit) A working Game Boy made entirely from “Minecraft” bricks.
And because they were able to visit each other’s “Minecraft” worlds, they were able to show off the things they had built, the villages and cave systems they had discovered, and the armor and weapons they had forged. They experimented and tried building new things.
Looking back, it’s probably a little healthier than all the hours that my cousins and I sunk into games like “Mortal Kombat Trilogy” and “GoldenEye 007” at family gatherings.
Then there’s the other thing I learned: One of the kids found and used an unauthorized app that lets them cheat at Minecraft, getting all the items and supplies they could ever want in the game’s more challenging Survival Mode. In a game that’s supposed to be about building, it’s a letdown that kids would want to short circuit the process. But also totally expected.
Ultimately, though, I find it really heartening that kids have settled on something that’s ultimately constructive as the defining video game of a generation. They could be shooting each other or running each other over, but they’re choosing to build instead.
Brandon Relph, from Eastbourne, East Sussex, spends a few hours each night on his business – and now employs 23 people across 13 countries
A tech entrepreneur has built up a computer game business employing more than 20 people and made £10,000 at the tender age 15.
Brandon Relph, who started his business last year, employs 23 people across 13 countries who help him build whatever his clients want in the mega-popular game Minecraft.
Brandon, who started his business goCreative with a German teenager called Florian, said: “I was first introduced to Minecraft when I was about 10 or 11.
Entrepreneur: Brandon Relph has already made his first £10,000
“The game cost me £10. That was the best £10 I have ever spent.
“My aim now is to make £10,000 by my 16th birthday and I am already there with that one.”
Plan: The boy combines his business with school and a busy social life
The teen began coding at the age of ten and since the age of 15 has spent a few hours each night working on his business, while still finding time for his homework.
Brandon, from Eastbourne, East Sussex, and Florian are currently reinvesting their profits with a hope to expand further.
Brandon added: “We both live with our parents and we don’t really need to take much of an income from the business.”
Dream: The young man wants to become a spy
Businesses pay goCreative to advertises their products or services within Minecraft.
For instance, a film production company may want to recreate a scene from their film within the game.
Ambitious Brandon is aiming for A* grades in his GCSEs and hopes to study computer sciences at either Oxford or Cambridge so that he can fulfil his dream of being a spy.
If you’ve done all that you can do in Rise of the Tomb Raider, you may want to take a look at this DLC that just dropped today. It’s called “Endurance Mode,” and essentially adopts the core Minecraft gametype (yep, that game isn’t just about building things) — scavenge and craft by day, and survive at night when the enemies come out. The developer is billing it as an “unforgiving” mode, where you need to actually build fires and find fuel to survive, and so on. I can’t vouch for it but it sounds cool on paper.
As a reminder, Rise of the Tomb Raider‘s exclusivity is likely going to die off soon with the PC release next month.
