by Stone Marshall | Mar 11, 2015 | Minecraft News |
This is a sidebar to the March 23, 2015 Forbes Magazine cover story, Inside The Post-Minecraft Life Of Billionaire Gamer God Markus Persson.
“Survival mode” is simple: Your protagonist (known as “Steve”) is dropped into a randomly generated landscape and must collect resources and build things to survive. Walk up to a tree and “punch” it to collect blocks of wood, and craft them into a simple shovel or pick; use that to dig in the ground or mine a mountain. Eventually you’ll be able to make stone tools, then iron.
Fail to build adequate shelter and come nightfall you’ll fall prey to dangerous monsters. In “creative mode” you can build whatever you imagine–Big Ben, a disco, a mansion–except this modern-day take on LEGOs lets you interact with others and their various creations.
–Initial launch: May 2009. Downloads to date: in excess of 100 million. That’s more than 47,000 a day.
–Minecraft’s procedurally generated worlds are so large the map can contain up to 921.6 quadrillion individual blocks.
–There are 372,047 subscribers to the YouTube channel Far Lands or Bust!, which chronicles one man’s attempt to walk to the edge of a Minecraft map. At his current pace it should take him another two decades.
–If you search for “Minecraft” on YouTube, you’ll get about 63,800,000 results. Several stars host regular shows updating fans on new features.
–There are more than 431,000 subscribers to Reddit’s /r/Minecraft forum.
–The Danish Geodata Agency created a 1:1 scale re-creation of the country in Minecraft. It contains over 4 trillion blocks, and the file is over 1 terabyte in size.
–Official Minecraft licensees include Scholastic, LEGO, J!NX, ThinkGeek, Mattel and Telltale Games.
–Amazon.com lists 490 different books in its “Minecraft” category, including strategy guides, joke books, fan fiction, teachers’ guides and programming manuals.
–Minecraft users have built replicas of hundreds of different architectural masterpieces–from the Great Pyramid of Giza to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater.
–There are 359 different splash texts that can randomly appear on the game’s launch screen, including “Made in Sweden!” and “Call your mother!”
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by Stone Marshall | Mar 10, 2015 | Minecraft News |
It’s time again to announce the next MINECON!
If you like Minecraft, and you like people who like Minecraft, you’ll probably like MINECON. It’s THE place to see all the cool Mojangstas you fancy, meet people who love Minecraft maybe even as much as you do, and attend panels and events full of YouTube creators and a ton of other talented folks!
This summer we are heading to London, UK to hang out with 10,000 of our closest friends (hint: that’s you!). As usual there will be panels, contests, tournaments, events and a soon-to-be-announced show-of-some-sort for our Saturday night bash.
WHEN: July 4-5, 2015
WHERE: ExCeL London Exhibition and Conference Centre
WHO: You, hopefully!
Since you’re bound to have more questions, I’ll ask myself some in this handy Q&A:
How do I get tickets?
Ticket sales will happen in February, exact date and time will be announced in the next two weeks. You’ll head to minecon.mojang.com to purchase them, but they will go fast! To accommodate different people’s schedules, they will be released in two batches on the same day, different times, 5,000 tickets in each batch. When you buy your ticket you’ll also get access to our discounted hotel pricing, so don’t go booking a hotel room just yet!
How do I become a volunteer (aka MINECON Agent)?
So you want to be a part of the event? We will be taking volunteer submissions next week. You’ll fill out an online form and we will get back to you before tickets go on sale. Watch mojang.com for more details.
I have a great idea for a panel, how can I make it happen?
Our community submitted panels have been some of the best panels we’ve had! Panel submissions will begin in early March. You’ll need to fill out an online form about the panel, who would be best on it, and submit a video of yourself describing the panel and why it should be at MINECON.
I want to exhibit at MINECON. How do I get a booth?
Each year we have a nice selection of awesome exhibitors, and you could be one of them! You can contact us via minecon@mojang.com for exhibition booth requests.
More details and information will be coming in the next couple weeks, keep watching mojang.com for all the answers you seek!
Thanks for reading!
Vu – @vubui
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by Stone Marshall | Mar 8, 2015 | Minecraft News |
As we all know, Microsoft bought Mojang to get Minecraft for a whopping $2.5 billion. But as it turns out, they weren’t the only company trying to get the brand.
Activision and EA were also interested. This was revealed yesterday in an interview with Marcus “Notch” Persson in Forbes.
As it turns out it didn’t work out with Activision, and Persson won’t say what happened with EA, but adds that he didn’t want to sell to someone “who did game play in a way we didn’t like.”
Microsoft obviously passed that test and everything began after Persson posted a Tweet stating: Anyone want to buy my share of Mojang so I can move on with my life? Getting hate for trying to do the right thing is not my gig.
Forbes writes that Mojang’s CEO Carl Manneh was sitting at home with his family when he first saw the Tweet from Persson. Within 30 seconds of reading it his phone rang. It was Microsoft wanting to know if they were serious or not.
One of the main reasons Microsoft bought Mojang is, according to Forbes, that the platform holder has an anormous cash reserve of $93 billion outside the US that they can’t take home without paying enormous taxes. By buying out Mojang they avoided this and got to use some of this money.
Forbes also reminded Persson of his famous statement where he said that he didn’t want to sell his work to some giant, to which he answered: “You have to be responsible for what you said, of course, but I don’t really feel a lot of shame for saying something that I’ve changed my mind about.”
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by Stone Marshall | Mar 5, 2015 | Minecraft News |
We’re only halfway through the decade, but it’s already obvious that Minecraft is the biggest game of the ’10s. Its creator, Markus “Notch” Persson has now been honored for his achievement with a cover story in Forbes. The piece reveals a few interesting tidbits about how he came to leave the game that made his name, including the fact that the $2.5 billion sale to Microsoft was prompted with a single tweet.
On June 6th, 2014, Persson was feeling exhausted with dealing with the Minecraft community, and ventured onto Twitter to release the tension. He asked if anyone would be interested in buying his share of Mojang so that he could “move on with [his] life.” According to the interview, it was mere minutes afterward that Mojang CEO Carl Manneh was being called by a Microsoft executive asking if Persson was serious. Other companies were bidding for control of Minecraft, including Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts, although talks with the latter stalled because Persson, apparently, isn’t a fan of EA’s policies.
Unfortunately, Persson was less happy with the way his post-Minecraft life has been portrayed by the piece. There is a suggestion that he now spends his days running up $180,000 bar bills at Swedish nightclubs.It’s something he has denied, again, using his favorite medium of Twitter. In a series of messages earlier this morning, he said that he isn’t “dedicated to partying his life away,” and it would be difficult anyway, since the interest payments on his $1.5 billion fortune are going up faster than he could spend it on fancy vodka.Read original article here:
by Stone Marshall | Feb 28, 2015 | Minecraft News |
Amazon has given us some more details about the Minecraft Blockopedia book which is heading to the US, so we have news about its release and a lot more. Check it out below.
The Minecraft Blockoedia is a massive book which is going to be launched by Scholastic and new details about it have been made available from Amazon. The book has the ISBN-10 of 0545820111 and ISBN-13 of 978-0545820110 numbers.
The book takes on an hexagonal format and this pays homage to the blocks from the game. Alex Wiltshire wrote the 312 page book and gives details on each of the plants, ores and types of blocks in the game up to the 1.8 update. It also offers trivia and tips on how to use everything.
Minecraft Blockopedia arrives on the 24 February in the US, following on from the success of the video game which is available on various platforms and has been hugely successful.
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by Stone Marshall | Feb 23, 2015 | Minecraft News |
It is no secret that a book on Minecraft is getting produced and it is going to get launched tomorrow. Online retailer Amazon has already listed the Blockopedia on its website and indicated the release date to be 24 February this year.
Blockopedia is written by Alex Wiltshire, who is famous for being the editor of Edge Magazine and for being an expert gamer. Like the name of the book, Blockopedia is actually an encyclopaedia for the award winning, open-world sandbox title, Minecraft.
Blockopedia basically covers everything one needs to know about Minecraft. It goes into detail like giving away the properties of every texture, city and elements in the game. Furthermore, Blockopedia also offers players tips on how to make the most of Minecraft.
Even so, it is still unsure on how much the Blockopedia will cost when launched. We’ll update this accordingly when Blockopedia make its debut tomorrow.
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