by Stone Marshall | Nov 9, 2014 | Minecraft News |
Earlier this year Microsoft acquired indie developer Mojang for $2.5 billion. It was a big move, and it left many fans wondering how it might effect Mojang’s hit game Minecraft. In a recent interview with IGN, Xbox head Phil Spencer talked about the desire to meet the needs of the game’s community. He said that Minecraft 2 may not make the most sense, and his words were followed by every fan of the game breathing a sigh of relief. Minecraft already does what it was created to do perfectly, why would it ever need a sequel?
Why it works so well
From the beginning, Minecraft was a game all about building. Not only was the gameplay about letting you create whatever you wanted, but the game itself was designed to be built up into something better. If you look at its original release and look at it now, it’s a very different game. Thanks to Mojang’s constant support with free updates, the game was able to constantly grow into something more grand. Content is constantly being added, and bugs are always being squashed. A sequel could never improve on the Minecraft formula, because its formula is all about improvement. A sequel would be a radical shift away from the pre-established normal of the game, changing it from a single evolving entity to a standard game series with annual static sequels.
Now that Microsoft owns the game, the company’s best course of action to keep customers happy would just be to keep the updates rolling. Minecraft is now on more platforms than ever, catering to millions of players. Everyone who has purchased the game bought it knowing it would receive updates, that the developers would be adding more fun content. It’s essentially an Everlasting Gobbstopper: for a one-time price you get something you can never finish and that will remain good for years to come. If a sequel comes along it will make the original go stale, forever stopping progress in your old worlds. It’d be like a new Skylanders game that wasn’t compatible with last year’s figures, or a new box of Legos that didn’t fit your old pieces. New content shouldn’t intend to be a rigid standalone package; it should be an addition to the big Minecraft toy box.
Worst-case scenario
But what if, in some bizarre alternate future, a Minecraft 2 is made? Would it live up to its name? Would anyone care? What would it have to be to feel like a true sequel?
If Minecraft 2 rolls around Mojang and Microsoft can’t just add some new content. They need to add loads of new content, like the equivalent of 10 years’ worth of updates all rolled out at once. We’ll need new things to explore, something more than just new biomes and ancient structures. The most obvious option is new alternate realms like The Nether and The End. It’d be pretty sweet if we could explore space a la Really Big Sky, letting us visit and mine numerous randomly generated planets. More places to visit would also mean more building materials and new things to craft. It’d be nice to see new redstone elements, new light sources, new decorations — new everything! Maybe go the Banjo Kazooie: Nuts ‘n’ Bolts route and let us build our own custom vehicles to navigate the world faster. There are also so many odds and ends they could throw in, like an improved combat system and custom skins on consoles.
The possibilities for a sequel are limitless, but let’s face it, no matter how great it could be we’ll always wish it was just done as an update.
Other options
In the end, we have to remember Microsoft is a company, and the ideal future of endless free Minecraft updates isn’t going to bring in revenue. There’s many ways Microsoft could earn money from its new property without making a sequel. Maybe it’ll focus more on monetizing the game, delivering more skin and texture packs to consoles. Microsoft has provided some good paid content in the past, and as long as it’s kept cosmetic everyone can enjoy the game without spending extra cash. Maybe the series will get spin-off games instead of a sequel, releases that utilize the property without messing with the core experience. Microsoft could easily slap some creepers onto a free-to-play mobile puzzle game. It could also make small ID@Xbox games, maybe a randomly generated Diablo-esque dungeon crawler or a four-player party game. Minecraft has become a very recognizable brand, with its name and characters appearing anywhere that will garner a lot of attention.
For better or worse, we don’t know what the future holds for Minecraft. Despite Microsoft’s stated good intentions, maybe a sequel is inevitable. While we still have to wait and see if Phil Spencer’s words hold true, his statement did prove one important thing: Microsoft has a pretty good understanding of what Minecraft is, and what its community would want. The company may not be the ones that created the game, but it’s shown that the future of our beloved game rests in good hands.
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by Stone Marshall | Nov 8, 2014 | Minecraft News |
The latest pre-release build of Minecraft 1.8.1 has been published by Mojang, two weeks after the team last put together an early build of the incremental update, but the extra development time apparently hasn’t given Mojang any better of an idea as to when Minecraft 1.8.1 will be ready for an official release.
The fourth pre-release build of Minecraft 1.8.1 was published Thursday morning and the latest round of changes offer solutions for everything from ongoing bugs to handful of performance issues that have since been optimized. Only a few of the changes were outlined on the official Mojang blog, but we’re happy to report that lead Minecraft programmer Jens Bergensten continued his tradition of publishing more-complete versions of Mojang’s patch notes via his personal Reddit account.
In addition to stamping out more than half a dozen bugs, Minecraft 1.8.1 pre-release 4 offers unspecified improvements to the game’s rendering engine, which should (theoretically) result in smoother frame rates for some portion of the Minecraft community. The latest Minecraft 1.8.1 pre-release also tweaks the game’s Options menu.
On the bug front, Minecraft 1.8.1 pre-release 4 eliminates an error that cause villagers to ignore data tags when trading, along with a bug that allowed players to duplicate themselves on certain servers and one that caused chunks not to render properly for some players. The studio also fixed “an annoying bug” that will apparently not be given any further explanation.
Here are the complete patch notes for Minecraft 1.8.1 pre-release 4 (via Jens Bergensten):
- Rendering performance improvements
- Options changes
- off/fancy/fast clouds
- off/on entity shadows
- fast/fancy now only controls leaves and rain particles
- Dropped items on fast graphics now rotate again
- Fixed some bugs
- Fixed the Anvil GUI truncating long item names and showing garbage at the end
- Fixed chunks not rendering behind the player in F5 or changed FOV until moving the mouse
- Fixed an annoying bug
- Fixed villagers ignoring data tags in trading
- Fixed /summon ignoring rotation
- Fixed /execute detect giving false positive when in different dimension
- Fixed players duplicating themselves on servers
- Fixed mineshafts generating air blocks at wrong location
Be sure to check back with iDigitalTimes.com and follow Scott on Twitter for additional Minecraft coverage throughout the remainder of 2014 and for however long Mojang continues to publish new Minecraft content in the years to come.
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by Stone Marshall | Nov 6, 2014 | Minecraft News |
One uneventful Friday night, I decided to visit Disney World. I’d been once before, packing all four parks into five days. It was intense, and I didn’t get to go on all the rides.
This time I wanted to take it easy. So I wandered around the Germany Pavilion at Epcot. I rode on Pirates of the Caribbean at Magic Kingdom. Twice, actually. I ate some snacks so I wouldn’t die.
Oh, and I did all of that from my couch in “Minecraft.”
Someone built a 1:1 scale of Disney World in “Minecraft,” which is the game that Microsoft recently paid more than $2 billion to own.
“Minecraft” is what’s called an open-world sandbox game, where players can build amazing creations, walk endlessly, or even play against each other online.
The multiplayer functionality of “Minecraft” is where people from all over can participate and play with each other in the same virtual world. Some people even host their own servers. There are hundreds if not thousands of gorgeous creations in the game, ranging from entire cities to replicas of real-life landmarks.
Once Upon A Dream
And that’s where Disney World comes in, or as it’s called in “Minecraft,” the MCMagic server.
The brains behind the magic is David Wasman, who goes by the name TheRealDuckie in the game.
He started out building the castle with a couple friends. He then saw on the “Minecraft” subreddit that someone else had built the front train station.
“I put two and two together, and figured I could put each one on opposite ends of Main Street, and then it just blew up from there,” Wasman tells Business Insider.
He then got to thinking that there are thousands of people who would never have a chance to make it to Disney in their lives. So he started a free server running out of his bedroom to give people an opportunity to visit the park.
“The server could only handle around 20 people at the time,” he laughs.
Through word of mouth, other builders from around the world pitched in to help him create more of the park, brick by brick. The number of people willing to help out grew, and three years later, the entirety of Disney World was online and accepting hundreds of visitors a day.
“I knew I had something,” he says. “I knew that being able to take from that magic that Disney already created, I can’t take any credit for that. But I can at least continue it in some way. It’s an homage, really.”
Building a team to help create stuff for a “Minecraft” server is a well-known part of the “Minecraft” world. Ever since Mojang (the maker of “Minecraft”) allowed people to host games on their own servers, there have been teams of people offering their building expertise to help make each server unique.
One of those teams, called ChiseledBrick, was started by a 13-year-old. People can spend anywhere from $50 all the way up to $200 per build, depending on various factors, such as the size of the build and the level of detail involved.
“It’s usually a form of investment. A server usually wants to have a good spawn area because it is the first impression of the server,” ChiseledBrick founder Justin Wang says.
Spawning is where a player is placed in the game world once they sign on. Or where they are “reborn” after they die.
In MCMagic, there’s no dying. It’s strictly for wandering around and checking out the parks. The spawn area looks like the front entrance to Disney World, the ticketing and transportation center. You can read about different aspects of the park, and learn how to do things and which commands to type in.
The best part is that you don’t actually have to walk anywhere. For example, you can just type in that you want to go to the Magic Kingdom, and you’re magically transported to Main Street.
Magic Everywhere
MCMagic is completely nonprofit. Any money that they make from donations goes right back into supporting the servers.
“I’ve paid, for the history of the servers, about 90% of the costs out of pocket,” Wasman says. “I’ve spent well over $16,000.”
Courtesy of TripAdvisorThe real Cinderella’s castle in the real Magic Kingdom.
There are hundreds of “cast members,” too, who help guests find things and make sure that everything is running smoothly. They also ensure that the space remains family friendly. There are constant reminders in the chat area on the left that no foul language will be tolerated.
“We are very big on the safety of our guests,” Denise Neill, one of MCMagic’s moderators, tells Business Insider. “We have a very young user base. We don’t allow any profanity, outside links, or any advertising on the server. Our goal is to make sure that when you come here, you know that your 7-year-old is not being approached by anyone who can get them into trouble.”
And even those cast members run the place on a volunteer basis. People who hang out on the server often enough and want to help out even further, whether by acting as a tour guide or a moderator, have to submit an application.
Neill stumbled on this server before taking a trip to Disney World with her husband, and just fell in love with it, she says. She’s been helping out with the server on and off for about three years, all as a volunteer.
“It’s just so much fun,” she says. “I’ve learned something new every day, and I’ve built really good relationships with people I’ve known for three years here.”
She said it’s not uncommon for people who meet on the MCMagic server to hang out in real life, and even meet up in the real Disney World.
Do You Want To Build A Theme Park?
In order to get Disney World looking like the real thing, the team solicits help from Disney fans.
They ask people who are going there to take detailed pictures, they use aerial images from Google, and they’ve even found the blueprints to some of the rides in order to build them to scale.
The amount of detail is insane. You can download what are called “resource packs,” that allow you to experience the parks as intended. And that even includes the music. And the shows, such as “Fantasmic.”
And people love it. “At this time, we’ve had around a quarter of a million guests on our server,” Neill says. “I remember when we had a party for our 5,000th guest. We get a new player every few minutes.”
But thanks to the quick way of getting across the parks, there aren’t any crowds to deal with.
ScreenshotThe sorcerer’s hat in ‘Minecraft.’
To Infinity And Beyond
There aren’t any plans to expand beyond Disney World. They’ll never build the Disneyland in California, or any of the other parks around the world.
But that doesn’t mean the work is over with the parks. Cast members in MCMagic are constantly building new things, ranging from changing up the different seasonal decorations, to huge projects like new rides or attractions.
For example, it was just announced that they’re removing the sorcerer’s hat from Disney’s Hollywood Studios. So it’s only a matter of time before they remove it from MCMagic.
“They will never be done,” Neill says. “This is a work in progress forever. You have to remember that Disney changes every six months. That means something new is coming.”
by Stone Marshall | Nov 6, 2014 | Minecraft News |
Blockopedia is a new book published by Egmont that details every block in Minecraft. While players will enjoy the extra information, onlookers are offered a window into how Minecraft provides a creative canvass for block based constructions.
Minecraft blocks are the essential elements that not only make up the world, but that players use to make their creations. Each block has different qualities and inter-dependencies that require a detailed understanding to make the most of them. Even young players soon learn how this all works and can identify the numerous types of blocks they may need.
The book, itself shaped like a block, groups things into different categories: naturally generated blocks, ores and minerals, plants, liquids and gasses, player created, utility and mechanism. Each of the blocks is measured for blast resistance, light-emitting qualities, transparency, physics and flammability.
These details will make more sense to those who have played the game, but even for outsiders it’s fascinating to see just how much is going on beneath the surface of Minecraft. Although the game looks simple and visually retro, this block ecosystem is as complex as any modern video-game.
Blockopedia
As with any “fan service” publication though there is an element of cashing-in on the popularity of a particular product or brand. Certainly, Minecraft represents a huge potential audience, and with the book releasing on December 4th is likely to sell out before Christmas.
However, Blockopedia has more content than might be expected here. This, along with the top class presentation, should ensure it is both useful and interesting once the initial novelty has worn off.
Another potential downside with a printed book like this is that it can go out of date quite quickly. Here though there is enough solid basic information that the book will continue to be useful even when it is no longer comprehensive.
Written by Alex Wiltshire, former editor of Edge magazine, the book expands on the basic properties of each block to offer advice and suggestions around their function and use in the game. The extends to how the blocks can be used in crafting to make a variety of useful secondary building materials.
Minecraft Book
Perhaps the only real omision in the book is an alphabetical index to look up blocks. Without this readers have to flick through pages or leaf through the table of contents to find particular block’s details.
The book follows the other Minecraft themed publications from Egmont, Minecraft Construction handbook, Minecraft Combat handbook, Minecraft annual and the Minecraft Beginner’s handbook. These each offer more instructional information about the game and are complemented by the Blockopedia information.
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