

Minecraft: 331132 registered users, of which 50793 (15.33%) have bought the game - kenshi
http://minecraft.net/stats.jsp

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spyrosk
It is a great game, especially the paid survivor mode, although beware, it's a
_huge_ timesink in every mode. Very addicting, gives one a sense of complete
freedom to build and hack almost anything he desires. If you search youtube
you'll be astonished at how much time and passion people have put into their
creations. It gives me a feeling of an old school game, before graphics became
the No.1 reason to play a game.

What's even greater is that Notch (the sole creator and developper), apart
from being very dedicated to the project, is very accepting to users' feedback
and completing requested features.

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kenshi
Minecraft is interesting in so many ways. Obviously there is the impressive
sales and user numbers. And we have a solo-developer, Notch behind it all.

Then there is the impressive fostering (and support) of the community around
the game. People really are passionate about this game, as demonstrated by the
youtube videos and general fandom for it (I found out about it from a fan of
the game).

For a game I'd say the technology choices are pretty unconventional. Java on
the client and server side.

The game itself is part of a genre of crafting games, which seem to have a
whole cult appeal in themselves. But it's a genre (or subgenre?) that is
getting pretty mainstream. Games like Little Big Planet on the PS3 and the
forthcoming Forge World mode in Halo Reach, show that people's desire to mod
and create in games has not diminished at all.

And of course, Minecraft is a product of an open development platform. Whilst
I love some of the closed platforms (consoles, iOS) for their slickness, I
love the fact that stuff like this still comes from the PC world.

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chaosmachine
I have no idea what this game is, but the numbers are impressive:

 _"In the last 24 hours, 3121 people registered, and 1298 people bought the
game."_

The price is about 13 USD, so that's roughly $17,000 in sales today, or $700
an hour...

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NinetyNine
The game is a sandbox game in which the world is made up of block units, all
of the same size. Units can be dirt, sand, stone/cobblestone, and various
ores. There are trees as well, and combining various raw materials, you craft
progressively more complex things. From there, you can build almost anything
granted you have the resources.

In survival mode, there are zombies and spiders that appear at night. They're
pretty difficult to kill with just your hand, and they will mob you pretty
quickly. So you essentially have to construct a safety fort to live. People
solve this problem in pretty elaborate ways sometimes.

One of the most interesting aspects of the game is how subtle the world around
you is. When you cut down a tree, you usually can find a new tree seed to
plant it again. The tree grows based on how much light it's exposed to. The
zombies sometimes get in fights with each other, or local non-violent wildlife
(pigs, cows). Water can flood your tunnels if you hit it, and lava does the
same.

All of this, and it's endearing. The menu screen has a joking catchphrase
which changes every time, the developer Notch is as in love with the game as
everyone else, and the rest of the community is hugely cooperative in building
things, even if it takes a huge amount of effort. These reasons are what get
people to stay, and get the purchase.

I only wish I could hack on this code, the problems seem hugely interesting
(rendering miles of block, even at low detail, is resource intensive, and
simulating an environment on top of that).

~~~
BoppreH
I find it important to add that the community is great. A patch recently
updated the behavior of lava and burned to ground many giant structures people
built.

What the community did? They started a thread to share their stories,
understand the new behavior and generally have a good laugh.

I've seen 16-bit adders and clocks made with the in-game elements. Structures
spanning thousands of square kilometers are not uncommon to see.

I don't know if it was self-selection or just sheer luck, but I think the
community is worth noting, especially now that the survival mode has
multiplayer capabilities.

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_delirium
If those 50,793 purchases were mostly at the current price of 10 euros, that's
pretty good revenue for a one-man operation that's still in alpha.

~~~
icey
It almost makes it worthwhile to keep it in a state of perpetual alpha,
doesn't it?

It's clearly incredibly lucrative already and he's not at all constrained by
the formality of a product that must be maintained or kept consistant, no
worries about making significant or breaking changes to game mechanics, no
formal bug reports of any sort... he doesn't have to worry about any of the
things people expect from even _beta_ software and instead gets to focus on
the things he really wants to work on.

Seems like the perfect system to me.

~~~
_delirium
Yeah, it seems like an interesting mix of game-design and a forum: people are
basically paying $10 to get access to a community & experiment, the way you
pay $10 to get a SomethingAwful account. They're not paying $10 to buy a
product that's expected to work to any particular standard, which is certainly
nice from a game-design point of view.

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troygoode
To me, single-player minecraft is "meh, neat" whereas multiplayer is one of
the defining examples of emergent gameplay. Definitely worth giving the free
version a shot.

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BoppreH
I'm currently playing it.

It's "Lego meets virtual reality."

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aw3c2
What does this mean? Can I play without paying for it? Or are the 85% the
usual rate of illegitimate copies?

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electromagnetic
Minecraft is free, the Alpha is pay-for IIRC. If people like Minecraft enough
I guess they'll buy the Alpha.

