

The Improbable Rise of Minecraft - missn
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_16/b4224032575898.htm

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rflrob
Unfortunately, this article doesn't seem to offer any insights into what
factors made the game so successful, or even really present much new
information that couldn't be found in one of the many other links on HN over
the last several months.

See, e.g.: [1]<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1740289>
[2]<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2107773>
[3]<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1718023>

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DarkShikari
As the other commentors mentioned, there's nothing improbable about it -- but
there shouldn't even be anything too _surprising_ about it. It's not even as
if Minecraft is the first time this happened _or_ the most extreme case of it
happening. It's probably the most widely-publicized example though, at least
among the tech media.

Of course, this doesn't at all reduce the value of Minecraft's success -- it's
just that Minecraft is not some singular magical exception in a world of
failures. This has happened before, and it'll happen again, and it'll happen
bigger.

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Helianthus
I feel like I rage on titles all too often, but I can't resist this one,
particularly since this one comes from businessweek which is currently putting
a grotesque pop-up to win 1000$ for a survey in my face.

There's nothing _improbable_ about the rise of minecraft. It hit the right
notes, took the right steps. What it was, was _unexpected,_ particularly to an
audience/demographic (excuse the coming absurdly broad brush I swear it's just
for hyperbolic humor) that relies on men in suits making decisions about what
sells and what doesn't.

Hopefully I got over my pedantic streak for the day via that one word.

~~~
runevault
To me the title smells of the case of "10 years to an overnight success" since
Notch has been building random games for years, this was just the one that
happened to take off.

