Minecraft

[Zeb]

http://www.levelupstudios.com/wp-pro...sgreen-450.jpg
http://www.levelupstudios.com/punchi...-gives-me-wood

[Priran]

The next epoch is upon us! The skies are trembling, pigs are growing wings, and the nether is turning awfully cold, as Minecraft slowly crawls out of Alpha..

Minecraft will reach Beta status on December 20th, 2010.

With Beta comes a larger focus on polish and content, and we’ll start early on with adding proper modding support with a stable API, and we’d love all input we can get on this from the modders out there. We’ll also add some kind of non-intrusive narrative to the game to help drive the game experience early on, and to provide some kind of late game goal. There will be a bigger focus on testing and stability as well, with more time between updates.

When the game enters beta, the price will rise to 14.95 Euro.

We will also change the license to remove the line that promises all future versions of the game for free. Please note that this change only affects people who buy the game after December 20, so if you got the game for during alpha, you will still get all future updates for free, despite this change. A promise is a promise.
Buying the game during beta will include all updates up until release, of course, and bug patches will be free.

Soon, you will be able to buy gift codes for Minecraft, perfectly timed for the holidays! Even better, if you buy those before December 20, accounts created from these codes will count as alpha accounts, and will receive all future updates for free.

And the next game update (with server-side inventory) is coming next week, before Beta

Merry holidays happy! :D

http://notch.tumblr.com/post/2175441...cember-20-2010

[Kaisha]

Huh, didn't think he'd actually charge for expansions and stuff eventually. Figured when I first read that on the site it was just another way of saying content updates, since I can't really see a sandbox game having expansions aside from themed add-ons, or actual game modes. Not bad regardless, pay 50% for the game, play it a year early while it's in development, and never have to pay for another thing relating to it ever again. Nice pre-purchase incentive, now if only MMOs would do the same thing.....

Him announcing working on an API is great, been wanting that for awhile as I can't be arsed to have my minecraft.jar patched to make use of some of the mods, especially when it conflicts with other mods. Hope he gets to work on some new recipes though when it hits beta, I've been wanting furniture/decorations for ages. Hard to make the interior of standard-size buildings look appealing.

Doesn't sound like much at all will be added for the initial beta update at any rate. Do hope he fixes the lighting-bug and the tree leaves thing, as both are getting pretty damn annoying.

[Melchoir]

"server-side inventory" has me really worried. On my "large project" worlds I use an inventory editor so it doesn't take me a year to build them. However, with server side inventory that might not (probably won't) be possible.

I don't really see the point of him charging for updates for non-alpha buyers unless it is a major update... I'm not paying $3 for a piece of furniture.

[Kiarax]

Creative mode exists for exactly that reason and takes out the middleman.

[Kaisha]

I'm confused, is the server-side inventory supposed to be only for SMP servers for the sake of preventing cheating, or is this something that'll be hosted off Minecraft's own server and is persistent with our account across all modes?

I'm assuming it's the former as it'd fix the duping bugs. If you run the server, nothing is going to stop you from just spawning new blocks in your inventory.

[miokomioko]

I don't really see the point of him charging for updates for non-alpha buyers unless it is a major update... I'm not paying $3 for a piece of furniture.

Just because he can. $ cha-ching $

I am looking forward to when he starts updating the game as a whole again (halloween update style) and is less focused on just multiplayer coding issues.

[Khamsin]

I'm assuming the whole "pay for updates" thing is, if we put it in MMO terms, like buying an expansion as opposed to just general updates here and there. In FFXI, we have new content added occasionally that we don't pay extra for, and we have add-ons and expansions that we do. The same will probably be the case for Minecraft.

Of course, the important distinction here is that MMOs have subscriptions, and Minecraft doesn't. Once everyone buys the game, there's really no profit in continuing to update and add new content to the game when there's no subscription to fund the team. So it's only natural to expect them not to offer all future content and updates for free. But there's bound to be some updates and new content that will be, to keep us interested and motivate us to buy the stuff that he does charge for.

Naturally, he'll have to keep it so that some people having paid content and some people not doesn't break multiplayer servers, and that people who only have vanilla minecraft can co-exist with people who bought all the add-ons.

[miokomioko]

I think he just regrets giving the game out for half price because of how fast it blew up. Pretty much everyone has heard of it by now and I feel like a vast majority of those people have already made the decision to buy it or not. He probably should have just offered alpha/beta access for half-down, and then paying the other half gets you access to the finished product. I just can't see the game getting that many more sales once it becomes officially "finished" and I think he realizes that. He might even be worried that Minecraft has already peaked in terms of media coverage and buzz.

[Kaisha]

Makes you wonder if he'll limit the API in any aspects to prevent people from basically just recreating any new objects/modes that a future expansion may include.
(granted, not like that'd stop anyone from just modifying the JAR file directly instead)

[Khamsin]

I think he just regrets giving the game out for half price because of how fast it blew up. Pretty much everyone has heard of it by now and I feel like a vast majority of those people have already made the decision to buy it or not. He probably should have just offered alpha/beta access for half-down, and then paying the other half gets you access to the finished product. I just can't see the game getting that many more sales once it becomes officially "finished" and I think he realizes that. He might even be worried that Minecraft has already peaked in terms of media coverage and buzz.

Well, that's his motivation to produce future content that people would pay for, and will hook new customers (after official release). Consider any other PC game out there. You hear about it, it excites you, so you buy it off the shelf. The company gets your money once, and after the initial sales and hype, most people who were going to buy it already did. They continue to get your money by releasing add-ons, expansions, and sequels.

Alpha players got those future updates for free, but on the other hand, people are giving him a bunch of money now for an unfinished product. He now has the funding to do something good with it, and if he plays his cards right, he can make something that will hook people even after the official release, and make people want to buy the game and the add-ons and expansions. Something that'll pull people in, who may not have necessarily been interested yet in the game's current state.

It's in his own personal financial interest to not get lazy now, and to live up to the hype, for the sake of future sales and expansions.

[DrRuler]

Does anyone know if it's possible to add mods to a multiplayer server? My friends and I have been playing together on a self ran server but we miss having grappling hook and extra arrow types ect. We were wondering if there was a way to install them but I am lost on the subject after searching for an answer myself. Anyone know if it's possible yet or do we need to wait for an update?

[The Blackrose]

Alpha players got those future updates for free, but on the other hand, people are giving him a bunch of money now for an unfinished product. He now has the funding to do something good with it, and if he plays his cards right, he can make something that will hook people even after the official release, and make people want to buy the game and the add-ons and expansions. Something that'll pull people in, who may not have necessarily been interested yet in the game's current state.

It's in his own personal financial interest to not get lazy now, and to live up to the hype, for the sake of future sales and expansions.

Bingo. Sure, it may look like he bit himself in the ass, but he pretty much got the finances to start an indie company and employ additional personnel. Not to mention the game has a decent size fan base. It's a hell of a trade off.

[miokomioko]

He just sacrificed the overall profitability of Minecraft (without DLC) by almost half for the initial funding of his company by promising a finished product. The only reasons he has to continue with Minecraft considering that he's probably not going to get substantially more customers when it is finished is to keep people happy and faithful in his brand... or to keep it healthy enough to churn out DLC. I'm not sure what his plans are when it comes to DLC, but it can it make up for the loss of initial profit potential when a majority of Minecraft customers that ever will be got it for half price? 750,000 sales and still rising. I'm sure the sale ending is going to push that up before the 20th.

It just looks like he's turning the marketing from "get it for half-price now!" to "there will be cool things in the future!" Although I'm sure he wishes he went about it in a slightly more profitable manner, even if you can never tell how big it was going to be... hindsight is 20/20.

[Khamsin]

He just sacrificed the overall profitability of Minecraft (without DLC) by almost half for the initial funding of his company by promising a finished product. The only reasons he has to continue with Minecraft considering that he's probably not going to get substantially more customers when it is finished is to keep people happy and faithful in his brand... or to keep it healthy enough to churn out DLC. I'm not sure what his plans are when it comes to DLC, but it can it make up for the loss of initial profit potential when a majority of Minecraft customers that ever will be got it for half price? 750,000 sales and still rising. I'm sure the sale ending is going to push that up before the 20th.

It just looks like he's turning the marketing from "get it for half-price now!" to "there will be cool things in the future!" Although I'm sure he wishes he went about it in a slightly more profitable manner, even if you can never tell how big it was going to be... hindsight is 20/20.

Question is, was there a more profitable way?

Had he kept a closed alpha, and waited until it was finished then put it up for sale, it wouldn't have been nearly as popular nor gotten as much publicity. And it'd take much longer to get to that point.

Had he still had an open alpha, but didn't charge for it (but charged full price when it was officially released), he wouldn't have gotten any money since no one would probably pay for something that they got to play for free for so long, especially a sandbox game (and is probably easily pirated by that point), unless his finished product has something totally new and cool and different from the alpha/beta builds.

And nobody would pay full price for an unfinished game, and still have to pay for future updates after that.

I think the appeal of helping an indie startup, and the "half price now, future updates free" bit, probably was what got him the most money out of all the possible scenarios. Plus, it minimizes the risk of Minecraft merely being a fad and people losing interest before he gets around to selling it. It might seem he screwed himself out of a lot of profit, but was "a lot of profit" really an alternative he could have made work?

The biggest risk now (to us) is him not putting much into "future updates", and just pocketing the money he made so far and retiring early. But, he could have done that before he decided to start a company and hire some staff. Now that he invested money into his company (which has a significant overhead and annual costs), it is now in his best interest to try to become profitable, so I don't think he'll get lazy and bail. He still could, but it's clear by now that it wasn't his original plan.

Actually, scratch that, the biggest risk is that he gets bought out by activision.

[miokomioko]

I think, looking back, the most profitable way would have been to offer alpha/beta access for half-price and when the game is complete, charge the other half to continue playing. That way he would have got a full price from everyone who wanted to continue playing instead of only the people who somehow held off from purchasing (or never heard of it) it until late December 2010. Obviously based on assumptions, but I don't know if a "You'll eventually have to pay the other half when it's done... if it's ever donw and if you even care about the game by then" would have deterred a large chunk of that 750,000 purchases.

Either way... I hope he continues to keep focused on Minecraft enough to perfect it instead of moving too much attention to his next game he's been talking about since the Minecraft cash cow has slowed down.

[Ragns]

D:

[Doombear]

Wow, he hates the animals more than even I do...

[Shenrien]

I'm curious what it would be like to experience what the animals get to... lol

[miokomioko]

That is amazing. I am curious if the mechanics of it would allow a player to experience that. I just doubt it would be possible to survive the blast, even with peaceful mode and a full set of diamond armor. Wouldn't your dead body still get the ride though?