Sunday, November 10, 2013

A long time ago in a big MMO

Once upon a time back in March, 2005 I subscribed to World of Warcraft and started questing. This was in the days of patch 1.3 before things like battlegrounds, fishing contests, and the Darkmoon Faire existed. Molten Core was the endgame instance and Diremaul was brand new. WoW was a little more than four months old at that point, so it was still early days.

Although I'd been a gamer for many years, WoW was my first MMO. As I approached level 20 I began to think about joining a guild so as to better experience the multiplayer stuff. I don't recall how I was recruited but I ended up a member of a large levelling guild on my server. It accepted anyone and everyone and most members were well below 60, the maximum level at the time.

The guild was very disorganized and although a couple of people could invite new recruits there were few officers online. As I began talking to other members I was surprised to find out that our GL (Guild Leader) was an absentee—although he was actually online and playing a lot, he was using another character which was a member in another guild.

Within a few days most of the guild members realised that the absentee GL was not only hurting the guild, but our experience of WoW. Because of his irresponsibility we weren't getting the full benefit of our subscription fee to WoW. Something had to be done.

Someone approached the GL about the situation. He offered to sell the guild to us for a rather large sum of gold. He was firm that a buyout was the only option.

Because the price of the buyout was far greater than the cost of incorporating a new guild (and tabard fee), we found his offer repugnant. In addition, we couldn't afford his high price.

However we could easily afford the fee of 10 silver to start a new guild. And so there was a massive mutiny where the majority of members quit the old guild and joined the new one. Back then you needed ten people to sign a guild charter, which we had, and soon the new guild was formed.

People really wanted a tabard and made getting it a priority. Choosing a tabard design in WoW costs 10 gold. It's hard to believe now with all the inflation in WoW, but back then raising 10 gold was a huge hurdle for us as we had only one or two level 60s. Many of us were below level 30 and were a long way from even getting our first mounts. (You got your first mount at level 40 back then, and mount costs were so significant that players often opted to play as Warlocks or Paladins due to receiving "free" mounts from quests rather than gold.) But we managed to scrimp together the 10 gold and were proudly wearing our new colors within a few hours after we formed the guild.

But this isn't a story about our new guild. This story is about the GL of the old guild.

You see, we found something out about the old guild's GL that influenced our decision to leave.

We knew that the old guild's GL was irresponsible in abandoning the first guild to play on another character in another guild. What we discovered was that the main reason for his behavior was that he was twelve years old.

Back then WoW was the hot new game that gamers of all ages were eager to play. Even though a subscription required a credit card, WoW still managed to have a fair number of younger players.

This isn't the case today. Even though 60 day pre-paid time cards can be purchased for cash in stores, nowadays you aren't as likely to run into a twelve year old when playing WoW or any other MMO.

It's not because of the changes that have been made to WoW over the years, or anything about WoW or any of the other MMOs.

There's one reason you don't see as many kids in MMOs these days:

They're all playing Minecraft.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Notch on TV—more mainstreaming of Minecraft

On November 7, Notch appeared on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson:




Notch has previously appeared on Swedish television of course, since he's basically a national hero these days in Sweden. This is his first appearance on network television with a nation-wide audience in the United States.

During the interview Craig Ferguson, speaking about Minecraft, says, "Anyone below the age of 20 seems to be obsessed with this thing." And there we have the reason why Notch was asked to appear on the show.

Television shows are constantly competing for viewers in order to do well in the ratings and thus charge more for ads. The TV industry is so old-fashioned that the ratings aren't gathered continuously—they're only tallied during certain sweeps months. November is a sweeps month.

Since Minecraft has sold over 33 million copies across all platforms (12.6 million copies on PC), that's a lot of potential viewers for Craig's show. Since most gamers and people under 20 don't watch live TV, it's a lot of potential new viewers for Craig's show. Even if only for that night, every viewer helps during sweeps month.

Did Minecraft players approve? His appearance was received quite well on Reddit.

As expected, Notch's TV appearance was well-reported in the gaming press—joystiq, GamePolitics, the escapist, Kotaku, PCGamesN, and StrategyInformer all had items.

This TV appearance by Notch is another indication that Minecraft is going mainstream.

The TV site Zap2it had an item: 'Minecraft' creator Notch visits 'Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson' for first talk show appearance. This piece isn't written for gamers, it's aimed at a general audience who might not know who Notch is.

In addition to mentioning his TV appearance, the tech site CNET has an interview with Notch and says Minecraft is "…becoming a cornerstone within video gaming's greater assimilation into pop culture." It also points out the recent South Park episode in which Minecraft is a central theme (full episode viewable here).

As Minecraft becomes a household word it's showing up in more and more places.

This article is an extended version of an earlier post I made to the Minecraft forum. 

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Notch doesn't really mind direct ripoffs of Minecraft

Notch said something of interest while being interviewed onstage as part of Minecon 2013:
Q. When I kind of look around on Xbox or PC, or any platform, really, there's a lot of games which are kind of inspired by Minecraft. There are some games which are arguably kind of clones of Minecraft. Where do you draw the line between those things? Where do you think the--when does it become something which I guess is a direct ripoff of Minecraft?

A. I don't really mind direct ripoffs either. I think if you start to use the name or imply that it is Minecraft and things like that then it's, then it's wrong because we need to protect our product. But if you take the game ideas or the look and stuff like that without taking the exact textures, then I think that's cool.

Some of them, maybe, they get a little bit, eh, confident and start [garbled] saying that the game is better than Minecraft and trying to justify cloning it. And that's when you get into a weird area. I think just saying 'Yeah, I cloned that game because it's an awesome idea and I want to make one.' Then yeah, go ahead and make it. That's how games and all products get better. You get inspired by someone else and do your own take on it.
(This can be seen on twitch.tv starting at 5:15:20 (5 hours 15 minutes and 20 seconds) in to the day's stream. Any transcription errors are mine.)

Two years ago I wrote A statement on Minecraft mods copying features from each other. What Notch said at Minecon echoes what I wrote.

My other Minecon 2013 coverage:
Text of Jeb's slides from The Future of Minecraft panel at Minecon 2013

Saturday, November 2, 2013

Text of Jeb's slides from The Future of Minecraft panel at Minecon 2013

Last year at Minecon 2012 Jeb gave a presentation about the plug-in API (see Jeb's Minecraft API slides from Minecon 2012).

This year, since there hasn't been much perceptible progress on the plug-in API, Jeb opted to fill the majority of the time with a retrospective of the Minecraft releases since Minecon 2012. Thus although the panel was called The Future of Minecraft, it was a look backward. The panel can be watched on twitch.tv starting 5:39:30 (5 hours 39 minutes and 30 seconds) in to the day's stream.

The major news came near the end, when Jeb announced that Mojang has hired two more developers to replace the two former Bukkit developers who have since left.

Here is the text from Jeb's slides:

Today's Agenda
  • Minecraft updates since Minecon 2012
  • Minecraft under the hood
  • The new launcher
  • Plug-in API news
  • Other stuff

Minecraft Updates Since Minecon 2012
  • 3 major releases (1.5, 1.6, 1.7)
  • 6 patch releases (1.4.6 etc)
  • ~49 snapshots

Minecraft Updates Since Minecon 2012
  • Contributions (commits) per release:
  • 1.4 -- 820
  • 1.5 -- 617
  • 1.6 -- 834
  • 1.7 -- 1109
[In addition to the number of commits for the releases, this slide also has a graph showing lines of code (click to enlarge)]:


[Yes, you read those figures right: 600,000 lines committed, 200,000 different lines. That's a lot of code! Minecraft is now a large program.]


Minecraft 1.4.6 (and 1.4.7)
  • December 2013, January 2013
  • Fireworks!

Minecraft 1.5
The Redstone Update

  • March 2013
  • Boosted beacon, nerfed bone meal, harder skeletons, new lava texture, improved lighting on stairs, new death messages...
  • Scoreboard system
  • And...

Minecraft 1.5
The Redstone Update

  • Nether Quartz
  • Dropper and Hopper
  • Redstone Comparator
  • Etcetera...

Minecraft 1.6
The Horse Update

  • July 2013
  • New resource pack system and launcher (more about this later)
  • Switch to Java 6
  • Game balance changes, Block of Coal block, new clay blocks
  • And...

Minecraft 1.6
Mo' Creatures' Horses

  • Developed by John Olarte (DrZhark), Kent Cristian Jensen, Dan Roque

Minecraft 1.6
The Horse Update

  • Hay Bales
  • Leads and Name Tags
  • Carpets
  • Etcetera...

Minecraft 1.7
The Update that Changed the World

  • October 2013
  • New biomes
  • Better biome placement
  • Improved fishing
  • New flowers
  • Commands support NBT data on items and creatures
  • More options for improved visual quality

Minecraft 1.7
Biomes


Minecraft 1.7
AMPLIFIED World Type



Minecraft
Under the Hood

  • Resource packs
  • The scorboard system
  • NBT data in commands

Minecraft
Scoreboards


Minecraft
NBT Data Commands

  • /summon
  • /give

Minecraft
NBT Data Commands

  • Pretty complex! Check YouTube for examples
  • Looks like this:
  • /give @p minecraft:iron_sword 1 0 {display:{Name:"Sting",Lore:["Found in a cave.","Very pointy"]}}

Minecraft
New Launcher


Minecraft
Plug-in API?



Minecraft
Plug-in API

  • Michael 'Searge' Stoyke
  • Minecraft Coder Pack founder
  • Game developer since 2001
  • Twitter: @SeargeDP

Minecraft
Plug-in API


Minecraft
Plug-in API?

  • High hopes for 2014
  • No promises :)

Minecraft
Other Stuff


Minecraft
Other Stuff


Minecraft
Other Stuff

[One-click streaming to twitch.tv integrated into Minecraft, announced earlier.]


Minecraft
Other Stuff

  • Minecraft Realms

My other Minecon 2013 coverage:
Notch doesn't really mind direct ripoffs of Minecraft