Minecraft

[SometingStupid]

  Patters said:

Sound familiar?

Was going to say weeping angels myself.

Also, would be nice to see what Notch does with the recently released aether mod.

[Orv]

That's what I get for going out for lunch and a movie.

That said, I really don't want Weeping Angels in my Minecraft.

[a purple future]

so I guess notch said that 1.8 is so big it's going to be two updates

I don't think that's how patch numbers work?

Also I know this is brought up all the time but I swear if pretty much anybody had his work ethic they would have been fired eons ago. what a rock star.

[ThunderPeel2001]

  a purple future said:

Also I know this is brought up all the time but I swear if pretty much anybody had his work ethic they would have been fired eons ago. what a rock star.

It's not like he's made millions off this game or anything.

[Thompson]

It has actually happened. Somebody has made Minecraft in Minecraft.

gdnO1QZJ--M

[Orv]

[Sean]

Dear Thumbs:

I don't own Minecraft but sometimes I see Jake playing and think it looks fun.

I guess I should do this, huh?

[Orv]

I believe it is something that everyone should at least experience.

[a purple future]

yeah it's one of those things that has become kind of a niche cultural touchstone, and is probably worth trying for that reason alone.

the other reason being that it's pretty fun too

[Wubbles]

He's not obligated to stick to a schedule in any event.

[a purple future]

  Wubbles said:

He's not obligated to stick to a schedule in any event.

You see, I don't buy that. I know this falls into unexplored waters a little bit, but buying a pre-release product (essentially helping to fund the production) should come with some kind of assurance that said product is worked on pretty steadily. There looks like there's a lot of new stuff in 1.8 and the halloween update was pretty substantial but there's been a lot of fuckall between. Making Scrooge McDuck sums of money so you can fart around and make multiple other games while occasionally working on what brought you that money seems a little... off.

This would be a lot less of a problem if they would just set up the mod API already. The mods that are already out there are mindboggling, and I can only imagine how awesome they could be if people had more/easier access.

I'm not trying to sound entitled or anything but it's just odd having been around when he was adding stuff weekly to get to the point where months pass with a scrap here or there.

Also considering that the game is supposed to be "done" in just about two months, this is a little troubling, especially since he just announced that he's starting another project in the meantime

[Nachimir]

I think people mistake visible features for progress and discount any work on a codebase. I don't know, having bought Minecraft and seen lots of games worked on I don't have any qualms about the way Notch works.

  a purple future said:

Making Scrooge McDuck sums of money so you can fart around and make multiple other games while occasionally working on what brought you that money seems a little... off.

Maybe I'm mistaken, but this sounds like whining for Minecraft to be a non-profit enterprise. Using proceeds to fund other projects is how any industry continues to exist.

Given the amount of time I spent in Minecraft on various servers, I got more than my $10 worth. Purple, I know you're trying to moderate your response, but many don't. When they bitch about their $10 like it was some form of major investment and GOD DAMN IT I AM A FAN YOU OWE ME NOTCH, that seems a little off to me. The amount of ownership that internet people will assume when a creator opens up a line of communication is terrifying.

[Forbin]

  Vanaman said:

Dear Thumbs:

I don't own Minecraft but sometimes I see Jake playing and think it looks fun.

I guess I should do this, huh?

Hmm, well there's this:

xy_fm7a-QqI

[Laxan]

[Orv]

I'm not sure how I managed it, but only just now, after I've seen the moon mod, do I realize how utterly batshit Minecraft and all it's mods and community are.

Mind:Broken.

[a purple future]

I think if you could prove that he's spent all this time on codebase then I would shut up instantly, because I do understand that. Like what happened to the poor Project Zomboid team- they had to completely re-code their update system and have spent the last few months on tools and mod support.

I think I sounded angrier than I actually am (not at all really) because I was really tired when I wrote that.

My original comment was more along the lines of how it seems like dude works maybe 4 hours a day. I could be wrong!

[a purple future]

that is so barely scratching the surface.

this is the current hotness:

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8S0rSE-HagQ

[Erwin_Br]

  a purple future said:

You see, I don't buy that. I know this falls into unexplored waters a little bit, but buying a pre-release product (essentially helping to fund the production) should come with some kind of assurance that said product is worked on pretty steadily.

Yeah, I kinda agree with you, though personally I paid for what was already there. I wouldn't have bought it if it had, say, half the features that it did.

[tabacco]

I don't really have any concerns over the rate at which he puts out new stuff. Honestly, most games go way longer between content updates. What I do wish is that he'd put more effort into QA before releases. I know Mojang has the cash to make at least a small QA team happen, and honestly all of the stuff that goes into this game seems like it could be unit tested pretty thoroughly in an automated way.

[brkl]

But why do that when a ton of people have already paid to beta test the game?

[a purple future]

  brkl said:

But why do that when a ton of people have already paid to beta test the game?

do they have any built-in crash reporting or some kind of bug reporting system? If the minecraft forums are anything to go off of, I'd be terrified of opening up direct bug submissions

Having millions of people beta test something doesn't mean much if you're not gathering data..

[Forbin]

It's a tough decision to hire QA at a small company. On the one hand, investing in Quality Assurance is pretty directly investing in quality. But on the other, you don't have infinite money, and you could use that money to hire developers or artists. At a small company, people have to do a lot of different things, and a developer is capable of testing. The problem is, after you've made that justification, it's not a small leap to say that a developers time is more valuable developing than it is testing. Also most developers that have a history with larger companies and succeed in a startup venture, are a little hesitant to bring in non-technical people when they're not absolutely needed. If you work at a medium to large company as a developer, even a technical company, you'll see that people with no idea what they're talking about have a way of taking over management.

I get the impression that people are counting Notch's income like that episode of the Simpsons where the kids think Principal Skinner is a billionaire since he makes $25,000 /year. They're definitely pulling in good money for a non-social indie company, but that doesn't mean unlimited resources.

There are a lot of challenges in a growing company. Trying to hire the right people to not just staff the positions you need filled by build the company you want to have in the long run.

And there are other problems with being waterfall based, if you want to do QA at the level that you'd expect of a polished commercial product, you need to make it part of your development cycle in a meaningful way. Meaning that even if you're iterative, or "Agile", QA means stopping development, hardening a build, and having your developers babysit a defect queue while working on little to nothing else.

Basically, it'd be a different (and longer) release cycle, which would be a drastic change to the way the game has been developed. And yeah it wouldn't be unfair to say the community is playing the role of QA, but that's kind of what we signed up for. Especially the people who bought it in alpha.

[a purple future]

I think in this particular case the most effective way to handle it would be to hire maybe one dedicated person for QA, who could effectively act as a liaison between the customers/de facto testers and the developers. Having a dedicated team to test would probably be a poor decision on their part.

Having somebody in the public eye to organize and address problems with the game would go a long way towards earning good will. Not that they necessarily need it financially/business-wise, but still. Notch acting as the one-man PR machine as well as company lead and one of the lead programmers seems like a bit of a precarious position.

[baconian]

  a purple future said:

You see, I don't buy that. I know this falls into unexplored waters a little bit, but buying a pre-release product (essentially helping to fund the production) should come with some kind of assurance that said product is worked on pretty steadily.

Maybe, but it didn't. It was made pretty clear during the purchasing process that you were paying for the existing product and there was no guarantee it would even be finished at all.

  a purple future said:

Having somebody in the public eye to organize and address problems with the game would go a long way towards earning good will. Not that they necessarily need it financially/business-wise, but still. Notch acting as the one-man PR machine as well as company lead and one of the lead programmers seems like a bit of a precarious position.

Good will? Right now, Mojang have more than any other game dev.

For me, Notch is showing everyone else in the industry how to operate. I would say that completely the opposite of all of your points is the case. Notch is directly getting feedback from thousands of beta testers. Have you noticed how quickly this guy gets releases out after an update. 1.7 went from 1.7.1 to 1.7.2 to 1.7.3 in a couple of hours based on twitter feedback, and 1.7.3 is a stable release. This is NOT bad software engineering, it is basically agile dev taken to its MOST effective extreme.

In my experience, users like reporting bugs, then seeing them fixed. They feel invested. I think notch understands this very well.

[shammack]

I agree with this:

  Quote

Good will? Right now, Mojang have more than any other game dev.

...but this:

  Quote

Notch is showing everyone else in the industry how to operate.

...is going too far.

  baconian said:

Have you noticed how quickly this guy gets releases out after an update. 1.7 went from 1.7.1 to 1.7.2 to 1.7.3 in a couple of hours based on twitter feedback, and 1.7.3 is a stable release.

But that happens out of necessity because the first update is full of critical bugs that should have been fixed before they released it in the first place. I guess crowd-sourcing your QA is an effective enough approach if you've got enough users with the patience to put up with it, but it does kind of make it look like you don't know what you're doing.

Notch can get away with that because his whole operation is sort of based on looking like "just a dude makin' a game," but I certainly don't think it's something for the rest of the industry to aspire to. Minecraft is an unusual case; generally when people buy a game they expect to be getting a finished product that works.