Minecraft, a game by indie Swedish game maker Markus “notch” Persson, is a sleeper hit born on its unassuming graphics and “sandbox” gameplay. The game doesn’t give players objectives, it just sets them in a randomly generated world of boxes that can be combined and arranged to make specific items – or whatever the players want.
The media has covered many angles to the game. Persson started work on the game on his own, but it has sold 1,180,851 copies and is officially still in Beta. Persson was invited to Valve Software’s headquarters, interviewed by countless publications and has been given a handful of awards for the game. Since he is now rich, he hired a few more friends to work on more indie games with a similar barebones approach. The games are simple designs with simple ideas. Quick turn-around, low budgets, high returns.
Persson has said the game industry’s blockbuster games approach and the low cost of entry into PC game development has left a huge hole for indie developers like himself to make games that take risks and appeal to the gamers between the Call of Duty’s and World of Warcraft’s.
Minecraft is the YouTube of video games. It doesn’t just have a similar appeal, it owes much of its fame to YouTube. Friends make their worlds and invite others to see what they’ve made. Much of its user base uses YouTube and makes videos of their creations. Most people first heard about Minecraft because of YouTube videos of impressive creations like the scale model of the USS Enterprise or a man accidentally burning his house down.
While most players just make humble empires in their worlds, I think people are inspired by knowing that the sky is the limit* – they can make whatever they want, and no matter how silly or nerdy it is, it might just be awesome.
Minecraft is a very social game, and it has that twang of user-generated, “endless” gameplay. But with no narrative, it has no drive except what you put into it. It’s fun to see a new feature work the first few times, but after the utilitarian in us wears out, we can get bored easily and we have to reinvent ourselves.
*It is 64 blocks from sea-level to the “roof” of the sky, at which point you hit an invisible wall.
Not that I blog much at all, but my friend Tim Mata and I have started posting all our game-related thoughts to gonzogamer.com. Definitely drop us a line if you have any thoughts, and subscribe to the RSS for our infrequent spurts of inspiration.
