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Book Review: Minecraft
He certainly has the money to make many of his empire dreams come true, as Minecraft remains a strong seller more than four years after its Alpha debut. The game features a "survival" mode, in which the blocky hero attempts to survive against hordes of enemies, as well as a "creative" mode where players can mine blocks and use them to build pretty much any structure. The latter mode has unleashed some spectacular displays of creativity, including enormous replicas of the Egyptian Pyramids and the Empire State Building.
While the authors clearly had some access to Persson, they didn’t use that face-to-face time to plunge deeply into his character: there’s precious little insight into how his occasionally messy childhood informed his worldview, for example, or the duality that clearly exists between his more insular self and his ambition to build a massive company that, at its heart, rests on interactions between millions of people. On the other hand, by avoiding the plunge into that psychological thicket, they also prevent their work from falling into the tedious armchair-psychiatry that’s doomed many a biography.
The book is at its best when describing the Swedish gaming industry (from its giants down to the indie studios), and how Minecraft went from bedroom-developer project to worldwide phenomenon. That’s almost enough to overlook how much of a cipher Persson remains, even in the final pages.
You can purchase Minecraft from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews (sci-fi included) — to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Much like the actual game!
...of the entire book. Would that still be pirating? This can be made easier with qCraft.
The G
Even though this review has been posted for > 40 minutes there are only 4 comments here. The people have spoken.
That's awesome! It's a phenomenon, but I don't see how it's different from the experience of so many failed entrepreneurs. Especially when it doesn't shed light on the PERSON, and only talks about the experience.
Oh, and except, you know, that he didn't fail.
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
Nor merited. The guy made a single video game, that's his life's accomplishment. What else really needs to be said?
Now a book on John Carmack, Warren Spector, Will Wright, Sid Meyer, Peter Molyneux, Cliff Bleszinski or even John Romero might actually be interesting and warranted.
I'd want to read an autobiography by Richard Garriott. I imagine it would read something like Fear and Loathing.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
I think people have a need to read about lives that resemble their own, as well. Persson is living the "shut-in gamer boy" version of a princess fantasy come to true. Girls grow up with tiaras and promises of prince-suitors. Today's disenfranchised 20-something guys have nothing like that. People like Persson are naturally bound to become the rockstar idols of self-insert dreams for these people.
Who among you can honestly say he would not love to swap lives with Persson? Multimillionaire after writing a relatively simple computer game? Sign me up for that dreamboat.
Give me a break.. Notch is never going to build a gaming behemoth.
In the years since minecraft has been released - a modding community has transformed the game a thousand times over, whilst his own "gaming behemoth in waiting" Mojang, trundle along with fairly small and unimpressive additions to the game.
To illustrate this - next up, they are introducing a "stained glass update".
Now, that's fine - I didn't necessarily pay for updates - but what was promised to me was a way to modify the game without having it broken every new build. This, they have massively failed on.
We're still waiting for the mod API, notch.
Notch made a good game, seems like a good guy and all, but he's fucking lazy (I don't blame him, effectively the greatest challenge of his life - to put food on the table is over) and/or unsure of his direction.
From the outside, it seems to have low standards for his employees and what they do for the game (I've no idea if that is true - it's just what it seems).
(Still, nothing can hold a candle to the develop of Cubeworld - who essentially released an alpha for money and thinks going completely silent and ignoring your community for months and months at a time constitutes a constructive way to engage the community).
"...To a frustrated game developer who feels the software conglomerates are stifling his creativity..."
Are we talking about the same person here? Notch takes Infiniminer, adds some new features and extensibility to the basic gameplay, which becomes his one and only claim to creative success. And it's the software conglomerates' fault that he doesn't have an original idea out yet?
Lucking into the Angry Birds /FarmVille style sweepstakes does not a gamer genius / tycoon make. He wants to build a Valve? Good luck.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
... Notch was in the right place at the right time. The success of fortress craft (clone) shows that there was an audience untapped for basically what amounts to a basic 3d modelling tool with some minor game elements.
A guy does something he thinks is fun. He manages to convince other people to pay for using the thing. He works on it until he doesn't think it's fun anymore. Then he goes to try his hand at more fun things. Isn't this normal? What's all these calls about him having a "bad work ethic"?
Also, people will only write books about successful people, because they're fun and it's fun writing it. Again, not strange.
Multimillionaire after writing a relatively simple computer game? Sign me up for that dreamboat.
It's not that simple to write something like Minecraft. Think about: maintaining the data for a huge dynamic world, the lighting system, monster AI, some simple physics, particle effects, animating the player and NPC heads and limbs turning, interactions of the various materials, calculating how lava and water fill empty spaces, procedural generation of realistic landscapes, multiplayer...
Minecraft procgen is literally smoothed noise that has been built up over the years.
A lot of people still prefer "173craft", aka Minecraft 1.7.3 because of the world gen in that was very specifically a mess and created absolutely wonderful worlds.
I'm on the edge between them both to be honest, both generators were great. But getting them to play together is hard since they are so wildly opposing systems.
The chunk system in Minecraft that contains blocks is still terrible. Ever since that McRegion crap was added to Minecraft, it has been noticeably laggier.
I remember I used to be able to play Minecraft on a netbook easily. McRegion destroyed that ability in an update.
It also fails really hard when it comes to mobs in them. Lots of mobs+McRegion and walking the borders between regions is SO LAGGY, holy crap it is laggy.
Why that crap got integrated I will never know. It is like they never even tested it. There were so many complaints about it, nothing done. (and the complaint site they used even got disowned by Mojang! WHAT)
I'm sure Minecraft still sends entire game chunks when ONE single block is updated in them. That is 16x16x256.
I hope that was changed, I seriously hope that was changed, that would be terrible if that is still like that.
Block movements, aka liquids, are literally just spawning new blocks n+1 (and the other directions) with a flow-texture applied, based on a group-check of nearby blocks.
Fairly simple stuff and easiest way to get integer liquid flows, I am experimenting with this right now in use of simulated sounds on and off at random.
When it reaches a gap underneath, it spawns a new "source", but really a sourceless source, where it resets the meta value to max the height of the water again.
And due to the limitations of the water engine, you can take advantage of it easily. (such as the water only checking I think 4 blocks around the source for the nearest drop, which can be used to create really nice natural looking flows with no walls at height level)
Likewise, the lighting and physics system aren't the best. They work, but aren't the best. ... n is transparent or opaque.
The lighting system is also one of the reasons infinite height worlds aren't possible in the current game because it becomes an absolute nightmare. (besides the terrible chunk system mentioned above)
There has been many proposed solutions, such as storing a map of all the chunks viewed from above and using that for calculating light instead of loading ALL the chunks between sky and your game views draw distance. This system would work regardless of being 10 chunks from the sky or 1000 chunks since all it would be doing is loading a very simple map image of a chunk layer stating whether block0, 1, 2
The downside is this won't work for those mods that use realistic lighting systems that add shadows and stuff. The maps would need to increase by 2 so that it covers the 2 faces of the chunks that are needed, east to west shadows and sky-to-chunk shadows.
Then it is just general modelling stuff seen in any game. In fact they are looking to rewrite the modelling system, well, are, to make it considerably easier to implement things which will be great. I look forward to a "mob update" in the future, the thing that annoys me most in Minecraft is the emptiness.
All these new biomes coming up soon need to be filled with life.
The game needs a lot of work to fix the inefficient engine oddities.
The chunk system needs to be scrapped entirely and rewritten from the ground up, planned out the ass. Hell, get the minetest guy or the guy that made infinite height worlds, THEY get it.
Lighting needs a few simple fixes and optimizations for integer worlds and that map generation system to cut down seeking out light paths for the sky.
On a sidenote, this is also why me and friends run a Minecraft Hexxit mod server, adds a lot of fun stuff to Minecraft and takes out the boringness and emptiness of it. Fixes some stupid stuff too.
What the game was. How he made it. How he sold it. How he continued developing it. How this method brought about a worldwide phenomenon.
To the niche audience of geeks and gamers who likes that type of game. Persson on the other hand made a game which is played by millions of eight to eighty year olds, and is still a big seller almost four years after its initial release. With Minecraft, we are clearly dealing with a significantly different gaming beast.
May the Maths Be with you!
Minecraft was helped by a few converging factors that the previous ones (openly admitted by Persson) lacked.
One: Youtube. Especially the affiliate links algorithm. This meant that people who had a lot of follow-on watches and had people watch a long stream got more money. And minecraft was something that they could record playing and get people watching.
Two: Minecraft is shit. Really. Without going to a wiki, try to play the game. How are you suposed to even know you're meant to PUCH A TREE to break a block? How do you know you're meant to press "E" to open your inventory and then put that block of wood into the four-square bit to turn it into wood and THEN put those four bits of wood on those four spots to make a crafting bench with then you can build an axe. After putting it down. And how do you know how to make an axe? What sensible person would think that a wooden axe would chop wood? Then we get into all the other recipies. So minecraft is shit. So you need to watch someone else play to find out how the hell you're supposed to play (or read a wiki. But that's reading, so natch). This means point #1 is important to even play the game.
Three: Derivatives are allowed. You can see a lot of companies threatening LPers who are "making money off our game" by recording them playing it and getting ad revenue. Minecraft were 100% clear that you can make an LP from the start. Making #2 a safe decision.
Four: Freely sharing, multiple platform play. Especially in alpha/beta, that meant that word-of-mouth meant people could *try* the game. Find out about point #2, see others making good with point #1 and know they too can do it because of point #3.
Five: Modding. Of course other games had this. E.g. Half Life, Doom, et al. But this helped a lot because of point #2, Minecraft being shit. So people modded things in like Industrial Craft or MineFactory or Forestry or Buildcraft to make a more interesting and deeper game, including mods like TMI or NEI that at least allowed you to find the recipies, and boy did these mods add a shitload of frankly illogical recipies. The use of these new items and why you'd install them of course required more LP and mod spotlights to demonstrate and inform people of these new things and how to use them. Meaning more LP content and more players.
1.6 has damaged Minecraft Vanilla because they're trying to make the game deeper by making people have to move and explore the procedurally generated world, but their "solution" is all stick and a removal of all carrots to make the stick bigger. Food now more important, this is actually a good idea, but you're likely going to spend a long time farming and creepers blow shit up, including your farm. Nice. And then you'll be eating bread, more bread, even more bread. Brill. They also ramp up the mob spawning to force you to move to reduce the spawn rate back to something you're not having to go out and spam hit a million mobs to be able to farm yet more wheat for bread so you can afford to mine or craft. Problem is, there's not a lot above ground to see, and moving "house" is hard because
a) the day is 5 minutes long and you HAVE to get to bed or monsters spawn still, during which time you can walk directly 600 blocks. But this isn't exploring.
b) all that stuff you had has to be ferried and your inventory isn't big enough for more than a chest's worth of stuff.
c) you have to camp between the old and new place every night.
1.7 isn't addressing this and is likely only going to make it worse.
Modders are falling behind and 90% of good gameplay is from the mods. Add that you're gaining little or nothing (and potentially losing more) and why are you upgrading? Maybe 1.7 will allow a framework that allows modders to more easily move from 1.5+ to 1.7 and thereafter have an easier time going to later versions. Maybe. But at the moment, it's losing momentum and that momentum was why Minecraft made money.
Do you not see him throwing away his money on projects all the time like Kickstarter and such?
You appear to be bitching about the fact that Persson is using his money to provide financial backing to other developers in a way that doesn't get him a share of their success?
How dare he! Anybody would think he values the games, not the money.
You fuckwit.