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What Would Minecraft 2 Look Like Under Microsoft?
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft spent billions purchasing Mojang, the studio behind the game Minecraft, and while it's unlikely to start work on a sequel anytime soon, rather than continue development of the game, it's worth considering what a Minecraft 2 will look like. After all, as a public company with revenues to justify, it doesn't seem beyond unreasonable a few years down the line, especially since a Minecraft-like game was one of the stand-out tech demos shown for the software giant's HoloLens augmented reality headset. As the author points out, Microsoft will have to tread carefully, tackling issues like whether greater graphical fidelity is actually what players will want ever — and whether to continue to support Minecraft on PlayStation."
Bloated, choppy video, BSODs, more money, and best of all Spyware.
That's why there are so many texture packs and shaders available.
I'd expect lots of cross-over branding crap. Look what happened to Legos: you can barely avoid the Star Wars, LOTH, Disney Princess and Marvel (and yes, even Minecraft) branded tie-ins over there.
>> pushed into building artificial worlds because making in the real one is hampered by (indecipherable sniveling)
Take a minute to Google "Dungeons and Dragons" and you'll see how my generation did reality-avoidance.
...and captures about 10x the performance while sacrificing compatibility to non-MS operating systems (at least until the .NET framework has been ported).
You will probably lose a good chunk of the developers with this move, though, as they are pretty adamantly Java-centric.
We will also probably see the development go more towards console and mobile and away from the desktop. Oh well.
And say goodbye to your home-brew server. Or any private server in general. Why would MS pass on that revenue stream?
Same blocky graphics, but now rendered in non-dithered 16 colors.
D&D players were regarded as outcasts. Minecraft is on every fucking supermarket shelf. That is the difference.
I mean, it's free (GPL), open source (C++ with plugins in Lua), and there are no paid accounts. Why bother looking into MInecraft when we can just build it ourselves, and in a more original and better way?
Pretty much all the desired improvements in the article (with the possible exception of point 5 - HoloLens) are irrelevant if point 1 - a decent modding API - is added.
Here's a short list of what certainly awaits in a Microsoft Minecraft 2:
- Registration requires a multi-part authentication process that involves at least 3 e-mails and the creation of one Microsoft outlook.com mailbox -- for each member of your family that wants to play
- The game will still cost $19, but multiplayer or network storage will require an Xbox Live account and gold subscription.
- The game will be retooled to appeal to an older audience, so expect ultraviolence and maybe some skin (which will usher in an era of very crude "box" jokes).
- Minecraft mods will be easy to write in C#, but no longer be supported in Java; they will implemented as SOAP services instead of plug-ins; and to use them you will need to register as a developer go through a multi-stage certificate generation and validation process to sign your mod which will only be available through the Microsoft store
- The Microsoft store will be integral to the game and appear as a building in the shape of the Windows logo; they'll sell diamond pickaxes that otherwise will be impossible to get
- There will be Windows-phone exclusive features, including a Smite button that allows people to kick other people off a server.
I'm thinking it would look something like this...
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Any time I ever common on anything having to do with Microsoft, I get pummeled by a PR firm. But this is a *positive* post, no criticism, so maybe the minimum wage public opinion manipulators will leave me along this time.
Microsoft's gaming pedigree is diverse. Each franchise has its own business model, suitable for that title alone. They didn't take, say, the Halo culture and try to force it on Fable fans. One thing Microsoft is exceedingly good at is identifying the relationship between games and the business related to them.
For me, each Halo title represents a couple hours of gameplay. Ratchet up the difficulty, beat it, done. But it also has an army of diehard fans who find its real value in PvP and turn what could be a good story in compact form into an epic adventure. Fable, for me, is one of those "get everything, do everything" franchises representing much more time in game. Where Halo has a pretty awesome miniseries, Fable will probably never see anything like that. Totally different game mechanics foster totally different cultures and business models to match. That's what I'm getting at.
If Microsoft can form a business model around the culture that already exists for Minecraft, then they will absolutely rock the entire voxel sandbox genre.
Imagine when they bring in features barely just pioneers in other games, like blueprints, and then let you have NPCs to build the blueprinted structures where directed, farmer NPCs, guards, etc to model cities. Indie devs in this genre are only looking ahead to that kind of thing but it's where the genre is heading.
Imagine when they expand combat mechanics to marry the PvP culture they're already good at fostering into a creative, open-ended gameworld. Imagine when they treat servers like planets, and we can travel between them with spaceships or magic portals.
Minecraft did not advance like it could have, due to lukewarm post-release development and a terrible modding framework. But nobody -- bar none *nobody* -- is in a better position than Microsoft to do great things for the genre. I've described a handful of systems that sound like pipe dreams but in the Minecraft boilerplate are dead simple. And then mods? Forget it. They can own this genre at that point.
I think the PR firms might leave me alone regarding this one because I am dead serious and completely honest when I say that Microsoft is totally capable of delivering something extraordinary. They would seriously have to either try hard to screw this up or do no work at all, and that's not their style.
When you first start playing, Kinect will scan you and then place a copy of you into Minecraft. Then you'll flail your arms around to build things.
A canned project when at its peak of market share and popularity with a whole industry of plugins and addons around it. That`s exactly what they did with Flight Simulator.
Minecraft under MS can only suffer from a sour end.
Oh, come on. D&D players were not outcasts, and the game was readily available at every book and toy store. There was cross-branding; cartoons and wood burning kits, for cryin' out loud. There is not one iota of difference between the phenomena except medium.
How is giving them a sandbox to build whatever they want tearing their imaginations from them? Are you against writing too? Or music? Are only 'maker' projects acceptable acts of creativity?
Not sure where you are bringing regulation into it since that has pretty minimal impact on the types of projects a child is going to be able to build unless their parents shower them with resources.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Supposedly leaked from inside Microsoft, a spoof of MS pointing fun at themselves and as a reminder of how not to do things
Heh. I remember when Mojang experimented with realistic water behavior. It did not go over well.
One of the old lessons in game design is sometimes realistic is not the best solution, and sometimes outright hurts playability.
we're not suggesting that Microsoft should do anything silly like try to integrate Excel support into Minecraft
TOO LATE !
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
See http://buildaworld.net. It think it's written by a lone developer and the site doesn't appear to show much progress. He posts screenshots on Facebook that show some of the fancy graphics the article author wants. Unfortunately it uses the Irrlicht engine, which isn't know for its performance although some screenshots look really good. It's interesting though, even if it never really gets anywhere.
My 10 year old lad has already said he hates version 1.8 of minecraft, and blames Microsoft for it.... Regardless of if its M$'s fault or not (admittedly its not), I am really proud of him for hating microsoft already!.... That's my boy!
It's not AS bad as the AC made it sound, but by no means is D&D on the same level as the Minecraft craze.
How is giving them a sandbox to build whatever they want tearing their imaginations from them?
Why do you need this sandbox in order to build stuff? What is wrong with building mechanical stuff using actual wood or metal or meccano or lego? What is wrong with building electrical stuff using actual breadboards and wires and components?
Are you against writing too?
I am not sure what misunderstanding of my argument leads you to say that. I'd be against writing in a word processor which limits your vocabulary and sentence structure for no good reason, certainly.
Or music?
No, but I'd have a problem if one electronic music creation platform (say... Garageband?) massively dominated all other sorts of music composition online or offline.
Are only 'maker' projects acceptable acts of creativity?
No, but they are cool.
Not sure where you are bringing regulation into it
That is remarkably false. Many school field trips and demonstrations and home experiment kits which were routine when I was young are permitted today, at least in the UK.
It's popular, so now it sucks?
One word: Spheres!
The one thing that Minecraft provably does better than minetest is the GUI. At least, last I checked into minetest, which was not so very long ago. I keep a source tree on my Linux boot. Are there any mods which make the UI at least as good as minecraft? This is not a very high bar.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
pushed into building artificial worlds because making in the real one is hampered by a perfect storm of regulation and fear under the umbrella of crony capitalism.
...because the only thing preventing children from building sky cities, gigantic castles, sea bases and portals to other dimensions is government regulations.
=Smidge=
Clippy, the ever helpful paper-clip, will be replaced by "Picky", the ever helpful pick-axe.
It looks like you are trying to do, X, do you want some help?
It will require an "always-on" internet connection.
It will require "Minecraft Genuine Advantage", it will check your system every 20 mins for hacks, mods, etc.
Every once and a while, it will deauthenticate your PC, but don't worry! for 5.99 you can simply re-pruchase it.
Oh, come on. D&D players were not outcasts
Tee hee. Maybe not all of them.
There was cross-branding; cartoons and wood burning kits, for cryin' out loud.
Yeah, look at the other cartoons which were competing with D&D. They were simply handed a complete franchise for a great deal, of course they took it. And it was a flop.
Wood-burning kits are kind of a reasonable crossover, because that was a dying hobby, too.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It would be written by a team of developers that aren't terrible at what they do.
They will still introduce bugs each new release, but far less than what Mojang did.
Oh, wait, it is still the same team? Dropped.
+11 Funny
AC is soo clevar and witty1 hahaha my sides!
I don't know what it would look like because it would spend too much time updating during start up, and I'd fucking delete it.
While I do wish the kids would go outside and play, it's not minecraft that's the problem, it's just the way kids are in the time of "playdates". Minecraft however is such a great game for them. It basically replaces the hours I spent with lego. I find hardcore first person shooters psychically disturbing so I'm greatly relieved when they find shooting sheep with enchanted diamond bows or building cat fountains amusing. Its similar to the way I used to build lego things that I could smash. Even better with things like raspberry pi, you can write in your own python code to build stuff or launch other people in the air when they come into your house.
The very best feature of minecraft is that there is no objective at all. Again like lego. it's up to you and your imagination. It just gives you an organized platform for creating.
What will MS do? I was afraid they might shutdown the python API on raspberry pi but they just released Windows for free on the new raspberry pi, so it looks like they might embrace it even more. I think Microsoft is finally re-learning how they became successful by being the low cost alternative to apple and IBM. they want the love again. Market share uber alles.
I suspect they might pervert it the way lego has been perverted by selling specialized kits that just build one thing. So they might sell pre-built minecraft worlds with various happy-meal like themes. Or hook it into microsoft live where you gotta pay the man a subscription to live in the microsoft amusement park. I would really resent that because kids come and go from their toy interests and so a subscription for something they are not using would hurt.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
And replace the greyish void fog with the true blue void of death.
My guess is added spyware, ad-related content, micropayments, a locked-in addons store and a dumbed-down user interface with all the most useful and frequently used functionaity now either removed, hidden or buried under a layer of braindead ribbon tools.
I think it would look a lot like this:
http://static.planetminecraft.com/files/resource_media/screenshot/1231/bluescreen_3081220.jpg
Now someone needs to make a BSOD out of tiny blocks of water...
Koans and fables for the software engineer
Minecraft is one of the things I like least on the Internet right now. It epitomises everything I dislike about the environment given to the young generation, their imaginations torn from them, pushed into building artificial worlds because making in the real one is hampered by a perfect storm of regulation and fear under the umbrella of crony capitalism.
I'm sorry that your children don't get to build their own meth lab.
No, actually, that's pretty close to the non-snarky truth. I was an avid chemistry hobbyist as a kid. Already in the 1970s it was getting harder to obtain some of the materials I wanted -- all the 1950's "chemical magic" books said to go to your pharmacy for nitric acid or carbon tetrachloride or white phosphorus, but the pharmacy was having none of that. Fortunately, I had science teachers who wanted to encourage my enthusiasm, and they arranged for me to order stuff through the schools. I managed not to do too much damage to the house, the environment, or my health.
Today? Schools and pharmacies are even more locked down, but now we've got search engines and e-commerce. On balance, it's probably easier to get stuff than it used to be. But with "chemistry sets" disappearing from the shelves, fewer kids are ever getting started in the hobby.
As for having "their imaginations torn from them", though, I think you're still way off-base. My kid spends a good bit of time on Minecraft and related online pursuits, but they still haven't come for her hot-glue gun, and her tower of miniature houses, characters, and gadgets continues to grow steadily. So do the stories that she's writing, both alone and in collaboration with former classmates. It would be cool if she took after chemistry or electronics like I did, I guess, but those aren't the only fields in which to become a maker.
My guess is that Microsoft will rewrite the multiplayer server modules first, replacing Java with C#. They will introduce standardized APIs (that the game sorely needs). Expect to see micropayment systems introduced. Then I would expect a move to Azure cloud services, replacing the dozens of multiplayer server farms that are out there. Games will finally support more simultaneous characters per world, larger worlds, etc. and actually scale.
By this point you will see a schism in the developer community, those that hang on to the old server code and those that begin migrating to the new cloud-based (supported) code. XBox will enable access to Azure-code servers (today you can only access a world hosted by another XBox player), and that mode of play will quickly become dominant. Mods will be developed in Visual Studio 15, with a new project type.
As Microsoft continues to extend .Net to Apple and Linux environments, they will release new clients for those environments in .Net only. Expect some tie-ins with Microsoft Phones to check in on your Azure-hosted worlds, etc like Microsoft SmartGlass does for Xbox.
The Minecraft Client will be updated slowly, in a way that most people won't realize that Microsoft is tweaking it. When they finally release a v 2.0 client, I imagine that all existing accounts will be converted to Live accounts, whether you like it or not. One day out of the blue, it will block access to Java-based servers citing a "security risk to your Live account". You can keep playing with your old client on old servers, but you wont get the new widgets, textures, etc. The server hosting community will continue to dry up, until you convert to the new client through inertia.
A better question would be, What would Windows ME look like in Minecraft?
You are welcome on my lawn.
How is giving them a sandbox to build whatever they want tearing their imaginations from them?
That was a troll, friend. Try not to feed them.
Why is it worth considering what a Minecraft 2 would look like?
The post is a troll.
They will rename it.
A lot of Java->C# comments around and comments about Playstation, but I'm more concerned whether the Mac version would continue. Am also interested in whether my all-updates-for-life deal that I got by buying early into the beta (for..err...$7.95 I think) will continue.
Why do you need this sandbox in order to build stuff? What is wrong with building mechanical stuff using actual wood or metal or meccano or lego? What is wrong with building electrical stuff using actual breadboards and wires and components?
Need? No, but it does have one significant advantage, and that is cost vs return. The game is not that expensive, the hardware to run it is not that expensive, and the flexibility within it is pretty significant. Mechanical and electrical projects both require obtaining raw materials per project and tools can be quite expensive. Minecraft also has a significant multiplayer capability which allows collaborative projects on scales a child hobbyist is less likely to have access to.
I would not call it a replacement for other craft projects, but then again I would not consider mechanical/electrical projects a replacement for fiber crafting or vice versa. Different tools, different experience.
I am not sure what misunderstanding of my argument leads you to say that. I'd be against writing in a word processor which limits your vocabulary and sentence structure for no good reason, certainly.
Any project, wood, writing, music, is going to have limitations on it due to the tools or physical laws.
No, but I'd have a problem if one electronic music creation platform (say... Garageband?) massively dominated all other sorts of music composition online or offline.
Ah, the old 'if something is popular and it is not my thing, it is bad!' argument. Why exactly something that draws people in and gets them creating stuff bad? People gravitate twoards the tool and platform that suit them best, so while it is possible if you remove the option they would find other outlets, those outlets have already been rejected by them for not being what they are looking for.
That is remarkably false. Many school field trips and demonstrations and home experiment kits which were routine when I was young are permitted today, at least in the UK.
Not sure where you are paying attention, but I see a vibrant kit marketplace well in excess of what was available 20 or 30 years ago. I envy kids today and the options they have at just a few clicks of a mouse and a little shipping time. I have even been ordering kids projects or reading plans lately because there are so many and they make great little lazy saturday activities. The only place I can think of that is more limited today would be chemistry sets, which were a small market in the first place and their removal impacts a tiny number of (enthusiastic) people.
But on the whole I have seen the market for beginners and experiment kits in pretty much every domain explode, with more variety easier to obtain than ever.
A couple specific comments really stood out and indicated to me that the author is not a crafter.
Bigger worlds?? I have yet to see a world that was even 10 percent mapped, let alone actually explored. Size of the world really truly is more than sufficient for any reason I can conceive.
Pooling water? Again, nice if you looked at a world but didn't play it. If water pooled then basically all mines and caverns would simply be under water. Water really is an evil in Minecraft, and learning to deal with it is one of the elementary skills required to mine in the game.
I think the potential tie ins to other titles and universes would only alienate a lot of the most creative crafters, just look at the creations on YouTube, they love to create tie ins, from Star Wars to real world museums, but the joy is in creating the content, not in having "official" connections.
That said, I am sure there is a market among the me-toos, the ones that respond to every cool Minecraft video on YoTube with "can I get a copy of your world" for all kinds of branded content, but I don't know if Microsoft is looking to own a disloyal crowd of sycophant 13 year olds.
I am also curious about the future of Minecraft even without the Microsoft factor, because the mod coders have been waiting now for a few years for the modding API, which has been coming "soon" for a long time. Bukkit, the largest server modding framework is dead, killed by a "take my ball and go home" playground argument amped up with a DMCA takedown, and I think the window to reclaim that group of coders has just about closed, so whatever happens in the future is likely to be a different community of coders.
Combine that with losing the singular vision when Notch was making all the decisions and Minecraft 2.0 is going to be very different. Not necessarily worse or better, but different. I would have loved it if Notch had actually kept his promise to open the source, but he chose not to, and so the First Minecraft era passes.
The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.
"Proximity to wonder has blunted our perception and appreciation of it" --Tim Hartnell in 'Exploring ARTIFICIAL INTELLI
I tend not to be insulting when I post, but Ill make an exception here.
Your an idiot.
Tearing their imaginations from them? I have 2 daughters that LOVE minecraft because they love building houses and castles and populating them with all sorts of creatures. They do this collaboratively with friends, some of whom are in different states. It allows infinitely more collaborative creativity than just about anything else I have seen on the internet.
Minecraft is nothing more and nothing less than the electronic generations Legos.
In case I wasn't clear the first time, let me say it again...
Your an idiot.
I do not know much about minecraft mods but I still seem to remember they are Java as well. If they port minecraft into MS tech (DirecX and C# presumably) what happens to the community mods?
4wdloop
How is giving them a sandbox to build whatever they want tearing their imaginations from them?
Why do you need this sandbox in order to build stuff? What is wrong with building mechanical stuff using actual wood or metal or meccano or lego? What is wrong with building electrical stuff using actual breadboards and wires and components?
There's nothing wrong with building mechanical stuff or electrical stuff. But that in itself doesn't translate to building in Minecraft is bad. Building in different "mediums" is better, imo.
I don't think Minecraft alone is a problem. It becomes a problem - just like anything else - if it consumes too much of one's focus, time, and abilities. However, I think Minecraft is very useful beyond entertainment. I couldn't really get my kids interested in electrical circuits (phyiscally), but they enjoy building redstone machines and it opens the door for correlating the Minecraft experience to real physical principles which might fuel their interest in the future.
Also, they've recently expanded to building physical things (legos, cardboard, pvc, sticks, paper) because of Minecraft. So in my experience, Minecraft is a catalyst to creativity with physical materials and hasn't hampered their imaginations at all.
How Lego Came Back From The Brink Of Bankruptcy
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
I would make it so all worlds are Azure based and regardless of client (javascript pure web experience, XBox, java, whatever) you enter the same worlds. Instead of a fee to create a username there'd be a tiny basic subscription (for maybe 1 world) that would rise for multiple worlds (with special option features like "roll back to yesterday's world as I just burnt my village down by mistake") and rise more for "pro" (which would allow you to host others in your world space). Running a minecraft server would take minimal effort (one click provisioning via Azure followed by web based setup of the rules) but you'd have to pay MS a pro fee. They might offer an ad supported alternative if they really wanted to annoy people.
With Azure they could host worlds with 1000's of people in. Or would that become like 2nd Life all over again.
A true scale model of the world might even be a real possibility someday.
Then everyone on any platform would be able to play together and they'd have a true community rather than the multiple communities they in theory have now. And I'd be able to enter my worlds by phone, tablet, chromebook as I felt at the time.
For kids who still want to play totally offline (on a tablet on a plane or in the car) just keep pocket edition going.
Not saying I WANT them to do this, but if I was "cloud first mobile first" Nadella, I wouldn't be building a new client only game version. We have one of them already and it works.
Minecraft: Pocket Edition is already re-written in C++.
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
Tee hee? Fucking idiot.
1) Problem?
2) U Mad, bro?
3) Seriously, it's not worth getting that bent over someone saying something in a way you don't like.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
On balance, it's probably easier to get stuff than it used to be.
Of course, back then you didn't get a free flag as a potential terrorist in your federal files.
> Vegetation should grow if unchecked
It does that already.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Yeah, constantly being accused of a Satanistic suicide cult had no negative impact on D&D.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Looks like someone has made something similar to this.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
D'AWWWWW, what a cutesipoo article. I read it. Really, I did. And there are in my opinion two possible reasons for its existence. One, the autor got paid by MS in some way. Or the other, he has no idea how the game industry works today. Well, let's take a look at the "10 things" list of what's actually FAR more likely. I took the liberty to actually model it after the original list.
1. Make mods impossible
Well, unapproved mods, that is. Of course for your safety, at least that's the excuse. The reason is that, well, how the fuck are we supposed to sell you DLC addons if you can get the same for free?
2. Use MS tools to ensure vendor lock-in. .... for a price, of course. And until MS decides it no longer wants to support Minecraft 2 because you're supposed to buy Minecraft 3.
Supporting what's been said in point 1, you'll play on servers hosted by MS only. Of course they will come with all sorts of bells and whistlers
3. The game will be as you leave it ... for a price
Part of the appeal of MC is, as the author of the piece correctly identified, that you leave an impression in the world, while it would be nice if certain aspects of teh game would change over time, with water flowing and earthquakes occurring. Rest assured that you'll get whatever you want... provided you pay for it. Just 1 buck a day can save your mine from a cave-in!
4. More crossover sales
Hey, wouldn't it be great if owning a certain other MS game allows you to build something awesome? Like a laser gun if you own Halo VI? Of course... you should really get that laser gun if you want to take down those new monsters that will spawn from the next patch forward because it's the only thing that can put a sensible dent into their armor...
5. Use it to sell HoloLens
This time I crib at the original work. Because that's the only point I truly actually believe will happen. That game would be used to cram down yet another failed gimmick down our throat. Game console makers, please get it: We like our input devices the way they are. We like our displays the way they are. Stop fucking with either!
6. Realistic graphics ... provided you have the right version of DirectX
Of course the graphics get better and better with every patch. Uh... well, that is if you have the current version of DirectX. Which will of course not be available for your ancient version of Windows. But we'll support your DX... for now. But you might want to upgrade to Win11 soon, because we're gonna drop support in about 4-5 patches. And remember: You play on OUR server. WE decide which version is the right one! I.e. you won't play anymore in 4-5 patches if you ain't a good consumer and go buy our new crap!
7. Mobs will be mean
Like hell they will! How could we ensure number 4 works out if you could kill everything with that puny sword and bow? If everything else fails and we suck at AI building, we'll just cheat and send more of them. Because that's what players like today, right? I mean, all those zombie horde survival games can't be wrong!
8. More eye candy ... odd.
I said everything about that at number 6. Hey, don't look at me, it's not my fault they lamented the same thing twice in the original article because they don't have 10 points to make and having 8 looks kinda
9. Dumb it down
Remember when you first played it and how big and overwhelming it felt? We have to market it to the console crowd and if that taught us anything, then to dumb down a game to the point where a 3 year old can play it. So I guess one general tool is enough for everyone! Plus, if people take like half a year to figure out the basics, why'd they pay for DLCs?
10. Lock it down to XBox and Windows
Cross platform? Are you high on something? That game's a killer app, why the fuck would MS want to make it run on its competitor? If anything, they'd try as bad as they can to make it not run on WINE!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Meh. Everyone knows every other MS release is trash.
I'm gong to hold out for for Minecraft 10 Enterprise Server Upgrade 365 x64 for Workgroups
(and maybe SP2 just to be safe)
Shameless plug for my photos on Flickr
They're still selling millions of copies of 1.x each year, plus all the pocket editions and console editions. And some people shell out $15-20 a month for a Minecraft Realms server. There's an insane revenue stream here for them even if they never do release a 2.0. That's why their original acquisition announcement said that they expect to recoup their investment sometime in 2015.
I'm sure there will be a 2.0 release sometime, but if we're going to be speculating, cynical and sarcastic about MS, remember that they are experts at milking cash cows like Minecraft.
We are the 198 proof..
Thanks, Internet!
Koans and fables for the software engineer
Emoji of Microsoft Minecraft 2
My boys and I recently got into Minecraft. We don't have PCs for each of us, though, so I installed the Android version of Minecraft on their tablets and on my smartphone. I know this is much more limited than the full version, but it works for us. I'd be curious what Microsoft plans to do with the Portable Edition version. Will they merge it with the full version so that MCPE has as many features as Minecraft for the PC? Will they set it up so that MCPE users can enter "normal" Minecraft worlds hosted on servers? Or will they end Android development and try to push people to Windows devices? (Hopefully not the latter as they'll potentially lose out on a big market.)
Also, I've seen some people post free Minecraft alternatives. Do any of these support Android devices or are they all PC only?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Do whatever Microsoft is doing, and make sure you replace that 's' with a dollar sign to be edgy.
The windows desktop - which they will try to reinvent for the nth time
That's Microsoft's story: they get something that is cool, and they turn it into something uncool and uninteresting. Unless they just kill it off first.
The actual game won't change very much. It'll be a little more polished. Look a little nicer.
And they'll tie it to or wrap it in something stupid. live account, games for windows live, outlook account, xbox account, your phone, touch screens, app store.
Plus it will be far more hostile to modders. Which is half of what makes it such a popular thing. It's not one game. it's thousands of mod customized games.
So yeah you might end up with most of a good game in the end. But it's tied to a hostile pitbull that hates you and wants your credit card #.
If you can get over that. You might have a good game experience mostly.
Same as they've done to every other game they've bought. Strange to expect anything different this time.
It's "you're", you stupid, ugly, fat motherfucker. You ARE. Get fucked.
You are skipping the first 10 years of D&D. Jumping forward straight to AD&D.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I develop Minecraft plugins for servers and have a plugin in the Top 100 that's played by 100,000's around the world. Developing plugins is a hobby, not a job, but it'd be great if I could make it my job. Right now, that's really difficult and indeed, doing plugins is very much like developing mobile apps before the App Store or Google Play arrived because there's no eco-system, just a giving-system. What I'd really like would be for a way for players to be able to give me $1. I.e., make it just like smartphone apps. I don't think that would be unreasonable. Then I could quit my job, etc.etc.... I assume that Nadella is changing things up in Redmond, so if you work for MS and are responsible for MC planning, give me a buzz and let's talk!
Would be fun to build real world scenarios on Minecraft. Pretty easy to use editor. Download input data for scenarios from Excel and upload simulation results to Excel. Ability to playback simulation runs aferward bonus.
Modding would be replaced with DLC packs, none of which would be free.
Any attempts to mod the client or server would be construed as cheating.
The Xbox would be the primary platform and the PC would be considered as second-tier.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Hold on, doesn't Minecraft 2.0 already exist? ;-)
Whatever it looks like, Villager News will break the story first!
Seeing what Microsoft has done in the last years and how the amrket is going , they will almost certainly go for the following :
* subscription based, forget the 15$ or whatever you paid for minecraft, they will ask 1$99 every month.
* separate set and special mods which allows more than color/form only microsoft, and only for money
* everybody else relegated to basic coloring, texture and form mod, no "command" block type mod adding new function.
* not possible anymore to have your independent server. After all you could do some stuff which would tarnish the image of MC2.0 "microsoft". And there is the money from the server subscription, like 20$ a month.
* API even more obsfucated than for MC 1.0, but with DMCA take down if you deobsfucate it and attempt to add your own command mod
* going away from Java
Yeah i am quite a cynic.
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...they listen to the various commentators on what works and what doesn't, and create something that takes the working idea of the original and extends it further (so, things like cubic chunks that allow ~infinite height worlds, a proper modding API, tutorial for new players, ). Or, even better, they look to the gaming and modding community and get them to help steer it (I think one of the reasons why Minecraft became such a great winner was because the community was able to contribute to it from a very early stage - it was built around what real players wanted).
Personally, I think that a few neat ideas would be:
If they are smart, they will keep it cross-platform and encourage it's "hackability". The thing is a giant cash-cow now, but there are so many ways that they could screw that up with a sequel. But, I am hopeful they see that one of the biggest things that made it work was that the creators listened to the community while building it, and let them be involved. It's a development technique that is utterly, utterly opposite to how Microsoft have worked in the past (a rant I heard from an MS Project MVP was basically that the MS developers were off in their own world and had nothing to do with actual project management, and I see the same in a lot of other MS products - especially Office).
Are Microsoft going to be smart (and courageous) enough to try something that radically different to what they're used to? I don't know, but I hope so. Microsoft have started to change their ways recently in ways that those who saw the 90s/2000s era wouldn't really have believed they would ever do, so maybe there is hope. If they don't, and attempt "closed cathedral" development of a Minecraft sequel then my expectation is going to range from "Mediocre improvements in some areas but still not radically different to or better than the original" to a "turdburger clusterfail".
If they're smart enough to see why it worked - and jump in and do that - I have much more hope for the future of Microsoft both as a company and a software house.
It's like building with Duplos! I mean, it's 2015 for pete's sake!
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I just attended a seminar today where a couple of Microsoft people gave presentations. One thing that they made pretty clear is that Microsoft's Azure "cloud" is a HUGE part of their future business model.
Right now, when you ask the typical MS user if they can name 3 things Azure does, they usually get stuck naming even one item. But one of these days, Microsoft hopes to embrace the software as subscription model to the point where practically everyone will just pay for Azure to spin up and host whatever servers they wish, vs. trying to run their own on their own hardware, in-house.
They've also made a big deal in their recent marketing about the Titanfall game running on Azure -- and I'm sure there will be more of this to come. If they do a Minecraft sequel, I'd suspect it will be designed so people can easily host Minecraft servers on Azure (probably with a friendly web front-end to create and configure them?). Maybe that will be the ONLY authorized way to do it?
Accounts would sign in to Microsoft Live or whatever they call it now.
Linux clients (and possibly servers) would mysteriously not work quite as well as before, when the new updates intentionally use Java features known to not work well on non-MS platforms.
Servers might just be consolidated to "authorized" providers such as XBox Live.
The PC version might be crippled to get "feature parity" with the console versions?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
But on the whole I have seen the market for beginners and experiment kits in pretty much every domain explode...
Which, of course, is why they did away with the chemistry sets.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Mechanical and electrical projects both require obtaining raw materials per project
Then there are Lego and breadboards.
and tools can be quite expensive.
Computers and Internet access are "quite expensive". Just because the Slashdot Middle Class Wallet barely feels it, it doesn't mean most people don't.
Minecraft also has a significant multiplayer capability which allows collaborative projects on scales a child hobbyist is less likely to have access to.
What the fuck do schools do these days? No clubs? I'm not sure why you need a WEB SCALE collaborative project. Minecraft isn't providing a solution but highlighting a problem.
Any project, wood, writing, music, is going to have limitations on it due to the tools or physical laws.
Physical laws are more complex than Minecraft laws. (They have the added bonus of reflecting reality.) The most educational thing one can do with Minecraft is to prototype a clone of Minecraft itself to enumerate the limitations imposed for no particular reason.
Ah, the old 'if something is popular and it is not my thing, it is bad!' argument.
If any one product of service has an overwhelming marketshare, there is likely to be a problem. If that product or service artificially limits a person's freedom when they could express themselves in many more ways, there is definitely a problem. It has nothing to do with whether I like it. Minecraft can be fun, but that doesn't mean I think it's good - a lot of fun things aren't healthy in significant doses. Meanwhile David Bowie's music has always grated me, but I can easily see why the world is richer for his music.
Not sure where you are paying attention, but I see a vibrant kit marketplace well in excess of what was available 20 or 30 years ago.
Not in chemistry, as you've noted. Not in electronics, unless you're talking about the ease of purchasing systems on a chip - did you see what just happened to rADIO Shack? And you don't have the school and after-school clubs which got people interested in the first place. Do you not actually that people are becoming more sedentary (worse than that, little more than mouse-jigglers) and physically isolated? And that this is partly because video games (from Minecraft to Facebook) and stealing them away from a more complete experience of life. You may think that life doesn't need experiencing, but I object to a business encouraging people to think that way.
I envy kids today and the options they have at just a few clicks of a mouse and a little shipping time.
I can't believe that anyone is so lazy that having to fill in a paper form / call a number / visit a local club/store rather than clicking a mouse has ever stopped them be creative. The sort of people who are motivated by being able to click 10 times rather than spend 2 minutes on the 'phone either have a mental health difficulty (and I don't mean that lightly - lack of ability to communicate with other people offline is a serious problem) or aren't going to produce much anyway.
Minecraft is one of the things I like least on the Internet right now. It epitomises everything I dislike about the environment given to the young generation, their imaginations torn from them, pushed into building artificial worlds because making in the real one is hampered by a perfect storm of regulation and fear under the umbrella of crony capitalism.
Is this the bit where I say something about playing in the woods when I was a kid?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
There are versions of Lego Starwars, Lego Indiana Jones, etc. for the xbox. These don't have anything to do with actually building using legos, the player just completes a storyline as a Lego character (beating up other lego pieces along the way).
It would be very interesting if M$ could create Minecraft 2 in a way that studios could build on. e.g. You play through the Minecraft Starwars, and then you can go copy levels and other assets out of the game to use in your own Minecraft world.