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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."
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.
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?
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.
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.
"It looks like you're demolishing an online game. Like some help?"
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
They will rewrite everything from Java to C#. The game release will be endlessly delayed and when it does arrive it will be slow and bloated and not have half of the feature of the old Minecraft. You would better start stay on Minecraft 1 until Minecraft 3 comes out and they solve that.
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!
Why does Java suck?.....seems ok to me?
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=
So, you're talking about Java Applets..... Which happen to have the same security flaws as other browser based plugins, like Flash (Zero-Day flaw patched just last week).... Who uses applets now anyhow? Minecraft is a Java *application* - not an applet.
Yeah. A year ago the idea of recoding minecraft in C# would have been a bad joke. .NET framework it does sound like a good idea. Both as a sound business decision (a killer app for the newly cross platform .NET) and a technical decision.
But with microsoft open sourcing the
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of 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.
Why does Java suck?.....seems ok to me?
It is not the best language for game programming, at least not when performance may be a concern.
Minecraft is a memory hog and Java is at least partly to blame.
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.
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
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
You know Mono exists, right?
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.
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.
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?
You are still ranting about applets, whomever uses applets lives in pain....Applets have nothing to do with applications using Java, they are an off by default browser extension.
Which call a JRE, which has incompatibilities based on version. There was a code-signing change in J7, for example, which breaks a number of applications.
Its not the plugin thats incompatible, because the plugin isnt what runs the bytecode. The JRE is what runs the bytecode, and is where the incompatibilities lie.
Versions 2, 3, 4, 4.5 are all still in common usage.
2,3, 4, and 5 can coexist without breaking each other. If I were to install J8 on my machine-- regardless of how I configured it-- it would immediately break my ability to configure an entire class of printers (Fiery). It would also break my ability to access the web interface of a number of Cisco web interfacesm if that were something I did, as well as Dell iDRAC.
Heck, updating your minor Java revision on a server can break BES (if you happen to use that). The upshot is that I would wager that anyone still running a BES probably does not have the latest JRE, but a LONG shot.