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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."
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 $19, but multiplayer or network storage will require an Xbox Live account and gold subscription.
- The game will be retooled to appeal to an older audience, so expect ultraviolence and maybe some skin (which will usher in an era of very crude "box" jokes).
- Minecraft mods will be easy to write in C#, but no longer be supported in Java; they will implemented as SOAP services instead of plug-ins; and to use them you will need to register as a developer go through a multi-stage certificate generation and validation process to sign your mod which will only be available through the Microsoft store
- The Microsoft store will be integral to the game and appear as a building in the shape of the Windows logo; they'll sell diamond pickaxes that otherwise will be impossible to get
- There will be Windows-phone exclusive features, including a Smite button that allows people to kick other people off a server.
I'm thinking it would look something like this...
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
How is giving them a sandbox to build whatever they want tearing their imaginations from them? Are you against writing too? Or music? Are only 'maker' projects acceptable acts of creativity?
Not sure where you are bringing regulation into it since that has pretty minimal impact on the types of projects a child is going to be able to build unless their parents shower them with resources.
They will rewrite everything from Java to C#. The game release will be endlessly delayed and when it does arrive it will be slow and bloated and not have half of the feature of the old Minecraft. You would better start stay on Minecraft 1 until Minecraft 3 comes out and they solve that.
My 10 year old lad has already said he hates version 1.8 of minecraft, and blames Microsoft for it.... Regardless of if its M$'s fault or not (admittedly its not), I am really proud of him for hating microsoft already!.... That's my boy!
Why is this modded flamebait? Is it because there's no "pretty-accurate" mod?
I recall an article a while back about the huge corporate shift within LEGO when they started working with tie-ins. Yes, kids were quite content with building... but they're even happier to be building with their favorite pop-culture characters and settings. The bottom line was the bottom line. Ultimately, LEGO faced a decision whether they would keep their mediocre sales figures and their original characters, or whether they'd cash in their fanatic followers as targets for the movie marketing drones.
It turns out the latter choice wasn't nearly as bad as was feared. LEGO is iconic enough that they can hold their own in negotiations with brands. There are (almost) no remastered LEGO sets, no special promos, and no enforced storylines. Tie-in LEGO sets are still LEGOs, but with some familiar characters. Of course, LEGO still has their original material, which has seen a significant increase in sales because the tie-ins have served as a means to attract new customers. Perhaps surprisingly, LEGO has maintained its fanatic customer base, and yes, that often leads to supply shortages and expensive collector-oriented sets.
I'm afraid I can't find that article now, but here's an informative image.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
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.
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