How did Notch capture lightning in a bottle with Minecraft?? How can a game reach Minecraft's success?
pander to children, what do you think is the largest videogame playing demographic
lego is expensive
>>336864646
Minecraft was pretty much the first game of its type.
Sure there was a few games that had bits and pieces but none of them had all of them together in the same combination that Minecraft has.
Being the start of rather than the product of a trend. That's it.
>>336864646
find out what next batch of 6-14 year old autists want and make that
>>336864646
despite what the haters will say, minecraft is was an adequate game of a brand new genre,
>>336864646
THINK OUTSIDE OF THE FUCKING BOX YOU IDIOT KEK HIRE A GENUINE IDEAS GUY
>>336864790
The majority of its initial growth was through adults tho.
defined an otherwise barren genre
>>336864790
Let's not say things we don't meme
Because people who play this game are autistic. It's an autistic game for autistic people.
I don't mean offense by this. I love this game. Because I'm pretty autistic.
Most of this game is hard labor. Mining, laying brick, harvesting veggies and planting seed, fishing. Other than the RPG elements this game is 100% autism; repetitive patterns that only a retard cam take joy in.
The game loses every single bit of enjoyment when you look up from digging in your branch mine that's miles long by now, and think, "...why the fuck am I doing this? What goal am I accomplishing?"
This is why so many people have on/off relationships with minecraft. Cause you realise it's pointless, never play for 6 months, then you start playing again.
7/10 imo. Would reccomend
Pretty much pioneered a genre and then sold the game on false promises, then the game got popular with autists, furries, and kids so they became the vocal majority who steered the game into an entirely different direction than what he had slated it to be originally.
>>336866007
but notch just cloned infiniminer. and notches TOS said any mod made to the game was his property, which is why that terrible addition, the broken villages happened. notch took the villagers code from that kingsdom mod, couldnt figure out how it worked and just dumped a half broken copy paste of the code into minecraft.
>>336864891
Fuck you. It was inspired by many other indie games.
He saw potential in other games, liberally took some of their ideas, and put them together. Notice how every good screenshot is outside, not in a mine where you'd spend most of your time in-game. Part of the "fun" of minecraft is the glitches and absurd physics system.
>>336868803
>pioneered a genre
>stole parts from infiminer/dwarf fortress
epic
>>336868816
>notches TOS said any mod made to the game was his property
kek, notch truly was a retard who hit gold then.
>>336868891
>Fuck you
>Literally repeats what he just posted
You fucking drongo
Most video games have the player confined to the imagination and creation of the creator of the game. Minecraft allows the player to own these aspects themselves.
>>336869027
Please go ahead and list all of the voxel based first person exploration/crafting games that existed prior to Minecraft becoming popular. I mean look at all those available quality titles that were massively popular like Infiniminer; fucking everybody knows who Infiniminer is amirite? The only similarity Minecraft has with Dorf Fort is mining. Notch might have wanted to make a 3d Dwarf Fortress lite but that never went past early alpha. You seem like the kind of faggot that goes on tirades when someone says Edison invented the lightbulb or Bell invented the telephone or sperg out and list off all those other relative unknowns who were working on the idea of general relativity when Einstein came forward with his. For all intents and purposes Minecraft pioneered the genre.
>>336864808
>kids love minecraft
>kids love Legos
>decide to surprise them with minecraft Legos
>spend $170 on 3 boxes
JUST
can I be anymore cucked by my kids
>>336869562
tldr but thank you for knowing the word voxel.
>>336868624
this
>>336864646
When you think about it, it makes no sense that Minecraft wasn't done years earlier. Of course Infiniminer existed but that's just a basic framework for the voxels. But you think, it's such a simple idea, why wasn't a game where the world was made of blocks and you could pick up and put down every block in the world done before? It's such a simple, obvious concept, and Minecraft is such a simple, almost generic game in its execution, but as dinky a piece of software as it is it's still remarkable no one did anything better or tried to with any seriousness before.
Even if the technology were possible, no one saw the value in making a game that was about building with the blocks you mined off the world, not even the Zachtronics guys who made Infiniminer.
How did he do it? Because no one did it before, amazingly enough. Thomas Edison captured lightning in a bottle because all light bulbs before his commercial model were shit, and minecraft is the first generation shitty lightbulb that's still miles better than the even shittier lightbulbs that came before it.
>>336864646
Notch made a 3D fully destructable, buildable, and procedural generating world to pioneer at a time when so few games had a focus on exploration.
>>336864646
Absolutely pathetic nobody has made a copy of the game that can rival Minecraft
He got lucky and made a game that printed money for him despite dozens, if not, hundreds, of other people who have individually spent more time and effort than himself were the backbone for content development.
because we shilled it.
>>336870369
Because any time a clone is made people don't buy it because they can already just play minecraft
>>336870369
>>336870369
>Microsoft pays out 2 BILLION shekels to buy the game, might as well spend another BILLION on development for Minecraft 2
>It comes out
>It's worse
That said, everyone has a different vision for a perfect world, and everyone also has a vision for a different minecraft. For me it'd be more about base defense and seeing how long you can survive against the hoards of monsters that would actively try to fuck your shit up, but for other people they want huge tech trees and other people just want more tools to build with besides half slabs.
>>336868891
Shakespear was known to steal whole scenes from other writers, doesn't make him any less great.
>>336868891
>It was inspired by many other indie games.
That's literally what he said dumbshit
>>336870743
Shakespeare was a good writer
Minecraft is a poorly made game, it was just the first game of it's type, Inifiniminer doesn't count
>>336870961
>it was just the first game of it's type
It kinda still is.
>>336864646
Minecraft with Terraria tiers with slave workers.
>Basically getting villagers to do slave work while your off exploring and shit
>With a Faction Action PVP function built in the game
>With MC MMO for skill grinding
>>336869617
You mean your wife's son?
They don't like it when you call them your kids
>>336868624
Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time
But since you're autistic I don't expect you to understand what this means
Easy, it was one of the first exploration based games with a fully destructible environment and randomly generated environment.
Before minecraft ever came out I used to dream about something like that, down to "It would have to be pretty blocky with current computers, sure, but it would be awesome".
Too bad I was young and didn't know how to code at the time.
>>336871682
hey neither did notch. when microsoft bought minecraft they took one look at the code and laughed, and started from scratch. its also why hundreds and hundreds of features of minecraft that were promised but never added. he wasnt a very good programmer. hell, the game he stole the idea from, literally did it better
>>336864646
I'd say it had just the right timing and combination of things going for it. It had a close community that wanted to expand on and improve the game, it had really cool random worlds, you could share the seed of these worlds with other people so they could experience it, a basic combat system, a sense of exploration... it was the big box of Legos for the next generation. The fact that it could be customized and had a lot of mods certainly helped to expand its popularity.
Game kind of went to crap after the adventure update, but thats just my opinion.
>>336864646
>How can a game reach Minecraft's success?
Do that scene without blocks and have it look completely natural, along with full destructible with realistic physics.
>>336864646
>capture lightning in a bottle
Sorry to say, but, that is impossible to achieve.
>>336871945
Care to go into this more? I stopped playing minecraft around 2012.
I know it sold to microsoft but that's about it.
>>336872098
Isn't that how batteries are made?
>>336872098
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-93Ij5WIcok
>>336864646
Actually pander to an audience.
>>336869617
>can I be anymore cucked by my kids
...you've been watching your children fuck your wife?
>>336872149
eh, theres not much more to it. remember when it first came out and just a few blocks would turn a mega-computer to a grinding halt? i mean, it was having a hard time displaying what, 100 square boxes, with 16x16 textures?
the tl:dr is basically, if i was to show you counterstriker 1.6 RIGHT now, but it only ran about 10 frames per second, thats what minecraft looked like to anyone who knew the most minor things about 3d rendering.
>>336872395
That's hot.
Promise first person dwarf fortress
Give a half finished product
Sell out to microsoft
>>336872149
Mojang's Minecraft is coded in Java
That Java code was created from Infiniminer's source and stitched together with Notch's spaghetti code
Jeb was on the team and eventually reworked most of the spaghetti code when He became the lead director of Mojang/Minecraft and when Nothc fucked off, only to come back once in a while to type some lines
The code is still spaghetti but not as spaghetti as before
Minecraft gets sold by Notch and laugh heartily at the messy messy code
They then proceed to build the whole game from scratch in superior C++ (both PC and Console versions use C++) and is FAR FAR more efficient in performance
However there are no mods since all the mods past have been made in Java
You either play shit performance with all the mods or amazing performance with no mods and in Windows 10 only
Also Jeb said that Java is the superior code, not lying, but forgot where it was documented
>>336872750
Alright, that clears some things up, thanks anon.
Reminder that this is Notch's house
Insane amount of luxury
what a lucky obese neckbeard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kulqcpfd7d0
>>336872750
>Windows 10 only
RIP
>>336873272
He's terribly lonely apparently.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2490360,00.asp
>>336873426
Money cannot buy you a happiness.
>>336873546
Money CAN buy happiness
I would be insanely happy and overjoyed if I was given $100,000 so I could have a hefty savings and pay off my car and some student loans
HOWEVER, if I won the lottery for like, $900 million, I would not be happy
I'd feel separated from my regular people, feeling like they only care for the money I dont need at all and being pressured to use it on helping others and being open to press and shady, snobby rich people
Money CAN buy happiness, but having TOO much money wont
It just makes sense in my head
Having an extra sum would really relieve some financial stresses that everyone deals with, but after a certain point, its just becomes a bunch of numbers, and I dont want to stress over having that much of a money gap from what im used to, mostly in a socioeconomic way
>>336873546
it absolutely can, you just need to realize what makes you happy. notch is just retarded.
>>336873546
Depends on if happiness is a faithful woman or objects.
I know I'd be pretty happy with a giant basement filled full of lathes, mills, welders and plasmacutters, but I'd still want that woman.
>>336868891
Notch used the open source source code of a game called infiminer or something like that. Ha someone who's knows the story doesn't remember the base game.
Anyway, the original was mining some barren wasteland of Mars of something. Notch took that, added grass and trees, and made minecraft. I made the first server. That's another thing notch did, made the servers available to snyone. You can make a minecraft server right now you ignorant shit
>>336874137
The key is to not let anyone find out you are that rich
Use pseudonym, don't be retard and do interviews all the time letting people know you've got tons of money. You'd never be able to know who actually likes you for you, notch is a fool, a dumbass really
>>336874137
>HOWEVER, if I won the lottery for like, $900 million, I would not be happy
>I'd feel separated from my regular people, feeling like they only care for the money I dont need at all and being pressured to use it on helping others and being open to press and shady, snobby rich people
Exactly what I would fear if I somehow inherited a shitload of money.
of course, if it was 900 million I would take care of my parents and good friends who have always been there for me, but you would always have to be incognito about dating to avoid gold diggers.
>>336874194
>LITERALLY could afford a full time chef
>order macdonalds...but, since hes got so much money, he gets it delivered
>man why am i so unhappy. i feel so unfulfilled
>notch is playing some new indi game
>MAN THIS IS A REALLY COOL IDEA, I KINDA WANNA MAKE IT
>WHOSE THE DEV
>literally the infiniminer dev, working on a new game
>infiniminer guy goes "oh...hey, atleast, put my name on it this time..."
>no reply from notch
>>336874441
>>336874456
Fucking THIS.
>>336873426
With that much money he could create another game studio from scratch and pay an entire team thirty years of salary with no outside revenue. He could create games almost risk-free for decades.
If he doesn't want to be lonely he needs to stop acting like some random guy who suddenly won the lottery. "uhh uhhh what do rich people do? Oh yeah they go out and party with famous people, well I guess I'll do that."
"The problem with getting everything is you run out of reasons to keep trying" fuck off. Keep trying just for the love of trying. No passion in this fuck.
>>336874137
This pretty much. If I won the lottery I'd probably hemorrhage it as quickly as possible on immaterial thingslike founding a game studio that makes AAA-level h-games, leaving just enough to live comfortably without working the rest of my life.
>>336872098
WHAT NOW BITCH?
>>336874698
>"The problem with getting everything is you run out of reasons to keep trying" fuck off. Keep trying just for the love of trying. No passion in this fuck.
I completely agree. I don't understand that.
Even if I won the lottery and was comfy for life, I would still create things just for the challenge and reward of a finished project.
It sounds like he has no hobby, no joy.
>>336874815
KEK
>>336874698
See, notch doesn't actually like videogames or coding really. He clearly just settled into the former to pass the time and did the latter just for work
He already did the game studio thing and was unhappy as hell because it's all hard work to do properly and he only half knows a bad coding language so nothing he makes seems impressive and he loses motivation quickly
>How did Notch capture lightning in a bottle with Minecraft??
You're asking it.
A lot of his original ideas came from /v/. I remember the thread he posted a Google doc for people to submit their ideas for him to implement. I actually sent in a couple, can't remember if he ever added them though.
I also remember the Q&A he did on GPM's stream for /v/.
>>336874518
>>336874698
people forget INTEREST. remember when people yelled at notch for buying a 70 million mansion? 2 billion, at say. 1% interest per month? he made up the cost of the 70 million mansion by
sitting
on
his
ass
for 3 and a half months. literally. he makes 600,000 bucks, a DAY. sitting in an empty room. in order to even START digging into the money he has, he needs to spend roughly. if he spends just 10 SECONDS reading a blog post instead of spending money, whoops, hes made 7500 bucks
>>336875317
damn I never even thought about that
fuck
>>336864646
You have to remember pre Minecraft the genre of survival/basebuilding/open world sandbox was rare.
Turns out people really like them, Notch was just the first to find (or stumble upon) the features which together made a pretty good game.
>>336875317
1% interest is pretty high. But even with a 0.01% rate he's making over an average blue collar worker's lifetime salary each year.
At any rate his problem (if his life sucks as much as his tweets imply) isn't that there's no more point in trying to make money, it's that he doesn't seem to have any passion for anything and can't fuel that passion with money. Like, Elon Musk has quite a bit more net worth than Notch but he pours it into R&D because he has a passion (and a work ethic).
>>336873546
Horseshit. Only said by people who are poor.
All MC Survival needs to be great is basic things like finding the shortest route from A to B, interactions between AIs, material interaction (oil and water, compacted soil layers), basically actual physics
Then QuantumCraft in 2025 with 10^1000000 blocks per unit, reality sim
>>336875868
1% isnt really, this kinda assumes he just dumps all his money like a retard into a bank instead of investing or some shit. but yeah, its irrelevant in the long term.
back in the 80`s, 90`s, or something, it was like, if you could save 2 million bucks and slap it into a bank account, you would earn 60 grand a year in interest. so, you could live a 60,000 a year life, without ever having to work ever again in your entire life. now notch, notch has, 200x that.
>>336872519
I watched a joi video of a girl cucking her mom and I was trapped in an eternal plane of extremely turned on and extremely uncomfortable. I ultimately couldn't jerk off to it, turned it off, jerked off to complete silence, and spent the rest of the day in moral peril.
>>336876747
Fuck. I know this feel.
>>336876747link
He shilled it on /v/ and then it spilled to reddit
>>336872053
Ark: survival evolved
Subnautica
Rust
The Forest
He made it to pander to /v/ which means the result will hit a massive userbase
take a small idea that sounds cool
refine it with the help of a large userbase that doubles as a beta testbed
claim it as your own work and sell it
>>336872750
>Also Jeb said that Java is the superior code
What the fuck?This just goes to show how lazy they were.
>>336876747
Never change anon. Never change
He created a very simplistic game that allows you to explore huge expansive areas, set up a little home, and furnish it and build stuff.
That's all you need to feel immersed. You can enjoy building something massive for hours with the blocks you went out and earned and then go out to explore new areas and get more treasure and fight more monsters. Once you've got more rare blocks or rare items you can return home to store them. You can create farms, go fishing, even go to the ocean or deep underground and now you can go to hell.
The game just has a large immersive environment and there's nothing quite like getting on a quiet survival server, going off on your own, finding a quiet roofed forest and setting up a cozy little home hidden away in the trees.
>>336875902
Well anon, to have that opinion, either you are rich and happy, or someone who isn't rich but think that being so will fix his unhappiness, which makes me wonder why you'd think that.
>>336864790
35 year olds. Under 18 is roughly 26%.
>>336879092
sorry, MANchildren
>>336866105
agreed. it wasn't until minecraft got really popular on youtube that they decided to add a bunch of useless updates and as the other guy put it, pander to children. for a while, minecraft was actually a very solid and innovative game. they really did capture lightning in a bottle.
>cheap
>low requirements
>Everyone and their mom was let's playing the fucking thing
I just don't know
>>336878738
Was that trending back then? Or just luck?
mostly has to do with exposure and the relative newness of the videogame industry. anyone who knew a shit, they already knew flappydog and craftminer and whatever was an already existing game. but suddenly, everyones got computers and people who have never played a game, are now looking to buy their first game.
you take a room of people who have never played a game, and toss them tetris, they will be blown away.
you take a room of people who actually played vidya, and toss them tetris....yawn.
thats what happened. it wasnt so much minecraft was good, or well made, or anything. it was just literally, the first exposure of vidya to millions and millions of people.
>>336864646
>How can a game reach Minecraft success ?
Pokémon ?
Come up with an interesting and unique concept
Sell the game while it's still in alpha and tell people the game will be a trillion times better when it's completed
Don't actually ever do any work
profit.
>>336880154
>>336880154
to compare it, tv. now days, the original tvs are shit. black and white. 1 channel. mono sound. turns off at 12 pm because theres no channels that run during that time. if that was introduced to US, TODAY, we would laugh at it. but to them, just a MOVING picture was fucking mind blowing. tv spread like wildfire.
>>336880315
It's called kickstarter and it works like 70% of the time.
>>336876972
not op but i think this is it
http://www.pornhub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=ph57085152e3499
>>336876535
What a faggot. He could donate part of it yearly and it wouldn't hurt him the slightest. Even putting it into the local community would help anyone and he would feel better. Fucking sinner!
TSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
>>336868624
This is probably a good way to put it.
Minecraft's fun when you want to just build shit without any real purpose, use your imagination, that sort of thing. So you start up a new world, gather materials, build cities, fortresses, or what have you, and then you realize that there's no actual goal to complete and no one will ever see your creations and no one would care if you showed it to them.
With other creative hobbies like drawing, at least anyone can appreciate what you're doing and give you some critique. Minecraft doesn't have that luxury, so anything you make will simply fall flat.
On top of that, Minecraft doesn't really have a game element to it, because what's there is so simplistic and shallow as to provide no real challenge beyond some minor tedium. Sure you can kill the ender dragon, but doing so is more a function of grinding materials for the equipment to do so rather than a true challenge. Same goes for the Wither or the pufferfish guy or anything really.
I think Minecraft would've had much more appeal if some care was taken to make better use of the existing mechanics to provide a better gameplay. Something like a multiplayer mode that balanced fortification building and destruction so what you build has function rather than being undone by a 2x1 hole in the wall made by a diamond pick and included better combat mechanics.
>>336877659
they lack destructble terrain
>you will never go back in time to 2010 and play minecraft for the first time again
>>336872750
>You either play shit performance with all the mods
So be it. You have to be retarded to play vanilla, and Minecraft can run well even on my 2010 computer. Thank you performance-increasing mods.
>>336883118
>Something like a multiplayer mode that balanced fortification building and destruction so what you build has function rather than being undone by a 2x1 hole in the wall made by a diamond pick and included better combat mechanics.
Literally mods.
>>336883502
>play it for the first time
i'd rather invest in it desu
if im gonna time travel i better cash out
>>336883742
>you will never go back in time and invest in bitcoin
>>336883742
>You will surely get all future updates and versions for free
>>336864646
By making a good, novel game with practically infinite content that caters to the creativity of children and also encourages them to learn. Fuck what the manchildren on /v/ think, Minecraft is amazing.
Terraria seems to be the game that has come closer to make a successful similar game, its obviously not as popular and hasn't cashed the same amounts of money. But Terraria feels like a 2D MC with an actual approach to more complex combat and rpg mechanics, and then they kept adding content into the game instead of doing fuck all or adding shit no one cares about
>>336884149
Too bad it's only 2D though. I'd fucking love to play Minecraft with depth in it, and NPCs and proper AI.
Minecraft seems to offer some unprecedented freedom for a game--you can just modify the terrain to your heart's desire. So maybe removing restraints is part of the key to success here.
>>336884149
I didn't like Terraria but I liked minecraft. Might be the 2D thing, but I'm not sure really.
>>336883502
I would never go back in time to 2010. I'd rather kill myself than give up what I have now to go back and play a game for the first time.
>>336884149
Terraria didn't make billions but i'd say you're understating how much it has made. It has a crazy number of sales and a whole bunch of merchandise in big retailers afaik; built around what is ultimately a cheap game.
>>336864646
It was basically at the right place at the right time, with the right product. Trying to emulate Minecrafts success is like trying to win lotto.
Minecraft:
a) came right at the start of the whole LP thing and suited it
b) did the whole open development thing first
c) was pretty solid in its own right
>>336874137
I've heard money can buy happiness but it caps out at around 80k a year, anything after has nil effect or so i've heard. Basically once you stop having to worry about bills you're set.
The bigger conundrum is why didn't a professional development team pick it up after him and refine the concept. His was the first successful prototype, but still just a prototype. It's the equivalent of ENIAC, or the Model T. Where's the follow-up? Where's a fully destructible, fantastic performance voxel game with hundreds of objects, furniture, custom object maker, with sphere planets, branching tech trees, support for hundreds of players, and good combat system and mobs? What you would essentially consider to be Minecraft 2 in your fantasyDivided by half?
>>336885530
Don't forget minecraft happened when creativity was at an all time low and only reserved to modders and mappers, and suddenly a game pop out of nowhere and YOU CAN DO ANYTHING!
The fact it ran on a toaster helped a lot too, also how easy it was to try because it was playable in a java applet.
So has minecraft gotten any substantial updates as of late?
>>336886036
>The fact it ran on a toaster
Now, let's not get delusional.
>steal someone elses idea
>viral market the fuck out of it
>string people along with shitty promises and garbage content while throwing them a bone occasionally
That's how, same as every modern "game".
>>336886828
Well i'm talking about old meinkraft, it used to run decently on my shit tier laptop from 2006.
>>336887283
>run decently
yeah, so did counter strike source.
wew. thats ALMOST the polygons and textures of the gun in counterstrike. running okay. impressive.
spoiler: no. you know what ran on toasters in 2006? half life 2.
>>336874815
>>336887454
Mate, that shitty laptop couldn't handle css but meinkraft(classic and indev) ran okay.
>>336887063
who's idea
>>336887596
The White Man's Ideas.
>>336864898
But Minecraft isn't original
>>336887538
my eeepc 700 laptop played counter strike source. the 1 core celeron, 512 ram 7 inch screen laptop? only trick part was forcing a custom res, source didnt like the 1366x720 something?
>>336887834
neither is the first processor discovered on the planet earth, There were others created by humans before our time. that doesn't change the fact that minecraft is as prolific as lego
minecraft could be a simple form of math within a 3d world or a video game. It's just blocks.
there are more interesting things than minecraft though so I wouldn't worry about it's 'Originality'
autism bucks
At first, it was genuinely good. It looked much better than it does now, and it played much better. We were sold false promises by Notch, he left /v/, and then surrounded himself with yesmen to promote his lazy behavior.
Then everything that Mojang touched turned into shit.
/v/ told him what to do
>>336888192
bingo, FOTM faggots live and die by the 'current' 'year' and it's 'highlights'
>>336887939
Ah, now that i think about it, the laptop was so bad it had trouble with smokes in cs 1.6. The chipset(via chrome something) couldn't do anything a tad intensive without shitting artefacts left and right.
>>336869617
>JUST
>cucked
I'd say you are more ruined by 4chan shitposting. You should stop and think about your life you absolute toolshed of a man.
>>336864790
99% Women
>>336873546
He tries to have a normie night club culture ibiza party life with Chad Chaddingtons when he is a fat nerd. Of course he won't be happy
>>336885530
I mean its pretty famous and probably won loads of cash, and its a great succes for an indie developer but obviously it doesn't come close to minecraft's levels
>>336884334
>>336884953
Its great in its own style, but yeah the 3D and first person makes for some much more immersive experience
Has anything significant been added to mine craft since Halloween update that isn't just new block skins and more useless food types?
This could have been fucking amazing by now
>>336864646
java, everything he fucked up a twenty year old script-kiddie could fix with a mod
>>336866105
Who spread the word to their children.
>>336873546
no, but money can help you to get healthy and fit. and than you go to the beach order every chick a drink and after pounding a hundred cunts you find one that is nice, lovely and cute and bam you have a family
>>336889661
then fix it
>>336889879
no, I'm working on my horse-cunt mod way too hard right now
From a psychological standpoint Minecraft appeals to children so highly because it gives them power that they are completely denied in their daily lives. Your parents dictate when you wake up, what you eat, how you get to school, what you wear etc. Every moment is controlled by someone else.
When you put a kid into a minecraft world the sperg the fuck out because it's the first time they've had any control over anything in their entire lives. Minecraft was revolutionary in the aspect that it handed control to the player.
>>336864646
Minecraft's success was hardly Notch's, or even Mojang's doing. Minecraft happened to get popular right around the same time that Let's Playing started getting popular.
Do you see the correlation?
>>336892240
Certainly helped sure. But that doesn't explain all of it.
I'm a high school teacher, and I used to run a social skills group for kids who had trouble fitting in. It was a range of kids, some of them had deeper issues than others, but many had autism diagnoses. The ones with more severe autism didn't really get the point of it, found it very difficult to engage in the role-play tasks that were part of the program. Obviously all autistic kids love minecraft, so I decided to try using that. We got them to complete collaborative tasks on a minecraft server, simple stuff like building a particular object, and eventually started getting them to role-play the tasks from the program through their minecraft avatars. It sounds dumb but it worked really well. Some of these kids who outright refused to talk to anyone other than their dedicated teaching assistant were getting involved, helping other kids out etc. They built up a proper friendship group which carried over outside of the classes and many of them made huge progress with regards to "fitting in" more generally.
I think what works so well about minecraft is that it's completely safe and completely logical. There are set rules you can learn about the world and apply them how you want, exploring whilst feeling completely in control. The rise of let's plays around the same time meant that a load of kids who had poor social skills could interact with each other through a safe and familiar framework, rather than the often unfair and unreliable norms of "real" social settings.
