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Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

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Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#321

Post by VLM »

elohesra wrote: post #28
yeukhon wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well instead of mobile games they may leverage the large console and desktop gamers out there and add FB accounts to those circles. Besides it may be a new revenue. One kind of social events is gaming with friends. It's nice to compete with friends and show to your network what you and your friends are up to. Undoubtedly at some point virtual reality is going to become the next "smartphone". Rift is a giant headset b…

> It's nice to compete with friends and show to your network what you and your friends are up to. I've never understood this mindset in gaming. Maybe I'm just showing myself as an introverted curmudgeon, but I only game when I'm not programming, and I just game to try to unwind. Being forced to do something 'social' when I just want to relax is just annoying to me personally. I'm not saying I hate other people (I do)…

"want to cram social aspects into games"

Long term relationship because gaming can only happen at slow social speeds rather than fast individual speeds. That means more milking subscription money out.

Playing thru the Halflife story / drama with your friends sounds superficially interesting. Then you realize you can only go as fast as your slowest friends. Then you realize they want $15/month for six months while it plays out for everyone. Um, no thanks.

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#322

Post by gnaritas »

XorNot wrote: post #242
skore wrote: post #3

> "Facebook creeps me out." Whether or not you agree with his decision, having Notch pull away from talks with you creates an instant credibility "situation". It's also noteable that Notch had been meeting with the Oculus team just two weeks ago[0], was tweeting about them in rather gushing terms[1] and seemed incredibly inspired to work on VR ideas[2]. He is now the personification of the a near universal feeling of…

It feels like Notch is being given too much credibility here. At the end of the day he's a billionaire because he had a viral hit and was ready with a monetization strategy (and had amazingly cheap running costs). None of this really speaks to his business or technical acumen, and he hasn't exactly done very much lately.

> At the end of the day he's a billionaire

Notch isn't even close to being a billionaire; he's a multimillionaire.

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#323

Post by jimmaswell »

fchollet wrote: post #169
ekianjo wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> scaling crisis for VR. That's supposing Facebook knows how to scale production of electronic items... apart from the cash, they have no relevant experience about that. If it had been Google or Microsoft there would already be people who know how to make it scale to mass production.

The "scale" JC is referring to is not hardware production. It's the virtual reality. Millions of people interacting in real time in a virtual universe in which they are actually present . Think of it as similar to the scaling challenges of MMORPGs. Only much worse.

And why would this be so much harder to scale than just normal MMORPG physics, which it is? The headset just lets you look at the rendering in a new way.

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#324

Post by watwut »

copergi wrote: post #308
netcan wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. He has credibility because he's proven to be effectual, innovative and principled. This is not the case of a guy getting lucky in the viral lottery and then running his mouth.

> He has credibility because he's proven to be effectual, innovative and principled He has proven the exact opposite. He made a clone of an existing game, failed to deliver on almost everything he promised the people buying it, and then walked away from it leaving it to be never finished by someone else. >This is not the case of a guy getting lucky in the viral lottery and then running his mouth. Yes, that is exactly…

Can you name a game that can not be claimed to be a clone or at least somewhat similar to another one?

I also noted that you did not mentioned which game he supposedly cloned. I noted that because when people say these things (whether minecraft or flappy bird or 2048) and I checked the other game, it usually turned out they provide very different experience.

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#325

Post by roc »

ThomPete wrote: post #318
roc wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I think the "scaling" is the money to hire the staff they'll need to improve their technology, in this time before they have a chance at a sufficient revenue stream to bootstrap. Facebook-type users are a decade or more away from VR. They don't "do" fiddly interfaces and rough edges. Even if the hardware was there, the usability isn't.

Exactly, not unlike the reason why Nest found it ok to get bought by Google.

And not unlike Facebook/Oculus, Google/Nest makes perfect sense from the Nest side and very little from the Google side.

In both cases there are potentially large payoffs in the long term. But they're extremely high price tags for decade-plus plays in which the acquired company has little to no particular proprietary technological edge.

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#326

Post by danudey »

rafe33 wrote: post #271
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notch didn't say Facebook acquiring Oculus was creepy. Notch said Facebook is creepy. Besides tighter integration with Facebook, what has changed in Instagram since it was acquired by Facebook? Nothing. You just pointed out exactly what changed with Instagram, and what everyone is afraid of changing with the Oculus. "Log in to your Facebook account to continue playing."

No no guys Instagram also released direct messaging.

Props to them for understanding the benefit in competing with Snapchat. Kind of late in the game, but better late than never?

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#327

Post by kuschku »

jsheard wrote: post #314
bitJericho wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't realize continually updating a game these days is considered "never finished". Minecraft is more of a game than anything on Facebook.

It's been a few years since I played Minecraft seriously, but when I did they were mostly chasing low hanging fruit rather than working on hard or boring problems like modding, anti-cheat, RAM consumption, renderer efficiency or server administration. Full disclosure: A year of dealing with a small-population server regularly getting OOM-killed on a 512MB VPS might have made me slightly bitter.

Actually, the past 2 years of Minecraft development were almost completely spent on RAM consumption, renderer efficiency, recreating the renderer with an OpenGL 2.1 shading pipeline, switching from direct drawing to VBO's, creating compatibility with translucent objects, etc.

Since January 2013 they've spent almost the whole time on optimizing the performance.

And the only features they've implemented since where features people wanted really badly or features which came automatically – for example, after adding support for translucent objects they were able to add stained glass with just some few lines of code.

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#328

Post by drivingmenuts »

samstave wrote: post #207
fchollet wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "scale" JC is referring to is not hardware production. It's the virtual reality. Millions of people interacting in real time in a virtual universe in which they are actually present . Think of it as similar to the scaling challenges of MMORPGs. Only much worse.

It is both; FB makes a shit-ton of HW with their open-cmpute platform.... They have a lot of XP in building real physical shit these days. Scaling traffic is a non-issue for them.

How much experience do they have marketing that tech? I've never heard of someone selling a Facebook-brand router. The few times I've heard of FB involved in an actual product, it tanked or disappeared, never to be spoken of again.

Facebook phone, anyone?

There's a world of difference between a potential item, like the FB phone and an actual, demonstrated item, like the Oculus Rift, so they might get some points there.

But their record ATM is non-existent, AFAIK.

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#329

Post by ndesaulniers »

DigitalSea wrote: post #131

What company isn't creepy these days? Google, Facebook and Amazon are a few companies of many that come to mind when I think of all the user data they hold, what they know and what they could use it for. Thems the breaks unfortunately. I admire Notch standing up for what he believes in, but I just can't see how Facebook is creepier than anything else or affects the acquisition of Oculus. It's not like the gaming devi…

> Thems the breaks unfortunately.

Thems is not the breaks, fortunately. Boycott software and services from companies that don't respect your privacy. You want to influence the policy of these mega corporations? Vote with your choice of products.

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#330

Post by csense »

_cbb1 wrote: post #301
DennisP wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zuckerberg has complete control, with 57% of Facebook voting rights. http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/01/zuck-power-play/

This article could be out of date because it was written in 2012. It's been reported that he has sold some shares.

As a public company, isn't Facebook required to report how much of the company is owned by all major shareholders?
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