Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#91

Post by phkahler » Wed, Sep 10, 2014, 12:31 AM UTC

arrrg wrote: post #61

mindstab wrote: post #19

I don't get it. Mojang already made "all the money" from selling minecraft and are largely maintaining it now. I haven't heard if they even have any new games on the way? The space one was cancelled. What exactly is MS possibly getting that could be worth $2B?

They still sell around 10k PC copies per day … It’s not growing, but it’s also not exactly shrinking (I remember obsessively checking those stats years ago and they always hovered around 10k), and hasn’t for years. Minecraft might be a different beast than other video games, truly more like Lego than video games actually. There are always new young people you can sell the game to and with constant maintenance for fre…

>> ...truly more like Lego than video games actually...

Which is really funny considering what Lego did in the video game space - they made video games where many things were made of Lego, but there was no "building" involved at all.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#92

Post by javert » Wed, Sep 10, 2014, 12:34 AM UTC

berns wrote: post #64

georgemcbay wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any "FU money", but it seems very likely to me that once you have that sort of money, there are only a couple of reasons to run it up any further: 1) You have "Big Plans" that need funding (eg. Elon Musk) 2) Running up the numbers as a life gamification to "beat" your peers, or just because you can't stop chasing yourself, like one of those freak beast weightlifters that looks like a space monster but is…

Helping others. There is no limit to that.

I bet Bill Gates has a hard time finding enough qualified people to wisely manage the money he is giving away.

For example, if he has someone in charge of spending money on medical research, don't you think there is a point (a few billion) where they just don't know what else to spend money on? I mean, there are only so many medical researchers in the whole world.

Of course you can always just throw money away/at people, but it won't do any good. "Give a man a fish" vs. "teach a man to fish."

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#93

Post by javert » Wed, Sep 10, 2014, 12:38 AM UTC

MrZongle2 wrote: post #43

joshdance wrote: post #39

Talked to a die hard Minecraft fan about this and he thinks it will be a good thing. More devs, more updates, maybe even a re-write so it runs better.

More devs? Sure. More updates? Doubtful. If Microsoft dropped $2B on this property, the last thing they're going to do is continue to pay a development team to work on a game that has already been completed in their eyes. A re-write, on the other hand? Guaranteed. And it will be the first of many sequels, Halo-style. For Xbox One and the newest version of Windows.

As a former minecraft player, I am salivating at this.

Believe it or not, Notch did a great job creating the game and doing a few updates, and then became totally incompetent (or maybe just disinterested) after that. Development has been at a standstill for years, despite many bugs and vast potential for improvement.

I would love to see somebody do something great with this game and Mojang does not seem to have "the right stuff."

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#94

Post by math0ne » Wed, Sep 10, 2014, 12:39 AM UTC

As an avid minecrafter since the early days I can't help but see this as a good thing. The mod community is what has made mc what it is, but it gets no support from the developers.

Minecraft has been so wildly profitable but the company is set up in a way which Mojang the developers get a tiny portion of the profits to re-invest in development.

Notch essentially diverts all the money into his own pocket while leaving a very small staff to work on what is prob the most profitable video game franchise in history. Just from a very basic business standpoint this seems to make very little sense to me.

If someone could get control of minecraft that was willing to invest in it's development amazing things could be accomplished. Imagine big budget lego minecraft expansions, minecraft re-written in C with a good rendering engine. So many things could happen!

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#95

Post by Chinjut » Wed, Sep 10, 2014, 12:41 AM UTC

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #67

Mandatum wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it fair to say that once you achieve "FU money", numbers start to lose their value? I can't imagine being able to say "no" to something like that. Although likely for something like Minecraft, it'd be stock options/cash mix.

Maybe Notch's perspective is that Minecraft as an IP is worth more than that. He can probably ride it out for the next couple decades with sequels or other monetization techniques. Why take the big payment today when you can have the bigger payment on-going? Especially if you want to continue to make it your life's work. Look at some gaming stars from the past. John Romero didn't "make us his bitch" with his post iD…

It seems to me that the one-trick pony nature of the gaming business is more reason to take a big payout upfront. $2bn is fuck you money for the rest of your life. Who knows if the Minecraft IP will even be worth anything a few years from now?

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#96

Post by Cogito » Wed, Sep 10, 2014, 12:42 AM UTC

Pyrodogg wrote: post #6

The Minecraft modding community just had a ridiculous few weeks with the various dramas surrounding Bukkit (a popular, extensible server mod). I can't wait to see what the reactions are to this news.

I'm in many ways sad I stopped working regularly on Bukkit. My involvement started to wane a couple of months before the 4 founders got acquired by Mojang, mostly because I got a Real Job.

I was there just as it was starting, and helped (what seemed like) a lot with the early dev work and community management. Mostly it was just fun hanging out with the team (primarily EvilSeph and Tahg, but of course Dinnerbone, Grum, and all the other core devs as well) solving problems, but that started to happen less and less.

I have heard snippets of what has been going on, but haven't yet really read up on it. I do know that Warren (EvilSeph) was always at the core of the project, he kept the community more or less under control and helped co-ordinate everything. It was always clear that if he ever stopped pulling the various threads together the project as a whole would stop working.

Sure, devs would be able to keep adding features and upgrading to latest versions, but the project was always more than just the plugin API and server implementation. It's incredibly annoying to manage the expectations of thousands of minecraft server admins (who seem to mostly be 12 years old, though there were definitely a lot of older admins) and no-one but Warren ever seemed up to the task.

I should probably go do a bit of reading to find out exactly what has been going on.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#97

Post by robotresearcher » Wed, Sep 10, 2014, 12:42 AM UTC

math0ne wrote: post #94

As an avid minecrafter since the early days I can't help but see this as a good thing. The mod community is what has made mc what it is, but it gets no support from the developers. Minecraft has been so wildly profitable but the company is set up in a way which Mojang the developers get a tiny portion of the profits to re-invest in development. Notch essentially diverts all the money into his own pocket while leaving…

I'm not saying you are wrong about the business structure, but all the money does not stay in Notch's pocket.

(story from March 2012) http://www.minecraftforum.net/news/7645-notch-gives-3-millio...

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#98

Post by varkson » Wed, Sep 10, 2014, 12:43 AM UTC

Guvante wrote: post #82

robododo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always felt it was odd that Notch bashed Windows 8 so publicly for the store, yet happily sells on iOS, XBox, PS3, etc.

You don't think there is a material difference between Microsoft changing Windows to a closed platform and Apple creating a closed platform from scratch? In the case of the latter it is well known and can be planned around. In the case of the former you have fully invested and then suddenly the game changes.

It won't happen though. The minute that Apple closed off the Mac, with the Mac App Store being the only software source, the minute that idea might have a little credence.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#99

Post by TillE » Wed, Sep 10, 2014, 12:44 AM UTC

xkarga00 wrote: post #52

I hope they resurrect 0x10c

That's precisely the kind of wildly overambitious project without obvious mass appeal that a large game publisher would never ever support.

Which also described Minecraft, of course. But I doubt anyone making decisions at Microsoft would take that gamble.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#100

Post by Hominem » Wed, Sep 10, 2014, 12:46 AM UTC

For people under a certain age, minecraft is the Internet. If handled correctly, it will be Facebook, email, Skype and damn near everything else to an entire generation of users.

Notch didn't really see it. He created the metaverse.