Opinions on Microsoft buying Mojang

[Tsori]

As much as I hate to defend Microsoft, They aren't EA. I've yet to see Microsoft release an unfinished product, regardless of how bugged, then charge for the rest of the product.

Also, as far as i know, Minecraft didn't own any subsidiary or other company that MAKES video games. They do make the Xbox, but they don't make games for it. Mojang could become the basis for them venturing into making games, instead of making bad products to play the games on that just fall flat to it's competitors.

Are you kidding?

Microsoft studios ring any bells?
How about Rare? http://www.rare.co.uk/games

-_- microsoft own a load of game studios and implement their limitations as they wish, when i was at rare there is a handbook of things for each game in which microsoft studio "ideas" are placed. These ideas are not suggestions, but rather requirements

 

[Dorque]

As much as I hate to defend Microsoft, They aren't EA. I've yet to see Microsoft release an unfinished product, regardless of how bugged, then charge for the rest of the product.

Also, as far as i know, Minecraft didn't own any subsidiary or other company that MAKES video games. They do make the Xbox, but they don't make games for it. Mojang could become the basis for them venturing into making games, instead of making bad products to play the games on that just fall flat to it's competitors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Studios

 

[wolfenstein19]

My 2 cents on this is the following : Modded MC is a fringe community within a Platform (PC) where most sales already happened. So if MS can't monetise the modded market somehow, they'll probably ignore it. In the worst case, they'll shut it down entirely.

 

[Pyure]

Speaking of open source tico, I stumbled on this this morning. Made me chuckle since I'm a GT fan.

https://github.com/Vexatos/TinkersGregworks

 

[FyberOptic]

Have an historical anecdote!

Once upon a time, quite possibly before some of you were born, there was a BBS door game called Legend of the Red Dragon. It was quite possibly the most popular door game of all time, and had a plugin system which provided for quite a lot of third-party content, allowing for each BBS to potentially offer a slightly different experience despite it being the same game. The author made other games as well, including a sequel to LORD, all of which popular and robust but still not quite as liked as LORD itself. Well one day, after several years of development, he decided to sell and move on. It was a pretty disappointing time, and a sign that the BBS world was being left behind for the internet. The company that took them over basically only did so for the money on residual sales, and eventually let some other guy continue to develop them briefly under their label, just enough to put the company and his names on it along with some bug fixes and that was pretty much it. The company has now faded into obscurity and nobody can even contact them in regards to buying copies of it, let alone buying the rights to it, which even the original author has tried to do in recent years, but to no avail.

Yet it never completely died. BBSes still exist, even over the internet, and run LORD. I ran my own DOSEmu-based one with custom scripts and everything for a little while myself. People cloned the game, too, as you may have heard of a web-based game called Legend of the Green Dragon. And similar to Minecraft, it's another of those games that I loved so much that I completely took it apart (a pre-buyout version) just to see if I could find any secrets, even though it was written in Turbo Pascal for DOS, which was a bit more difficult to do than Java code. I even ported a bit of it to C++ (but can't legally release it). But like with modding, it's a labor of love, and no matter what Microsoft ever plans to do to the game, I think there will always be those of us who still want to play it and even develop stuff for it, including years from now. Nostalgia is always a good source of inspiration.

Fun fact: The original LORD dev, Seth Robinson, is on the Ludum Dare staff these days.

tl;dr version: Minecraft isn't going anywhere, no matter how bad Microsoft could ever manage to screw it up.

 

[Hambeau]

When I first read this, I was quite frankly horrified. But really...Microsoft is not that bad. Until the last couple of months, I have used Xp and other windows products for all of my computing life. And really, I have seen some of the code of Minecraft....it is a disaster. Where oh where did they put 2k+ lines of code for the anvils? The gui classes. Hardcoded. Not good coding practice. Look on the bright side, maybe Microsoft will add some support for multithreading. Yes, Minecraft is single threaded. So, look on the bright side, maybe they will be good for Minecraft. Also, most games that I have seen lately have built in modding support. I.e. the modloader come with the game. Plop the mod file into the folder named "mods" and you are done. Microsoft would be stupid to not notice that people actually like modding their games, and also that modding increases the lifetime of a game. So who knows, we can all not worry and be happy!

Minecraft is multithreaded as of 1.8... That's how they improved the chunk generation. Also, at one point in the snapshots they mentioned that each dimension (overworld, End, Nether, etc.) would be running on individual threads... I Don't know if that made it to the released version, though.

The video from the xbox guy mentioned "faster worlds on all platforms" or something to that effect. This could mean a general cleanup of the code-base, a rewrite using a more efficient language (Pocket Edition is already written in C++) or possibly even multi-core support, since most modern phones and tablets have multi-core processors.

Conversion to another language wouldn't be the disaster some are predicting since if they knew anything about Microsoft at all they'd know you can get the Express version of Visual Studio for free as a download. The main differences between the free/paid for versions are the shared workspace for large teams, more complex version control and obfuscation features. MS already supports one gaming environment/API for free, free libraries for robotics environments such as Lego Mindstorms and Stamp controllers and, yes, has a free API for the Kinect device (hmm... Minecraft control via movement?).

Optimism, I choose you!

 

[T10a]

And nobody has thought of a possible way that Microsoft might SUPPORT a free, open modding community, release an API, and let the modding community go wild, plucking some ideas and implementing them like Mojang has been doing, business as usual? Optimistic, I know but still it's not all doom and gloom with Mincro$oft.

 

[Hambeau]

My only statement on this is simple: Lets not jump overboard until we know the ship is sinking. All we know is MS bought MC. That's it. Everything else is speculation right now.

 

[Dorque]

Have an historical anecdote!

Once upon a time, quite possibly before some of you were born, there was a BBS door game called Legend of the Red Dragon. It was quite possibly the most popular door game of all time, and had a plugin system which provided for quite a lot of third-party content, allowing for each BBS to potentially offer a slightly different experience despite it being the same game. The author made other games as well, including a sequel to LORD, all of which popular and robust but still not quite as liked as LORD itself. Well one day, after several years of development, he decided to sell and move on. It was a pretty disappointing time, and a sign that the BBS world was being left behind for the internet. The company that took them over basically only did so for the money on residual sales, and eventually let some other guy continue to develop them briefly under their label, just enough to put the company and his names on it along with some bug fixes and that was pretty much it. The company has now faded into obscurity and nobody can even contact them in regards to buying copies of it, let alone buying the rights to it, which even the original author has tried to do in recent years, but to no avail.

Yet it never completely died. BBSes still exist, even over the internet, and run LORD. I ran my own DOSEmu-based one with custom scripts and everything for a little while myself. People cloned the game, too, as you may have heard of a web-based game called Legend of the Green Dragon. And similar to Minecraft, it's another of those games that I loved so much that I completely took it apart (a pre-buyout version) just to see if I could find any secrets, even though it was written in Turbo Pascal for DOS, which was a bit more difficult to do than Java code. I even ported a bit of it to C++ (but can't legally release it). But like with modding, it's a labor of love, and no matter what Microsoft ever plans to do to the game, I think there will always be those of us who still want to play it and even develop stuff for it, including years from now. Nostalgia is always a good source of inspiration.

Fun fact: The original LORD dev, Seth Robinson, is on the Ludum Dare staff these days.

tl;dr version: Minecraft isn't going anywhere, no matter how bad Microsoft could ever manage to screw it up.

My personal favourite LORD clone, Improbable Island. Like any LORD clone it gets repetitive but the sense of humour is fantastic.

 

[Hambeau]

Microsoft has already showed what their plans are... Charging for skins on their store for the console version. On top of that modding is dead. Back up your existing versions now. Once this goes through DRM is going to be in full force.

With that said Mojang will still be developing the game I am sure, but with how companies like EA have handled games like Battlefield we know how little the studios have in regard to what goes on... I wont support them any longer. I am one person and that may not mean a thing, but to me it will...

That's been going on with PE long before the xbox version... You can't blame Microsoft for that.

 

[Pyure]

Have an historical anecdote!

Once upon a time, quite possibly before some of you were born, there was a BBS door game called Legend of the Red Dragon. It was quite possibly the most popular door game of all time, and had a plugin system which provided for quite a lot of third-party content, allowing for each BBS to potentially offer a slightly different experience despite it being the same game. The author made other games as well, including a sequel to LORD, all of which popular and robust but still not quite as liked as LORD itself. Well one day, after several years of development, he decided to sell and move on. It was a pretty disappointing time, and a sign that the BBS world was being left behind for the internet. The company that took them over basically only did so for the money on residual sales, and eventually let some other guy continue to develop them briefly under their label, just enough to put the company and his names on it along with some bug fixes and that was pretty much it. The company has now faded into obscurity and nobody can even contact them in regards to buying copies of it, let alone buying the rights to it, which even the original author has tried to do in recent years, but to no avail.

Yet it never completely died. BBSes still exist, even over the internet, and run LORD. I ran my own DOSEmu-based one with custom scripts and everything for a little while myself. People cloned the game, too, as you may have heard of a web-based game called Legend of the Green Dragon. And similar to Minecraft, it's another of those games that I loved so much that I completely took it apart (a pre-buyout version) just to see if I could find any secrets, even though it was written in Turbo Pascal for DOS, which was a bit more difficult to do than Java code. I even ported a bit of it to C++ (but can't legally release it). But like with modding, it's a labor of love, and no matter what Microsoft ever plans to do to the game, I think there will always be those of us who still want to play it and even develop stuff for it, including years from now. Nostalgia is always a good source of inspiration.

Fun fact: The original LORD dev, Seth Robinson, is on the Ludum Dare staff these days.

tl;dr version: Minecraft isn't going anywhere, no matter how bad Microsoft could ever manage to screw it up.

lol i remember LORD. I played a variant where you could do drugs and stuff; it was so screwed up.

 

[Hambeau]

Only thing I can say is that if he didn't want the "responsibility" then why create a game, let alone release it to the public.

He started off sharing it with a few friends at first and it got out of hand.

 

[FyberOptic]

He started off sharing it with a few friends at first and it got out of hand.

Ehh, while I like Notch, I still question part of his reasoning as well. Dealing with angry shitheads, sure, totally got it, don't blame him for wanting out. But not wanting to run a company or have that kind of responsibility? That's just not true. Or maybe he changed over time and realized he didn't actually want it after all and that's what he meant. But he had already decided to make a company before Minecraft. It talks all about this in the book. They were going to make their own company for Scrolls, and then along the way Notch found that people were interested in this side project he'd started, so they thought they could use that to fund the company while Scrolls was developed. Minecraft then accidentally became famous and their lead game. But the fact remains that he'd already wanted his own company after being dissatisfied with ones he'd worked at previously. He just got more than he bargained for, perhaps.

 

[ratchet freak]

Ehh, while I like Notch, I still question part of his reasoning as well. Dealing with angry shitheads, sure, totally got it, don't blame him for wanting out. But not wanting to run a company or have that kind of responsibility? That's just not true. Or maybe he changed over time and realized he didn't actually want it after all and that's what he meant. But he had already decided to make a company before Minecraft. It talks all about this in the book. They were going to make their own company for Scrolls, and then along the way Notch found that people were interested in this side project he'd started, so they thought they could use that to fund the company while Scrolls was developed. Minecraft then accidentally became famous and their lead game. But the fact remains that he'd already wanted his own company after being dissatisfied with ones he'd worked at previously. He just got more than he bargained for, perhaps.

he's a coder at heart and probably never wanted to follow scrolls all the way through, or expected to keep working on side projects while chipping in once in a while

 

[asb3pe]

Are you kidding?

Microsoft studios ring any bells?
How about Rare? http://www.rare.co.uk/games

-_- microsoft own a load of game studios and implement their limitations as they wish, when i was at rare there is a handbook of things for each game in which microsoft studio "ideas" are placed. These ideas are not suggestions, but rather requirements

Humor him, he's probably young like most Minecrafters (sorry to stereotype but you know its true). Those of us old enough to have been thru the "video game wars" know he's completely, woefully incorrect in his assessment of "the mighty MS", but let's just humor him and maybe he'll do some research into some of the things that have already been pointed out in this thread about the long and sordid history of Microsoft and their various "game studios" that they have purchased only to have them fail miserably over the years. I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. And that's my reality - my own personal lifetime of experience with MS and gaming. Other peoples' experience might be completely different, but I know what they did to the games that I used to love.

 

[Dorque]

Ehh, while I like Notch, I still question part of his reasoning as well. Dealing with angry shitheads, sure, totally got it, don't blame him for wanting out. But not wanting to run a company or have that kind of responsibility? That's just not true. Or maybe he changed over time and realized he didn't actually want it after all and that's what he meant. But he had already decided to make a company before Minecraft. It talks all about this in the book. They were going to make their own company for Scrolls, and then along the way Notch found that people were interested in this side project he'd started, so they thought they could use that to fund the company while Scrolls was developed. Minecraft then accidentally became famous and their lead game. But the fact remains that he'd already wanted his own company after being dissatisfied with ones he'd worked at previously. He just got more than he bargained for, perhaps.

I have to think that one's just a bit facetious. Nobody, literally nobody, sits down one day and goes "I think I'd enjoy creating and running a company worth 2.5 billion dollars out of nothing."

Notch's vision of a "company" probably meant that he and his best buds would get paid to sit around without pants, eating the regional equivalent of Cheetos and Mountain Dew all day and either coding fun things or living off their "game money".

Instead, he was elected as gaming's new messiah, all our sins were piled upon him and he was crucified for Gamerkind's sins and forced to "run a huge business" rather than "have fun without having to worry about money".

There can be no comparison between business at that level and business on the scale I'm sure he was thinking of when he wanted to make Scrolls into a living.

 

[Zenthon_127]

I feel like the modded community is going to suffer not from the acquisition itself, but from important modders like cpw and large chunks of the community jumping ship before anything happens.

Now, if crap actually does start happening, I'm out. I feel like TeamCoFH and Co. are making a new game, and if it's up the the quality we've seen from them before expect a mass exodus.

 

[Kill-Joy]

"This night, walk the dead
in a solitary style
and crash the Cemetery gates
in the dress your Husband hates

Way down, mark the grave,
where the searchlights find us drinking by the mausoleum door
and they found you on the bathroom floor

Well I miss you, I miss you so far
and the collision of your kiss that made it so hard

Back home, off the run,
singing songs that make you slit your wrist
it isn't that much fun
staring down a loaded gun"

 

[buggirlexpres]

#blameKill-Joy

"So I won't stop lying
won't stop dying
if you want I'll keep on crying
Did you get what you deserve?
Is this what you always want me for?

Well I miss you, I miss you so far
And the collision of your kiss that made it so hard

Way down, way down
Way down, way down
Way down, way down
Way down, way down

I miss you, I miss you so far
And the collision of your kiss that made it so hard

When will I miss you, when will I miss you so far
And the collision of your kiss that made it so hard
Made it so hard

Way down, way down
Way down, way down
Way down, way down
Way down, way down
Way down..."

Cya Minecraft.

 

[L0NExW0LF]

Personally I feel like people are over-reacting to the news. In my opinion it's too early for people to start claiming that Microsoft is going to ruin Minecraft. First of all, the team that is currently developing Minecraft is the same, the only difference is that the original founders of Mojang are leaving; and remember that Notch hasn't been working on the game for quite sometime. Second, I feel that this might in fact be a good thing for development, because Mojang now has access to Microsoft's resources.