On Minecraft, Zeitgeist, And Indie Megahits

Gamesindustry.biz has an interview up with Daniel Kaplan (reg rqrd), the business development officer at Mojang Developments, the firm created by Notch from the success of Minecraft.

Much of it involves discussion of the corporate "noise level" they're under, but a big part of it leapt out at me.

Kaplan: "It's really hard to tell. We still don't really know how big Minecraft is - we have to update ourselves! Last year the huge blogs like Kotaku and Penny Arcade wrote about it - that's when we realised, wow. It was already going well, but when those guys wrote about it it started to go great. They made a huge impact on our sales and brand. We are very grateful."

He's keeping it somewhat under his hat, but essentially this has been the way Notch and Mojang as a whole have been all along on the subject of the "secret of their success." This has been in stark contrast with most of the journalists I've read on the subject, who seem to be determined to promote the idea that Minecraft's success was some kind of magical feat, some organic thing that simply leapt fully-formed from the quality of the product.

This is, of course, purest crap. Minecraft is an excellent game with one absolutely masterful mechanic (the spawning of monsters at night-time, which forces the player to engage the world around them with a strict time limit from the start). But there are thousands of excellent indie games out there, and hundreds using the same paid-alpha approach as Minecraft. Why haven't they all made millions?

Because Minecraft, good a game as it is, got its success not from any inherent quality of the game, but from a thousand blogs, forums, and online magazines carrying the news on Mojang's behalf. There's a name for this kind of self-perpetuating narrative. It's called a "zeitgeist". And this zeitgest, this sheer blind luck of the draw, is the secret to Minecraft's success.

Contrary to the magical thinking of journalists, Notch/Mojang simply got lucky. That's all. Nothing more, nothing less.

But here's the awesome part. This industry isn't filled with humble people, not even amongst the indie community (hello there!). And yet... Mojang pretty much hand credit for their success to the blogs and comics. They're talking about funding other indie titles they like the look of. They even recognise the nascent block-em-up genre they've popularised (not invented, incidentally, the concept is a decade old) and seem happy to watch contenders arise. They're pushing to make their users happy, not to broaden their fan base or increase their DLC sales, but pretty much just because they want to. They've made millions, and yet they're displaying humility.

I don't say this often... but in this case it's deserved. Mojang Developments are The Good Guys.

Develop 2011

I just took a look at the list of speakers and topics for Develop this year:

http://www.developconference.com/page.cfm/Action=Seminars/t=m/goSection=2

Is it just me or is the entire line-up (Art keynote notwithstanding) just completely nauseating? It's just endless rehashes of the same "EVERYTHING MUST BE CASUAL! EVERYONE MUST USE AGILE! EVERYTHING MUST BE ON A PHONE AND COST 20p! EVERYTHING MUST HAVE SOCIAL FUNCTIONS!" crap that infests Gamasutra these days.

"Can you whether the challenges of the New Games Market?"

- Er, no. Because I can't live off games that sell for £1. I'm neither a student, nor an Indian sweatshop labourer. I have a family to support. Go away!

I suspect the whole thing is going to be more of the same - fashionable braincheese for people with no idea of how to make games and every idea of how to spend the money they make from people who do know how to make them. Coke snorting idiot central, in other words.

That said, I may consider the Indie Dev Day section. £50 ain't going to break the bank and I can go and be patronised and patted on the head along with the rest of my fellows.