Microsoft actually has a good history for keeping connection with the original developers. Especially if its about the game programming itself.
Personally I have high hopes. Minecraft is one of the best written, worst managed, games Ive been involved in for many years. If we end up with MS management and Mojang programming then the future is rosey.
- Gandalf Parker
Gandalf,
I think the main problem is Microsoft reportedly trying to reclaim the 2 billion donuts (I can't actually image $ 2 billion dollars going to any 3 individuals) within a year. There is simply no way to make that money back on sales alone. There must be value add coming one way or another.
I think the main problem is Microsoft reportedly trying to reclaim the 2 billion donuts (I can't actually image $ 2 billion dollars going to any 3 individuals) within a year. There is simply no way to make that money back on sales alone. There must be value add coming one way or another.
They bought an entire generation of gamers.
Something as simple as a "make Minecraft mods in Visual Studio" program can net a lot of young programmers.
I think MS recognizes the intrinsic value here. Far more than has been marketed yet by Mojang. Think of this as MS new version of MineSweeper. (yes I know, not at all the same thing). This is their new grabber game, which is tiny but huge replayability. It can work equal on any platform. And with MS handling it they can make it foolproof to install or already come installed on everything. They NEEDED a new game to be part of their package and this is a great choice.
COMING SOON
MicroSoft MineCraft
Easy to get into, hard to put down. Hours and hours of fun to fill time waiting in line or fill an evening. And believe it or not, it COMES WITH literally millions of pre-made maps to discover and share with your friends. And even if.. that is IF that ever gets old (ha ha) then there are hundreds of player made mods so you can start all over again.
Am I the only one hoping for an official modding API, perhaps in C# with integration in Visual Studio? Obviously, that would have to be pretty far down the road, but I could see it happening.
Honestly though, I don't think they'll change Minecraft all that much. It's too successful as is. Anyone with half a brain knows you don't make major changes to a winning product (Coka Cola found out the hard way). What I do think is they will make a Minecraft sequel. It's probably already in early stages of development. The thing is, if you don't like the sequel, you don't have to play it, or even buy it. The original Minecraft will still be there. Version 1.8 and below will be unchanged from what they are right now. There's really no way to keep you from playing the version of Minecraft that you're already playing, or to change it and force you to download the changes. So relax. YOU'RE Minecraft isn't going anywhere.
You have a lot of your facts wrong. Microsoft will have nothing to do with Minecraft or its development. Minecraft is not a Microsoft game now, it is still property of Mojang. Mojang will continue to update the game and prank the community as they wish. The development of Minecraft is still controlled 100% by the people at Mojang, Microsoft will just be paying their salaries and collecting profits from the company as a whole, you have to remember, Mojang has other games too (Scrolls and Cobalt come to mind, look them up, they're actually quite fun). And what suggests that Microsoft is "very serious" and "there will be no annual April fools jokes"? All in all, my biggest piece of advice is to learn more about business deals.
Please, please, please educate yourself. I mean it. I am not insulting you or anything, but you are so misinformed about our economic system and laws that you might be holding yourself back personally and professional.
Here is what you sounded like: The sky is blue because it holds the ocean in a force field above us and occasionally it weakens and that is why we get rain.
*** PLEASE, i beg the community and the moderators, a lot of your posters are young, and you have at least a little opportunity, and I think responsibility to clearly state when a fact is 100% wrong. A lot of opinions on this site are subjective, and that is fine, but when something is unquestionably wrong, it should be pointed out. ***
That is true, to a certain degree.
Mojang IS in charge of Minecraft, but only if Microsoft choose to approach it that way.
If they choose to, they can call all the shots concerning Minecraft, replace every member of staff at Mojang, etc, because they own the whole lot (Mojang, and everything they make).
It's unlikely they'll take 100% control, but it's also very unlikely that they'll take 0% control of Mojang.
It will be somewhere between the two, and we won't know for a while (if at all).
But again, it's up to Microsoft.
They may give Mojang free rein, at least to start with, but people shouldn't be under the impression that Mojang can do what they want.
Microsoft can change, cancel, reboot, make a sequel, insert ads, add DLCs, etc, to any and all games made by Mojang.
We don't want them to, but don't think they couldn't if they wished to.
If you buy a car, you don't just own the metal shell. You own everything therein, right down to the wheel nuts!
I would love to see MS (or ANYONE else) take a clue and do a seed version of a Space game (Star Traders would be a good one). Or a DnD style game fpr adventurers seeking riches. fame. notoriety (Magic Realm? Daggerfall?) Apocalypse (wasteland? fallout?), a new planet, ocean exploration, etc etc etc. I would be glad to talk to anyone about using seed in ways that work around some of the problems minecraft had.
Come on programmers! A small game with infinite persistent map? One that fits great on everything from a Rasberry Pi (credit sized $30 computer) to a home server?
- Gandalf Parker
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
--
Minecraft: the best programmed and worst managed game I know of.
I think MS recognizes the intrinsic value here. Far more than has been marketed yet by Mojang. Think of this as MS new version of MineSweeper. (yes I know, not at all the same thing). This is their new grabber game, which is tiny but huge replayability. It can work equal on any platform. And with MS handling it they can make it foolproof to install or already come installed on everything. They NEEDED a new game to be part of their package and this is a great choice.
COMING SOON
MicroSoft MineCraft
Easy to get into, hard to put down. Hours and hours of fun to fill time waiting in line or fill an evening. And believe it or not, it COMES WITH literally millions of pre-made maps to discover and share with your friends. And even if.. that is IF that ever gets old (ha ha) then there are hundreds of player made mods so you can start all over again.
Your logic doesn't hold up.
First, minesweeper doesn't make $2.5 billion within a year.
Two, but far less important, I guarantee Sony will abandoned Minecraft before having the words "Microsoft" appear on their screen. They could still use Mojang, but even that don't prevent them from getting rid of it. REMEMBER, Sony has done well without Minecraft, and they will continue to regardless.
I would love to see MS (or ANYONE else) take a clue and do a seed version of a Space game (Star Traders would be a good one). Or a DnD style game fpr adventurers seeking riches. fame. notoriety (Magic Realm? Daggerfall?) Apocalypse (wasteland? fallout?), a new planet, ocean exploration, etc etc etc. I would be glad to talk to anyone about using seed in ways that work around some of the problems minecraft had.
Come on programmers! A small game with infinite persistent map? One that fits great on everything from a Rasberry Pi (credit sized $30 computer) to a home server?
- Gandalf Parker
A limitless procedurally generated world would work on any device, but the minute you start to change things, massive data structures will be needed to keep the world persistent, and that isn't something a Rasberry Pi has.
Minesweeper had value to MS without making any money at all. Minecraft can have the same value by being the new "minesweeper" to MS products. It can be included in any package on any OS. My point is that it doesnt have to make money to have value to MS. Many of the things they buy are not bought to make money alone.
A limitless procedurally generated world would work on any device, but the minute you start to change things, massive data structures will be needed to keep the world persistent, and that isn't something a Rasberry Pi has.
In a game using sprites like Minecraft does, the data storage is minimal. In a world viewed in chunks like minecraft does, the array only needs to hold the changes made to one chunk at a time, and then only numeric of the sprite. The rest becomes file storage. If sprites are kept within comfortable computer storage realms then its even better (evidenced by Minecrafts love of 64 and 128 and 256 etc).
One suggestion I would have is that if the graphics for the sprites were a format which supported a pixel map that was separate from the palette then a single image could easily offer 256 variants into the game. This would increase the game many times more without increasing the storage and data requirements.
Quote from gp1628»
Personally I have high hopes. Minecraft is one of the best written, worst managed, games Ive been involved in for many years. If we end up with MS management and Mojang programming then the future is rosey.
Um, no. Minecraft's game design has a fantastic spirit to it, but the programming is often atrocious. One example I just hit was in placing villages. When a chunk is generated, Minecraft checks every chunk within max view distance to see if it has a village start and, if it does, whether that village extends into the current chunk. Village starts require knowing the biome, since they only generate in particular biomes. Does it store or cache that information? No. It recalculates the biome information for each chunk from scratch - and *that* actually requires regenerating the entire biome map for the area. So for *every* single chunk generated, it has to regenerate the entire area biome map nearly 500 times.
Another example - when a world definition object is created it creates the spawn chunks for the actual world data. This means if you change the world layout as the world is loading up, you'll get "out of place" spawn chunks made under the previous rules. I have to do some gruesome hacks to get around this, and they should be completely unnecessary.
I'm not too impressed with MS management either, but I don't mod MS management systems, so I can't give specific examples.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Ok, I understand that a few of MY facts were wrong as well, I have been humbled, but please do not insult me. I understand that I was wrong, KrushBro is right. I never intended to imply that Microsoft could do nothing, I meant that the company of Mojang will still own the game (unless Microsoft so chooses).
Minesweeper had value to MS without making any money at all. Minecraft can have the same value by being the new "minesweeper" to MS products. It can be included in any package on any OS. My point is that it doesnt have to make money to have value to MS. Many of the things they buy are not bought to make money alone.
You can't seem to get your head around this, so basically think you are a shareholder. When Microsoft says it will get back the $2.5 billion in a year, they are saying something completely different than what you are saying.
You are saying I will give the company 2.5 billion in value-add. They didn't say value-add, they said dollars. They didn't say over time, they said 1 year.
You are trying to use value as a reason for the $2.5B, and that is much harder to translate into a cash asset. If you proposed your pitch for value-add, the company would have been dissolved yesterday.
Ok, I understand that a few of MY facts were wrong as well, I have been humbled, but please do not insult me. I understand that I was wrong, KrushBro is right. I never intended to imply that Microsoft could do nothing, I meant that the company of Mojang will still own the game (unless Microsoft so chooses).
Wrong again. Mojang, and all it's products, even the coffee machine is now owned by Microsoft. It is almost impossible that Mojang won't be moved to another country because of the corporate tax rate.
I wasn't trying to insult you, but if you go look at the giant "Microsoft Purchased Mojang" thread, and all the following um, opinions, um, you realize that almost everyone is trying to present the future of Minecraft as rosy based on 0% reality.
This isn't about your ignorance, it is about you in the future knowing what the law is, not what you want it to be. Do you know that a huge number of people that voted earlier didn't know the house was controlled by Republicans and the Senate was controlled by the Democrats?
When I make my predictions about the future of Minecraft, it is not wishful thinking, it is the facts about a corporation and what they do and how they think and what they can get away doing by law.
Did you know the CEO of any public company could be punished by law if they do the moral thing knowing it would damage the shareholder's value ??? It is called fiduciary duties of CEO. See here:
Yet I have to listen to people saying that Microsoft will release Minecraft as open-source because Microsoft cares. Again, know the facts, they will enlighten you, not hinder you. I hope you understand.
After reading some pages off this thread, I have a theory:
Microsoft seems to be getting alot of hate at the moment so it's investment in Minecraft could be a thing to gain popularity. If Microsoft makes Minecraft great it would get alot of popularity which balances the amount of hate it has. It could improve things like Boolean Logic and anything else related to that (or other educational things) so it seems great to the parents and gain popularity from many. It might improve more than Mojang did to appeal to the community thus making Microsoft seem less... Hated.
Every theory sounds good in the makers head so I wonder what you think (if this is a repeat then sorry. I literally couldn't sit through 50 pages in a thread)
Do you know what a stockholder is? OK, please convince me why I should let go of $2.5 billion to make my company more popular? How do you measure popular? How much popular is worth $2.5 billion? If Microsoft wanted to be popular for $2.5 billion, why not give the money to charity? I think you know these answers.
Stop treating Minecraft like Ted in the movie Ted. Ted has got to move on, you will do alright on your own :-)
Do you know what a stockholder is? OK, please convince me why I should let go of $2.5 billion to make my company more popular? How do you measure popular? How much popular is worth $2.5 billion? If Microsoft wanted to be popular for $2.5 billion, why not give the money to charity? I think you know these answers.
Because charity does not garner nearly so much public/internet attention as a video game that is a pillar for recent culture in many, many places? Especially given how Mojang's policies and opinions tend to match what the average person seems to think should be online, and charity is just... charity? How many average people actually have that strong of opinions about charity?
Public relations and advertising can be worth a significant amount. It's not all about the product. They weren't just buying Minecraft's considerable networks of assets. They were purchasing a brand's good reputation.
At what point are individual stockholders paying the entire collective sum? Mojang was bought by Microsoft, not one person. Do you have numbers to show exactly how much money the deal was worth to the individual? I'd like to see those numbers before I'm convinced of anything involving hypothetical people.
I think the term is "good will"- the amount a companies name and reputation is worth (over and above the actual value of the company's assets).
Apparently MS paid good money for Mojang's (and minecrafts) "good will".
I don't know how this thread got so popular... anyways people have been giving Microsoft the bad note, honestly there not gonna ruin it. People have been saying:
Microsoft is gonna add DLC!!
There gonna ruin it!!
Stupid windows.. We're not gonna get updates!!
Forced shaders!! My worst nightmare!!
Noo.. It can't be.. Minecraft 2!
To answer these.. There not going to add DLC, no one would like it. How are they going to ruin it? Yeah, we will get update because Jeb isn't leaving, and lots others are staying, sorry but Notch is gone. There not going to add forced shaders, plus, there not THAT bad. Minecraft 2 was a test its not official so stop picking on that topic.
Actually its mostly one person pushing the Microsoft as an evil corporate entity. Microsoft actually does a lot of charity, and grants, and puts a lot of personel time into the boards and councils that help manage things like the Internet. And Microsofts stockholders have far less influence on MS than smaller companies.
He might be right. But Im not convinced of it. I also think that he might be wrong and everyone should continue with their more hopeful predictions.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
--
Minecraft: the best programmed and worst managed game I know of.
As much as i am a pessimist by nature and love to criticize, for once i am being optimistic, mostly cause i would love so much to see all the people who are raging and saying that Microsoft will ruin MC, to see those people proven wrong.
I see this thread has reached the final stage of grief.
At this point we can only sit back, and wait. They have the clue, or they don't. Either way I'm not going to worry about it because I have zero control over it.
Gandalf,
I think the main problem is Microsoft reportedly trying to reclaim the 2 billion donuts (I can't actually image $ 2 billion dollars going to any 3 individuals) within a year. There is simply no way to make that money back on sales alone. There must be value add coming one way or another.
They bought an entire generation of gamers.
Something as simple as a "make Minecraft mods in Visual Studio" program can net a lot of young programmers.
COMING SOON
MicroSoft MineCraft
Easy to get into, hard to put down. Hours and hours of fun to fill time waiting in line or fill an evening. And believe it or not, it COMES WITH literally millions of pre-made maps to discover and share with your friends. And even if.. that is IF that ever gets old (ha ha) then there are hundreds of player made mods so you can start all over again.
Minecraft: the best programmed and worst managed game I know of.
Honestly though, I don't think they'll change Minecraft all that much. It's too successful as is. Anyone with half a brain knows you don't make major changes to a winning product (Coka Cola found out the hard way). What I do think is they will make a Minecraft sequel. It's probably already in early stages of development. The thing is, if you don't like the sequel, you don't have to play it, or even buy it. The original Minecraft will still be there. Version 1.8 and below will be unchanged from what they are right now. There's really no way to keep you from playing the version of Minecraft that you're already playing, or to change it and force you to download the changes. So relax. YOU'RE Minecraft isn't going anywhere.
Please, please, please educate yourself. I mean it. I am not insulting you or anything, but you are so misinformed about our economic system and laws that you might be holding yourself back personally and professional.
Here is what you sounded like: The sky is blue because it holds the ocean in a force field above us and occasionally it weakens and that is why we get rain.
*** PLEASE, i beg the community and the moderators, a lot of your posters are young, and you have at least a little opportunity, and I think responsibility to clearly state when a fact is 100% wrong. A lot of opinions on this site are subjective, and that is fine, but when something is unquestionably wrong, it should be pointed out. ***
That you so much for helping him.
That doesn't equate to sales from a stockholder's perspective, but I understand where you are coming from.
Come on programmers! A small game with infinite persistent map? One that fits great on everything from a Rasberry Pi (credit sized $30 computer) to a home server?
- Gandalf Parker
Minecraft: the best programmed and worst managed game I know of.
Your logic doesn't hold up.
First, minesweeper doesn't make $2.5 billion within a year.
Two, but far less important, I guarantee Sony will abandoned Minecraft before having the words "Microsoft" appear on their screen. They could still use Mojang, but even that don't prevent them from getting rid of it. REMEMBER, Sony has done well without Minecraft, and they will continue to regardless.
A limitless procedurally generated world would work on any device, but the minute you start to change things, massive data structures will be needed to keep the world persistent, and that isn't something a Rasberry Pi has.
Minesweeper had value to MS without making any money at all. Minecraft can have the same value by being the new "minesweeper" to MS products. It can be included in any package on any OS. My point is that it doesnt have to make money to have value to MS. Many of the things they buy are not bought to make money alone.
In a game using sprites like Minecraft does, the data storage is minimal. In a world viewed in chunks like minecraft does, the array only needs to hold the changes made to one chunk at a time, and then only numeric of the sprite. The rest becomes file storage. If sprites are kept within comfortable computer storage realms then its even better (evidenced by Minecrafts love of 64 and 128 and 256 etc).
One suggestion I would have is that if the graphics for the sprites were a format which supported a pixel map that was separate from the palette then a single image could easily offer 256 variants into the game. This would increase the game many times more without increasing the storage and data requirements.
Minecraft: the best programmed and worst managed game I know of.
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Curse PremiumUm, no. Minecraft's game design has a fantastic spirit to it, but the programming is often atrocious. One example I just hit was in placing villages. When a chunk is generated, Minecraft checks every chunk within max view distance to see if it has a village start and, if it does, whether that village extends into the current chunk. Village starts require knowing the biome, since they only generate in particular biomes. Does it store or cache that information? No. It recalculates the biome information for each chunk from scratch - and *that* actually requires regenerating the entire biome map for the area. So for *every* single chunk generated, it has to regenerate the entire area biome map nearly 500 times.
Another example - when a world definition object is created it creates the spawn chunks for the actual world data. This means if you change the world layout as the world is loading up, you'll get "out of place" spawn chunks made under the previous rules. I have to do some gruesome hacks to get around this, and they should be completely unnecessary.
I'm not too impressed with MS management either, but I don't mod MS management systems, so I can't give specific examples.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
You can't seem to get your head around this, so basically think you are a shareholder. When Microsoft says it will get back the $2.5 billion in a year, they are saying something completely different than what you are saying.
You are saying I will give the company 2.5 billion in value-add. They didn't say value-add, they said dollars. They didn't say over time, they said 1 year.
You are trying to use value as a reason for the $2.5B, and that is much harder to translate into a cash asset. If you proposed your pitch for value-add, the company would have been dissolved yesterday.
Wrong again. Mojang, and all it's products, even the coffee machine is now owned by Microsoft. It is almost impossible that Mojang won't be moved to another country because of the corporate tax rate.
I wasn't trying to insult you, but if you go look at the giant "Microsoft Purchased Mojang" thread, and all the following um, opinions, um, you realize that almost everyone is trying to present the future of Minecraft as rosy based on 0% reality.
This isn't about your ignorance, it is about you in the future knowing what the law is, not what you want it to be. Do you know that a huge number of people that voted earlier didn't know the house was controlled by Republicans and the Senate was controlled by the Democrats?
When I make my predictions about the future of Minecraft, it is not wishful thinking, it is the facts about a corporation and what they do and how they think and what they can get away doing by law.
Did you know the CEO of any public company could be punished by law if they do the moral thing knowing it would damage the shareholder's value ??? It is called fiduciary duties of CEO. See here:
http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/corporate-fiduciary-duties.html
Yet I have to listen to people saying that Microsoft will release Minecraft as open-source because Microsoft cares. Again, know the facts, they will enlighten you, not hinder you. I hope you understand.
Do you know what a stockholder is? OK, please convince me why I should let go of $2.5 billion to make my company more popular? How do you measure popular? How much popular is worth $2.5 billion? If Microsoft wanted to be popular for $2.5 billion, why not give the money to charity? I think you know these answers.
Stop treating Minecraft like Ted in the movie Ted. Ted has got to move on, you will do alright on your own :-)
Because charity does not garner nearly so much public/internet attention as a video game that is a pillar for recent culture in many, many places? Especially given how Mojang's policies and opinions tend to match what the average person seems to think should be online, and charity is just... charity? How many average people actually have that strong of opinions about charity?
Public relations and advertising can be worth a significant amount. It's not all about the product. They weren't just buying Minecraft's considerable networks of assets. They were purchasing a brand's good reputation.
At what point are individual stockholders paying the entire collective sum? Mojang was bought by Microsoft, not one person. Do you have numbers to show exactly how much money the deal was worth to the individual? I'd like to see those numbers before I'm convinced of anything involving hypothetical people.
If you are planning to make a suggestion, please read this.
If you want to know more, you can read this.
For those who complain about post-Beta generation, you might want to see this.
Apparently MS paid good money for Mojang's (and minecrafts) "good will".
Microsoft is gonna add DLC!!
There gonna ruin it!!
Stupid windows.. We're not gonna get updates!!
Forced shaders!! My worst nightmare!!
Noo.. It can't be.. Minecraft 2!
To answer these.. There not going to add DLC, no one would like it. How are they going to ruin it? Yeah, we will get update because Jeb isn't leaving, and lots others are staying, sorry but Notch is gone. There not going to add forced shaders, plus, there not THAT bad. Minecraft 2 was a test its not official so stop picking on that topic.
He might be right. But Im not convinced of it. I also think that he might be wrong and everyone should continue with their more hopeful predictions.
Minecraft: the best programmed and worst managed game I know of.
At this point we can only sit back, and wait. They have the clue, or they don't. Either way I'm not going to worry about it because I have zero control over it.