MS to Buy Mojang for 2bn?

[Darren Dirt]

:sigh: I guess I just miss the simple days when coding a game put into play all of this...



...but nowadays it seems to be made note of a game requires an extra 2 or 3 "layers"; add to that old-fart sentimentality an extra dose of sadness seeing how SIMILAR the new FTL is vs SD:FL but no acknowledgement of the obvious. #probablyJustMeBeingMe

[Mr. Analog]

There's nothing stopping you from getting into quick n' dirty game dev on your own with Unity or similar tools

As well, nothing saying, you need a big budget either, take a look at something legitimately fun like Papers Please, Depression Quest or Game Dev Tycoon, simple AND fun all developed by individuals or small groups

You might want to check out Desura http://www.desura.com/ if you really want to get into the indie game dev scene

[Darren Dirt]

"Laziness" is not nothing.





Seriously though I'm busy with a lot of diverse stuff so could never focus my time/energy to building a game (would distract myself along the way like CRAZY) so now my focus is on the game industry and my own feels. Takes less time and energy. 

[Mr. Analog]

The industry is a diverse place and I think now is actually easier for a small dev to get exposure.

You don't even need to distribute freeware floppies anymore! haha

[Mr. Analog]

It's official:
https://mojang.com/2014/09/yes-were-being-bought-by-microsoft/

The question I have is will Microsoft be "hands off" and just manage the brand and leave the community alone? Will the community explode into rage on its own and self destruct?

A year from now will Minecraft still be the same?

[Thorin]

Wow, 2.5 BILLION in the end.

Here's hoping there isn't any self-destruct code in the existing server that could just shut down people's private servers...

Maybe I'm being a bit too paranoid.  But then again, it's Microsoft that bought them.

[Lazybones]

http://notch.net/2014/09/im-leaving-mojang/

Notch is walking away... Should probably read before commenting.

[Thorin]

Yeah, I'd read that already.  I'm still worried what Microsoft might do to the game now that they own it (and apparently Bukkit, since Mojang quietly bought the rights to that two years ago?)

Where Notch tried, at least publicly, to allow people some freedom in using his game for their own gain (monetized videos, monetized servers, not going after those that decompiled and modified his code), I'm concerned that Microsoft will try to forcibly shut down those that are making money off of it.  I think that Microsoft will try their best to squeeze every penny out, rather than just be amazed and humbled that it sells at all.

[Darren Dirt]

http://notch.net/2014/09/im-leaving-mojang/

Notch is walking away... Should probably read before commenting.

Clicked and read.

Up front, a troll-ish part of me wanted to find some eyeroll-inducing verbiage. But after reading I gotta say I was happily disappointed.

Pretty tough to deny that that is a very well articulated collection of thoughts and feelings from a guy who [in his own words] never asked for the attention he got (unlike Biebs and Miley and other "public personalities" whose very claim to fame comes from actually performing IN FRONT OF AND FOR THE PUBLIC.

This *human being* is in objective reality something very different from what people THINK [and will always think?] that he is. And ain't that true about virtually anybody in the public spotlight? Heck, even to some extent most of us private individuals? His choice to post this, knowing in advance the skepticism (or worse) it will likely be responded with, it's almost... an act of rebellion, inspiration, bravery, maybe. (Haters gonna hate, rather be hated for what/who I am than loved/accepted for what/who I am not, etc...)

[Mr. Analog]

I think the main problem is that a lot of people assume Notch is Mojang, so when things like the EULA change came in and exploded the Dev/Community world that @%&#storm blew up in Notch's face (not Mojang). And no matter what happens there's a lot of talk that swirls around him, the mistake he keeps making is responding to the "talk" directly and making things worse.

I can identify with this problem, you make something and it gets popular and a bunch of people start forming ideas about who and what you are, but then it didn't help that he got in the spotlight and repeatedly said dumb stuff leaving most people scratching their heads.

To quote Bill Murray: "The truth is, anybody that becomes famous is an ass for a year and a half. You've got to give them a year and a half, two years. They are getting so much smoke blown, and their whole world gets so turned upside down, their responses become distorted. I give everybody a year or two to pull it together because, when it first happens, I know how it is."

On the flip side he can go cry into a giant pile of cash and disappear for a while

For the rest of us it will be business as usual until Microsoft figures out how to monetize Realms and figure out a future path to actually cash in on the brand (calling it now: Realms subscriptions, pay to win PvP servers, DirectX adoption, HD texture packs / rendering, [and if they are really dumb] strangle the modding community)

This is still the best value I've gotten out of any game ever, I figure the worst case scenario would be MS forking the code into MS-land... at which point "legacy" modding will still thrive under some old version of "Java" Minecraft. Who knows where things will go for now, I just hope it won't "RIP in Peace" too early

[Tom]

I don't blame notch one bit. The last couple big @%&# storms were probably enough to make him jump ship. Why deal with that kind of vitriol if you don't have to?

Can you "fork" java code into a different language? Didn't MS totally drop J#? doing a rewrite would cost a lot, and knowing developers, they'd reimplement the protocol as well, meaning it'd just be an entirely new game. That alone would probably kill minecraft right then and there, unless it was so significantly better... But you can bet it'd kill off the modding and server community, which is what is keeping minecraft alive at this point.

[Mr. Analog]

When I say "fork" I mean, Microsoft would rewrite it while pirates would keep the existing versions circulating.

Worst case scenario in my world is .NET Framework only version running on closed source with no modding support running DirectX

Right now if you want to change game assets you use WinZip and just swap out contents / add your own stuff to the JAR. If they compile content into .resx files and make it part of an encrypted library you wouldn't be able to mess with game assets directly, you'd likely have to go through some kind of API (though I suppose the smart way for them would be to create a developer API and sell dev licenses for modders, etc)

For now MS says they are going to be "hands off", how long that lasts who knows (I suspect once they start pimping Realms it will be on virtualized MS servers living in Azure)

[Tom]

MS has stated that their new model is to make software for all platforms. How long that'll last I don't know, but obviously .NET is not properly cross-platform, so if they stick to plans, they will need multiple ports.

[Tom]

Saw this:

[Mr. Analog]

Saw this:

HAHAHA ... ooooooh NOOOOOOOO! hahaha.

NEI 2: Clippy's Revenge

Yeah, like I say a rewrite based on Microsoft APIs would be my worst case scenario and is fairly unlikely. I can easily see them moving to hosting on Azure though. Mojang was on the cusp of Realms anyway, this would be giving it a cloud infrastructure it needed to really go places.