Minecraft: 331132 registered users, of which 50793 (15.33%) have bought the game
minecraft.net
minecraft.net
What's even greater is that Notch (the sole creator and developper), apart from being very dedicated to the project, is very accepting to users' feedback and completing requested features.
Then there is the impressive fostering (and support) of the community around the game. People really are passionate about this game, as demonstrated by the youtube videos and general fandom for it (I found out about it from a fan of the game).
For a game I'd say the technology choices are pretty unconventional. Java on the client and server side.
The game itself is part of a genre of crafting games, which seem to have a whole cult appeal in themselves. But it's a genre (or subgenre?) that is getting pretty mainstream. Games like Little Big Planet on the PS3 and the forthcoming Forge World mode in Halo Reach, show that people's desire to mod and create in games has not diminished at all.
And of course, Minecraft is a product of an open development platform. Whilst I love some of the closed platforms (consoles, iOS) for their slickness, I love the fact that stuff like this still comes from the PC world.
"In the last 24 hours, 3121 people registered, and 1298 people bought the game."
The price is about 13 USD, so that's roughly $17,000 in sales today, or $700 an hour...
In survival mode, there are zombies and spiders that appear at night. They're pretty difficult to kill with just your hand, and they will mob you pretty quickly. So you essentially have to construct a safety fort to live. People solve this problem in pretty elaborate ways sometimes.
One of the most interesting aspects of the game is how subtle the world around you is. When you cut down a tree, you usually can find a new tree seed to plant it again. The tree grows based on how much light it's exposed to. The zombies sometimes get in fights with each other, or local non-violent wildlife (pigs, cows). Water can flood your tunnels if you hit it, and lava does the same.
All of this, and it's endearing. The menu screen has a joking catchphrase which changes every time, the developer Notch is as in love with the game as everyone else, and the rest of the community is hugely cooperative in building things, even if it takes a huge amount of effort. These reasons are what get people to stay, and get the purchase.
I only wish I could hack on this code, the problems seem hugely interesting (rendering miles of block, even at low detail, is resource intensive, and simulating an environment on top of that).
What the community did? They started a thread to share their stories, understand the new behavior and generally have a good laugh.
I've seen 16-bit adders and clocks made with the in-game elements. Structures spanning thousands of square kilometers are not uncommon to see.
I don't know if it was self-selection or just sheer luck, but I think the community is worth noting, especially now that the survival mode has multiplayer capabilities.
It's clearly incredibly lucrative already and he's not at all constrained by the formality of a product that must be maintained or kept consistant, no worries about making significant or breaking changes to game mechanics, no formal bug reports of any sort... he doesn't have to worry about any of the things people expect from even beta software and instead gets to focus on the things he really wants to work on.
Seems like the perfect system to me.
It's "Lego meets virtual reality."