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Comment by vaksel | Hacker News Reader

their math is a little bit off, a copy sold every 3 seconds = 28,800 sales a day.

Or 10.5 million copies a year. To tell the truth its pretty shocking how minecraft has taken off...the guy will probably end up making 100 million off the game. And if he sticks to iterating it, it might end up making over a billion over it's lifetime(say 40-50 years).

Which may seem like a huge number, until you remember that World of Warcraft is making close to a billion a year.

The reason the number looks that shockingly high, is because he is a one man show.

My guess is that he is going to end up using his new found fame/resources to start his own game development company.

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Speaking as a someone who has never played either, it's also shocking because World of Warcraft looks like this:

http://www.sopheon.com/Portals/1/WoW%20Screenshot.jpg

While Minecraft looks like this:

http://www.indiegames.com/blog/images/timw/minecraft.jpg

You have two distinct directions here, though: World of Warcraft's gameplay is rather complex (compare the image of WoW with this image from Minecraft: http://imgur.com/lQdye.png), is about killing monsters and obtaining the best equipment, showing off how much time you're able to spend in-game. I think showing your personality to others is really hard in WoW, at least without talking to them.

Minecraft, on the other side, is about you, your personality and creativity. You're able to modify the game as you like: First off all, you're making your own world! Second, texture packs are available, in order to change both the world and your own character. By making the game less complex, it is also very easy to get into, compared to WoW.

(I'm sure there are other reasons as well, but I'm no professional game developer.)

Minecraft is more like a lego world.

Recently, someone built a 16-bit ALU in minecraft:

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/09/28/working-computer-mad.ht...

And a 1:1 scale model of the Enterprise D:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/09/the-true-story-be...

There's a refreshing vibe working its way through the game community where alternative graphic styles and alternative game concepts are given more acceptance. It's becoming a great time to be a game developer.

It's called a 'backlash'. It's been happening for a while now, minecraft just dragged it into the spotlight.

The current demand is for games that are fun, not games that are pretty or push your gfx card to the limit. It doesn't have to look polished, but the look has to fit the gameplay.

Minecraft's blocky graphics allow the player to use their imagination a bit. Don't underestimate that.

looks can be changed, my guess is that the first thing he'll do is update the graphics to give the game mainstream appeal.

right now people are playing for the gameplay...just like they do with WoW

I don't know why he'd change the graphics. $350k/day is a pretty resounding confirmation that people don't mind or even like them. (I personally think it's a really nice style, it's got a certain flare to it)

The graphics are simple on purpose - because the game is essentially infinitely scalable (theoretical max map size is 3x surface of the Earth), simple graphics are super important for not lagging servers and clients to hell.

He's said in interviews that the improvements he wants to make are improvements that make the game more fun. He's not going to add features that won't somehow add fun, and if he finds that something isn't fun, it's out.

Because the graphics are purposely so simplistic, people are okay with that. As soon as you upgrade them and start to make them more modern, you start getting compared to other modern games like WoW, etc.

Keep it simple, people won't worry about the graphics.

I also think he avoids any issues with the 'uncanny valley' of near-realism in games. If something isn't going to look exactly like a pig wandering the mountain slopes, why not make it look like a Lego pig and be done with it?

The graphics are fine. I'd rather see improvement made in speed of rendering (even on a decent machine, setting "fancy graphics" and a "far" viewplane is a recipe for low framerates and lag) before trying to change the look.

Actually, if you upgrade your textures, the game bogs down pretty bad.

He'd have to do a serious overhaul to fix the graphics. I'm not sure if I'd want him to, either; the look is very charming.

i dunno about that. we're probably seeing one of his larger sales periods, as it enters into the mainstream from obscurity.

it might continue to do well, but i'm skeptical that he'll be able to keep up the rate at which it is currently selling.

either way, though, he's doing amazingly well for himself.

I think he'll be ok. Right now he is only selling to the early adopter crowd who doesn't mind the crappy graphics. Once he spends some money on graphic designers, he'll be able to get mainstream appeal.

Once he has mainstream appeal, he can release it for the stores to sell. Which will boost his sales.

But yeah...either way he has already made a ton of money off this game....at least a couple million. Which should give him plenty of room to perfect his product.

The real early adopters of Minecraft largely overlapped with the 8-bit/lo-fi enthusiast community, which consists of active forum goes and very connected social gamers. I think a lot of people overlook this when they comment about the graphics of the game; the ones that hold the most credence in gaming are the ones who have a nostalgia further back than anyone.

I don't really see how you can "graphically improve" a game that is built around square voxel-like elements and pixel graphics.

He definitely nears market saturation quickly.

just by way of illustration, see the difference in graphics between civ1 and civ2, which were both basically square tilemaps with a limited number of different terrain squares.

Better textures and lighting?

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