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Comment by monkmartinez | Hacker News Reader

It should be called the MINECRAPIFICATION of EVERYTHING!

Who knows if Notch was the first to herald in this new paradigm of half-finished products? It's the first thing that comes to mind every time I experience, read about or witness a product, service or idea that isn't quite fully baked. I say, "Self, they are just cashing in while they iterate and extend... or not."

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Am I missing something? What does Minecraft have to do with half-baked products? It seems like they went with an approach of having a free alpa/beta release until they had a release ready game, then have spent a decade adding more content to it?

Minecraft sold over 850,000 copies before even exiting alpha. (though these labels are really kindof arbitrary in the end) I think this was fine for that game: the game was fun, $10, and largely bought on its own merits. Sandbox gameplay + procgen exploration + multiplayer + modding can wring an incredible amount of life out of relatively few assets. It definitely led to a trend of over-promised and commercialized early-access though. When you can get a big chunk of the bag for pre-selling based on a small chunk of the work with minimal risk, the incentives are obvious.

Ah I see, I was reading through the wikipedia page and misinterpreted a line about updates being free during alpha/beta to be implying that the game itself was free.

I think the difference is that Minecraft alpha/beta was fun and actually promised very little. I paid for the beta (used cracked clients before then, when I was 12) and enjoyed it for what it was, I couldn't have cared less about "future updates". There was never any mention of "future features" in Minecraft (then-guerilla) marketing.

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