WSJ: Mojang Could Be Worth $1 Billion | Hacker News Reader

WSJ: Mojang Could Be Worth $1 Billion

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33 pointsprs44 comments

I love Minecraft, it is genius, original and tons of fun, but you need at least two points to draw a line, one hit does not a trend make.

The game world is littered with 'one hit wonders' but it is very hard to repeat that success, doubly so on the scale of Minecraft.

For those that say Mojang is somehow unique, that Notch is the messiah of indy gaming, all I can say is survivor bias. The game industry is chock full of brilliant, passionate peeps who build really original games that just fail to spark the imagination of a large audience for one reason or another.

Hope the best for Mojang and co, love their work on Minecraft and hope they can follow it up with something just as unique, but this article is making some big leaps.

I've been working on video games for 20 years and from my perspective Minecraft is not a one hit wonder, it's the coming of age of a genre. It reminds me of when I first saw Doom running. It was graphically beautiful for the day and a real technical accomplishment. Although it was by no means the first FPS, it was a huge hit and drove a lot of other companies to go into the genre. That industry has peaked today with Call of Duty being a $1b franchise.

With Minecraft, Notch took some really good games and put them together in a way that had much more Universal appeal. I wouldn't be surprised if the genre expands and matures and takes 15 years to play out. I think it's likely Mojang will lead that process.

Surely this depends on if they can continue to produce smash hits like minecraft.

While I love the idea of 0x10c I don't know if it will replicate the success.

It's something I find it hard to explain to people who don't understand things like programming and emulators. It could just be too hard to have the sort of mass appeal that minecraft did.

Surely the same thing could have been said about Minecraft, having little to no mass appeal, before it became a huge hit, no?

I think there was probably more evidence in favour of minecraft being a success. For example widespread popularity of lego and other various sandbox games.

Minecraft is also relatively simple to understand, pick up and place blocks. I assume that 0x10c will have a much steeper learning curve.

Though it was certainly a long shot that minecraft would be as popular as it is today, the question is whether lightning can strike twice?

I'm sure that 0x10c will still a profitable game but I doubt it will have sales numbers that approach minecraft's.

The cool thing is none of this was made for the profit or sales numbers. Notch makes games because he loves making games. In fact, it kinda seems like he's intentionally trying for a more obscure game, something to be niche with a strong community rather then wildly popular.

Ox10^c sounds like a game where Notch went "Ok, I have money and a fanbase which will pay attention if I make an obscure game, what game do I really want to play but wouldn't get approved in a million years by a publisher."

I've wanted a multiplayer game where I could script most of the day to day activity for about as long as I've played games. I think 0x10^c will be super popular.

Lightning never strikes the same place twice, etc

I never got that analogy. Lightning will strike the same place over and over again[1], because that place has the least resistance for charge to flow between the clouds and the ground.

[1] http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/wea00/wea00354.htm

After lightning strikes it probably doesnt :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_rod

> It's something I find it hard to explain to people who don't understand things like programming and emulators.

"It's a space game where you have to build your own computer. Unless you don't want to, in which case you can download one of, like, a million that people have already worked on for months and years."

It depends how big a chunk of the game is dependant on the programming aspect. Since it is inherently multiplayer it's quite possible that people with technical skills will dominate the game.

It will be very hard, perhaps impossible, for Mojang (or any other company) to replicate the success of Minecraft. But I don't think 0x10c needs to be as successful as Minecraft is. As long as they can make at least a little profit on 0x10c all will be fine. From what I've seen and understand about the game, I think 0x10c will certainly be profitable.

The nice thing about 0x10c will be that in a way it's another sandbox game as well, but this time the sandbox is the on-ship computer instead of the world. But I also think the game will offer plenty for people who are not into programming. Markus streamed the FPS capabilities of the game recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2k8QBcaaUM

It will be profitable, but it needs to be extremely profitable to justify a $1 billion valuation on the company.

If they are to have chance of replicating that success, I would think they have to aggressively brand Mojang as the "creator of Minecraft". Maybe then it would be possible. I know of Minecraft, but I didn't remember that Mojang was the company behind it, before I was reminded by this post.

It takes 3,000 employees for Zynga Inc., ZNGA -0.38% the largest social-network game company in the world, to generate at least $150 million in annual operating profit.

From an office in Stockholm, a largely unknown company brought in more than half that sum. Its employee count: 29.

Ugh, this type of statement does a massive desservice to the programming service provider industry.

And it ignores the thousands of people writing mods for minecraft.

With something close to absolutely no support from Mojang, even though they've appropriated some of the community's features.

I just finished talking with a colleague whose six year old loves minecraft and I remember talking with a twelve year old who was similarly obsessed - to the point of knowing the patch numbers and all the details. The community which grew organically around this game is incredible, and that kind of peer-to-peer promotion is priceless.

and if you don't want to play it there are many people who stream their playing of this game.

I have used twitch.tv for perusing games I am interested in as well as screening games for my niece and nephew, usually I send a link to my sister and ask if the game is acceptable and would her kids enjoy that.

That was another thing he mentioned - his kid watches all the minecraft youtube videos too. I'm sure if you get bored of doing your own thing you can take a look at what other people are making and come away with a whole new perspective on how to play the game.

I remember my friend telling me about this game and showed me a youtube video of the gameplay. I tested Minecraft and didn't like it. After a while I tested it again and I was completely hooked.

Today we're playing it almost every evening after work with my wife in our own server. Doing missions together, building our own city, farming and raising animals.

I just found out the FTB mod pack for it. It's unbelievable how much stuff people have added to the game. Now I can make a portal gun, build a railroad system or design my own futuristic neon city.

I paid like what, 10 euros for this?

For the people who criticize Minecraft as an underwhelming gaming experience, you need to look at the game from a different perspective...

For a young child, this game has a tremendous lure... it's very simple to visually take in. All of the objects you build with bricks are abstract representations of real life things. For a child, visualizing a castle in minecraft is much easier to process than showing them one in a Lord of the Rings movie.

The other thing is that there's really no rules. You can pretty much do whatever you want... build stuff, explore, play the actual campaign, fight bad guys, etc. This is the exact opposite of the 'cinematic' experience most other games try to create. Kids will bec creating their own storyline in their minds.

Minecraft is the ultimate game of imagination and kids will eat it up like candy. This is why it's made so much money and has become a cultural phenomenon.

Is it really a child's game? I got the impression it had pretty broad appeal especially as it's programmable.

It definitely has tremendous broad appeal, but I think the characteristics I mentioned above is what puts it into this category of it's own. Notch has done an amazing design job of baking in advanced gameplay without affecting any of the accessibility.

I'm surprised to see an article that requires a paid subscription on the front page of HN.

Minecraft isn't WoW (that's a good thing). WoW is pretty much aggressively targeted to make large amounts of money, which is why they're valued so high. Mojang seem to want to make things that are cool and fun, more than they want to set up large subscription bases, add on packs and so on. Could Mojang become a billion dollar company? Sure, maybe. Anything can happen. Is it a good comparison between them and Blizzard? I'd say no, they seem to have distinctly different goals.

You know what's cool, being a company that is happy making things rather than being a billion dollar company and dealing with the headaches of stock price related soothsaying.

For those having trouble getting past the paywall: http://wsjwap.mo2do.net/s/4150/388?articleId=SB1000142412788...

This link works: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732380700457828...

not for me :(

EDIT: Googling the title got one that works (for me).

nor me :(

> Sales occur digitally rather than through brick-and-mortar stores ...

This isn't true. I bought the Minecraft (activation card) for my son through Walmart.

Please don't submit articles behind pay walls.

I think one real lesson here is that super-shiny high end graphics are not what counts. The gameplay is by far the most important ingredient in any game's success.

More than ten years ago back when I playing Counter-Strike (CS still being immensively succesful btw) I was using a "low poly" mod: this would replace the models of the players with models made of fewer polygons (the head became a cube, etc.) because it would give me a faster framerate.

And the shitty graphics didn't matter: the important thing was the gameplay.

If you can have both great gameplay, great graphics and great perfs, go for it.

But if you have to choose and want to get succesful: cut down the graphics budget. That's not what's going to make your game succesful.

It just goes to show that social proof is extremely powerful. 1. Create a really crap game that's not really a game. 2. Create a site with a bullshit stats page showing how many geeks are supposedly buying it and how fast. 3. Spam about it on geeky sites. 4. Watch all the geeks throw money at you as they try to prove that they are geeky enough by buying a sandbox game that they "totally get." Mojang, I salute you.

crap game is fairly subjective here, it seems to have burnt enough man hours to suggest that it does have lasting appeal.

Wow, you could not have misread Mojang any worse. You must be intentionally obtuse here -- I refuse to believe that you're this ignorant.

You feel like some washed up older guy pissed off that his idea didn't make it, content to sit and pooh-pooh anything else that comes by. "My idea was so great, but no, stupid little blocks is what idiots around the world want" is the vibe I get from you.

"Crappy game" "bullshit stats" "spam it"

You're jealous and content to sit there and throw your sour grapes at anyone who dares actually like Minecraft.

Honestly, you're an insult to the spirit of this site and the people who come here. To shit all over a start up that is wildly successful for no other reason than you dislike it -- Shame on you.

He can be wrong without being a personal failure driven by spite. Your comment is not so nice.

you just have no idea what you are talking about.

I think this is an overly cynical view. Minecraft is actually fun, particularly with friends. The multiplayer experience is in a niche essentially on its own. This great multiplayer experience encourages people to get enlist their friends to buy the game and play with them.

While I think a $1 billion valuation is probably presumes far too much about the repeatability of Minecraft-like success, I think it's obvious that Mojang's success with Minecraft is attributable to more than just effective marketing. I also don't think it's unreasonable to think that Mojang's highly innovative game design will bring them more success in the future.

You have to understand how cartoon characters work through the TV for the children, in order to understand the popularity of Minecraft (which didn't become popular through TV).

When kids grow up, they watch TV and they take the liking of characters like Barney, Thomas the Tank Engine, Spongebob etc and the companies behind those characters become ultimately huge!. The same is the case with Minecraft.

If Minecraft is crap than TV is crap and all these characters who are on it. Tell that to the growing kids on their face, just don't gossip about the degrading culture, the morality of capitalism etc.

I don't think it's too hard to "get" Minecraft. The way it was originally explained to me (I purchased it in the beta) was "it's Lego." I played for a few weeks and it was good fun.

What pulled me back into Minecraft was logic circuits. I found Minecraft to be an incredible teaching tool to help impart the absolute basics of circuit design to others. From the first step of turning on a bulb (or, in Minecraft terms, opening a door) with a circuit, to building memory and discovering new ways of state persistence, all the way to building entire machines for the express purpose of computation, Minecraft manages to turn the learning process into enough of a game to leave people associating "logic" with "fun."

I think it's probably only half a decade before we start seeing people in universities who were inspired to be electrical engineers by Minecraft.

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