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Comment by jiggy2011 | Hacker News Reader

jiggy2011

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.

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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.

> 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.

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

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.

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