Minecraft- Cool Info
Minecraft has received favorable responses from critics, and has had notably large numbers of sales.
The game has been praised for the creative freedom it grants its players in-game, and for how dynamic the overall gameplay is. PC Gamer listed Minecraft as the fourth-best game to play at work.
On December 11, 2010, Persson announced, via his personal blog, that Minecraft would be entering its beta testing phase on December 20, 2010, and that the price would increase to €14.95.[26] He further stated that users who bought the game after this date would no longer be guaranteed to receive all future content free of charge as it “scared both the lawyers and the board.” However, bug fixes and all updates leading up to and including the release would still be free. At the start of 2011 Mojang expanded to include Carl Manneh as a “managing director” and Tobias Möllstam as a programmer. On April 7, 2011, Persson made a post on his blog that Mojang has decided to move the game out of Beta on November 11, 2011; however this would not be the “finished product”, as the game would be continuously updated before and after the release.
Minecraft.net provided online systems to authenticate logins and host the player’s profile including its modifiable character skin pattern and the purchased gift codes. On January 18, 2011, Persson announced in a blog post that Minecraft’s web servers would be switching to being hosted solely on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) content delivery network. Notch stated in his personal blog that their old help host was having trouble and that Mojang would be switching to using AWS as their host for both Minecraft.net and Minecraft’s web functions such as logging in. This was followed by a tweet the next day confirming the migration and that Tobias would be the one to setup the new servers. Upon this hosting migration, both Minecraft.net and Minecraft game features experienced fluctuating down time. On February 21, Mojang hired Dan Frisk to oversee the servers and backend for both Minecraft and Scrolls.
On May 19, 2011, Persson announced via his twitter about an additional dimension which is currently being tested to add to the game. The “Sky Dimension” is similar to the Nether, however set above the sky with floating islands.
Currently, an official iOS, and Android version of Minecraft is being developed by new Mojang employee Aron Neiminen for release later in the year 2011.
Reception
Minecraft has received favorable responses from critics, and has had notably large numbers of sales.
The game has been praised for the creative freedom it grants its players in-game, and for how dynamic the overall gameplay is. PC Gamer listed Minecraft as the fourth-best game to play at work.
A review of the alpha version, by Scott Munro of the Daily Record, called it “already something special” and urged readers to buy it. Jim Rossignol of Rock, Paper, Shotgun also recommended the alpha of the game, calling it “a kind of generative 8-bit Lego Stalker“. On September 17, 2010, gaming webcomic Penny Arcade began a series of comics and news posts about the addictiveness of the game. Video game talk show Good Game gave it a 7.5 and 9 out of 10, praising its creativity and customization, though they criticized its lack of a tutorial.
In December 2010, Good Game selected Minecraft as their choice for “Best Downloadable Game of 2010″ title, Gamasutra named it the eighth best game of the year as well as the eighth best indie game of the year, and Rock, Paper, Shotgun named it the game of the year. Indie DB awarded the game the 2010 “Indie of the Year” award as chosen by voters, in addition to two out of five Editor’s Choice awards for “Most Innovative” and “Best Singleplayer Indie”. It was also awarded “Game of the Year” by PC Gamer UK. The game was nominated for the “Seumas McNally Grand Prize”, “Technical Excellence”, and “Excellence in Design” awards at the March 2011 Independent Games Festival and won the Grand Prize along with community-voted “Audience Award”. At Game Developers Choice Awards 2011, Minecraft won the award for Best debut game, Best downloadable game and Most Innovative game award, winning every award for which it was nominated.
On May 5th, 2011, Minecraft was selected as one of the 80 games that will be displayed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum as part of “The Art of Video Games” exhibit that will open on March 16th, 2012.
Sales
In September 2010, after an impromptu “free to play” weekend, the game had a spike in sales of over 25,000 purchases in 24 hours. On January 12, 2011, Minecraft passed 1,000,000 purchases, less than a month after reaching Beta. At the same time, the game had no publisher backing and has never been commercially advertised except through word of mouth. By April 2011, Persson estimated that Minecraft had made €23 million (US$33 million) in revenue, with 800,000 sales of the alpha version of the game at €9.95, and over 1 million sales of the beta version at €14.95. As of April 23, 2011, Minecraft had over 7 million registered users, and over 2 million purchases.
MinecraftCon
On May 11th, 2011, Notch announced via his blog about an official Minecraft convention titled “MinecraftCon” to be held on the date of the official release of the game. Entry will be US$90 with planned features such as cosplay, speed building and Q&A. The event is planned to be held in Las Vegas, with other venues being considered via a poll.
