Why is Minecraft not finished?

[RedString]

It says on their website that over 3 million people have bought the game.

So is it just a problem of one guy not willing to hire anyone to help him finish it or what?

 

[KaOTiK]

It has a release date for November. Though Notch did say that the game will never truly be finished cause he is going to continually add stuff to the game. He isn't working on it by himself anymore either, he has hired people and has started up his own studio now too.

 

[RedString]

It has a release date for November. Though Notch did say that the game will never truly be finished cause he is going to continually add stuff to the game. He isn't working on it by himself anymore either, he has hired people and has started up his own studio now too.

Ah, awesome. I haven't played it in awhile so I'm pretty behind on the news.

 

[mizzou]

I accidentally posted this same idea in a diff thread.

The bigger problem is if the rest of the industry takes heed to what Notch did, and we end up just paying for unlimited access Beta level games (at full price)

Notch made it a hot seller....without it even being released or finalized. Thankfully he is a solid guy so this works well in a Minecraft situation. But with a person who is maybe lazy, unfocused, or devious...imagine paying for a beta level game at full price with the intention of owning the final product....and the final product NEVER materializes in any shape or form.

Sounds like lawsuit city to me.

In my opinion, it's a finished game so he needs to just close it by adding more MOD support as he previously stated.

I really really REALLY want Notch to take on Minecraft 2, with more efficient coding and a higher focus on A.I. and block physics.

 

[fatpat268]

I stopped playing Minecraft several months ago (before the halloween update last year), and while I go back to it occasionally, not a whole lot has changed aside from a few new items and mechanics... overall it's the same game. And while that's great in a way, but I was always hoping that the experience would evolve into something better, but it really hasn't yet.

 

[lsv]

Because bad games never get finished ;D

 

[BladeVenom]

The bigger problem is if the rest of the industry takes heed to what Notch did, and we end up just paying for unlimited access Beta level games (at full price)

...But with a person who is maybe lazy, unfocused, or devious...imagine paying for a beta level game at full price with the intention of owning the final product....and the final product NEVER materializes in any shape or form.

Don't we already do that for half the game out? It sure seems like many of them are betas.

 

[Dumac]

I accidentally posted this same idea in a diff thread.

The bigger problem is if the rest of the industry takes heed to what Notch did, and we end up just paying for unlimited access Beta level games (at full price)

Notch made it a hot seller....without it even being released or finalized. Thankfully he is a solid guy so this works well in a Minecraft situation. But with a person who is maybe lazy, unfocused, or devious...imagine paying for a beta level game at full price with the intention of owning the final product....and the final product NEVER materializes in any shape or form.

Sounds like lawsuit city to me.

In my opinion, it's a finished game so he needs to just close it by adding more MOD support as he previously stated.

I really really REALLY want Notch to take on Minecraft 2, with more efficient coding and a higher focus on A.I. and block physics.

Uh, no. Notch is not a solid guy. He has spent more time on vacation than working on minecraft. He doesn't make any content nowadays; the few additions that are made are created by someone else on the team.

It really shouldn't take long to add content to Minecraft. Notch is just being lazy and sitting on his millions of dollars.

 

[JSt0rm]

well to be fair I got more gameplay out of that $ then most AAA games even as a beta. He deserves to sit on a few million.

 

[Martimus]

I paid ~$13 for the game, and I had no illusions of it being more than it is.

He sold it as is, and people bought it because it was good in that state. I had fun playing it, and I still come back and play on it once in a while. I can't complain about paying my $13 for the game I got. I know that would only pay for about 10 minutes of my time at work, so I don't feel ripped off at all.

 

[lord_emperor]

Notch is a lazy bastard, no two ways about it.

The community has been fixing bugs and providing features that users are clamouring for while Mojang plods along with, honestly, really weak updates. Most of their recent features began as community mods.

However, I bought the game for what it was at the time and I think it was $10 well spent.

 

[Keeper]

I paid ~$13 for the game, and I had no illusions of it being more than it is.

He sold it as is, and people bought it because it was good in that state. I had fun playing it, and I still come back and play on it once in a while. I can't complain about paying my $13 for the game I got. I know that would only pay for about 10 minutes of my time at work, so I don't feel ripped off at all.

I paid $10... And agree with most of what you wrote. I joined this craze late. My son would tell me of monthly updates. Content add. Etc etc. I join....... And YES, Notch appears to be on vaca a LOT or here in the states meeting with lawyers. (Yes, I USED to read his blog. Thirsting for updates and conntent) I was SO disappointed with the BIG Halloween launch. I feel that was hyped beyond hyped to get more BUZZ.
Did I get my 10 dollars worth?
For sure. No doubt. And for that, I thank Notch.
It was painful to see something/someone so refreshing fall to "Corperate Workings".
And as my kids say, they were there "Back in the day" when this game held out hope and promise.
Thats all.

 

[Zenoth]

I thought ok, why not, I bought it about two months ago. I wanted to see what was all the fuss about. I don't like it, the only "fun" I had was surviving (and I'm using the word loosely) for the first day and night cycle via my first shelter. Then, I got bored. I never played in since the past two months or so, I literally played it for about two days total. As to why is it not finished? Who knows really, there's plenty of other games out there released as "final" and "completed" but once you play them it yells "BETA!" at you constantly. I mean honestly, most gamers don't know how games are made and what should be considered final or beta or whatever (finished or not), they buy a game and they expect to have fun, if it's not fun then they can say whatever they feel will justify the boredom coming out of the game, calling it unfinished or unpolished or uncared for.

Let's take Dragon Age 2 for example (dead horse I know, but it's one of the most recent and well known example I know of by heart), do most gamers consider the game "final" and completed? Well... I don't think I need to say anything else then. So yeah, Minecraft may well always be in a "beta" state of development and people will buy it for various reasons, be it to "support" the creator (even though the guy is now a few times millionaire) or to "give it a try". The same goes with Dragon Age 2 and many other games out there that end up on the store shelves and labeled as completed by just being on the shelves to start with, even though it was obviously rushed and still is most likely beta.

I just think that generally most gamers don't really care anymore if a game is completed or not, if it's released and the price is good for them or the game "seems fun" they'll just buy it blindly and call it a night, complaints usually follow after but at that point it's too late, their money is in the publisher and developers' pockets.

 

[xXFaNtAsMaXx]

From what I've heard, Minecraft is supposed to be getting a lot of things that made Terraria so popular, such as NPCs, dungeons, boss battles, etc. This is all supposed to be coming in the next major update. Hopefully this will make it more worthwhile.

I really like Terraria, but I like the engine that Minecraft uses better than Terraria's. If Minecraft took some of the stuff that makes Terraria fun, Minecraft could be great.

 

[mizzou]

I'm fine with Notch living life as a gangsta, but he can be a boss if he takes it a bit more seriously

 

[coldmeat]

How many sales now? 3mil? That puts him somewhere around $20-30 million earned? I know if I was him I would probably have quit working on it at the $10 million mark haha.

 

[Born2bwire]

God willing, we'll all meet again in Minecraft 2.0: The Search for More Money.

 

[Keeper]

I really like Terraria, but I like the engine that Minecraft uses better than Terraria's. If Minecraft took some of the stuff that makes Terraria fun, Minecraft could be great.

THIS...:thumbsup:

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

How many sales now? 3mil? That puts him somewhere around $20-30 million earned? I know if I was him I would probably have quit working on it at the $10 million mark haha.

and that's why you're not him : p (I kid)

 

[blurredvision]

Minecraft is essentially done as far as I'm concerned. He's taking payments for a product that runs perfectly fine but has a few bugs. He's also releasing regular updates complete with version numbers and names. Sounds like most every other online-centric game ever released. This isn't anymore a beta than gmail was a beta 3 years after it released.

 

[Dankk]

Wow, a lot of Minecraft hate in this thread.

As far as I'm concerned, if Notch wants to take as many vacations as he wants, he's totally within his right to. You guys remind me of some of the whiny people on the Minecraft forums who like to bitch and moan, saying "NOTCH, I GAVE YOU MY MONEY, NOW I EXPECT YOU TO WORK AS HARD AND AS LONG AS YOU CAN ON THIS GAME TO MAKE IT COMPLETE." The guy just got married this past weekend. Cut him some slack. Also, he's been working harder than you might think.

He's an indie developer with like four other people on his team. It's pretty obvious from the start that Minecraft is his big experiment. Are you honestly expecting him to rush the game out to completion as soon as possible? Mojang isn't some high-profile AAA studio pushing out another generic Cawa Dooty title.

I started playing about a year ago, and since then he's added a shitton of updates. I'm not complaining, considering the hundreds of hours I've put into the game so far. $13 is a pretty damn good deal for that much gameplay.

It should also be noted that he's working on two different games right now. "Scrolls" is his new experiment, and he has to develop that alongside Minecraft. If you're still feeling impatient, then I'm sorry; just hold your horses and wait until November.

 

[sandorski]

Minecraft is essentially done as far as I'm concerned. He's taking payments for a product that runs perfectly fine but has a few bugs. He's also releasing regular updates complete with version numbers and names. Sounds like most every other online-centric game ever released. This isn't anymore a beta than gmail was a beta 3 years after it released.

Pretty much. There are a ton of Mods that add all kinds of variations to the base game as well.

 

[lsv]

I'd like to see Minecraft in an MMO format. With a super giant world, now we're talking :O

 

[Newbian]

I'd like to see Minecraft in an MMO format. With a super giant world, now we're talking :O

Find a decent server to play on, many servers are like that and they have a ton of great fixes and extra content on them.

Hell when I stopped playing the game awhile ago the server I had played on had a economy with prices that changed, events happening, npc's to sell to and player shops with automated stores when the owner wasn't there and player ran cities.

The individual that owned the land, after buying it or going out in the wild can protect it so only he and the people he trusts can do anything to it and it had people making sure abandoned structures were removed over time.

Plus it tended to have around 80-100 people on at all times.

There are other ones where you can set up teleports as the world gets so huge, a decent pvp system for warring cities and anything else you can find so it's just a matter of finding a decent server you like.

 

[imaheadcase]

What have you people become? Seriously what is to complain about..
1. Game is super cheap.
2. tons of stuff to do.
3. FREE updates.
4. huge community (if you are into that)