Minecraft Biomes o' Plenty

The Minecraft mod Biomes O' Plenty does one thing.  It adds 60 (at the moment) more terrain regions the player can wander through.  This is a great example of something simple done very well.  The mod isn't overpowering players, it does not give them an edge in playing the game...  But it does make the Minecraft world a lot more interesting to explore.

There is a greater lesson in simplicity for game developers.  Simplicity is key.  You want the core mechanics and core game play to be as succinct as possible.  Sometimes you have to strip out all those bells and whistles that you think might be fun in order to reduce complexity and provide a simple yet moving experience.  Biomes O' Plenty is a simple and great mod.  If you have a game idea that's too big to tackle on your own, can you instead mod an existing game?

BOP (not Birds of Paradise) a great mod, and you should check it out.  Especially if you are an Explorer at heart.  As of my writing the current version is a bit buggy and causes lag spikes and block lag.  The author of the mod TDWP_FTW indicated this has presumably been cleared up for the next release.  Looking forward to it!

Scrumbleship; more then Minecraft in space. Hopefully.

Minecraft is an inspiration for just about everyone who wants to design games. Everything from straight up copies to 'inspired by' titles are popping up all the time. There are plenty of not so interesting clones... cough Yogventures, cough. (Which feels more like a retaliation then a game).  But there are some equally fantastic projects such as Towns and now Scrumbleship. Check below the jump for an introduction to the Scrumbleship kickstarter and game.

1 Free business plan for your computer game.

What happens if while making a game you run out of money?  Do you have a plan in place if that happens?  Is there a way you can get funds while still developing?  Let's face it, if we're in the game making business we have to think about the business part of things.  Development is a giant Expense so you need Revenue to pay for it. There is a business plan that you haven't thought of yet, that will get you at least a little Revenue during each stage of the game design process.  Which could make the difference between closing a game project, or continuing to develop.

(I couldn't help putting that old South Park gag in there).

This suggestion is based off an older post about the 4 Stages of Game Design.  Check into that if you don't know what the four stages are yet.  At GameLoop 2011 this weekend a fifth new 5 step that some dev teams are implementing was mentioned.  Look for that post coming up soon.

1. Prototype: distribute freely.  That's right, give it away.  It acts as your demo.  Maybe use something like paywithatweet.com to get the word out.  But don't forget to ask for donations.  Gamers can be really generous when they like a game.  Use these funds and the feedback to rev the game into Alpha.  
2. Alpha:  charge a low amount for the alpha version of the game, promise that if people buy it now they will get all upgrades included with this price. Suggestion: 1/4 of the Full Release price.  Use these funds to rev the game into Beta. Make sure people know that the price is going to go up if they wait.
3. Beta: charge a higher amount for the beta. Suggestion: 1/2 of the Full Release price.  Use these funds to rev the game into Full Release.
4. Full release: Once the full release of the game is ready, the price should increase to the full amount.  You need to set this price first, and then decide what the others will be.   Tell everyone what these numbers are going to be ahead of time and stick to them.

If you think this business model sounds familiar, you're right.  This is really a recap of the sales of Mojang's first title Minecraft.  More recently QCF Design was inspired to use this model to release Desktop Dungeons.  They released a freeware version of the game, then charged for Beta, more for Alpha following in Mojang's footsetps.  Notch and crew didn't have the benefit of hindsight or success to think of this as a good publishing methodology, but I bet they had a good idea it would work.  Given the right set of circumstances it could work for many independent games.

A word of warning: this would not be a good strategy for developing a console game.  At this stage asking console users to download many small chunks of data, getting them all vetted through the console makers, etc would be a huge hassle.  For a game on Steam or self published it could do alright.  Additionally restrictions in how games are published via app stores might also make this a bad business plan for an app.  We're going to cover three great business plans for apps in the future.

Is this business model going to work for absolutely everyone?  No. So what should come from this post?  Hopefully a good conversation on your team.  If you haven't even thought about business development yet (and most beginning developers don't), then use this as a jumping off point to explore the idea of monetization.  You might not have a business guy on the team.  But you still need to spend some time considering 'business' aspect of game design.  Most game developers come from the coding or art world.  Tweet this to a fellow team member and take this as an opportunity to walk for a moment in the business world.

If I could ask Carl Mennah one question it would be: "What are the steps to building the infrastructure through these stages?"  This is something they had to piece together themselves.  Some of their trials and tribulations were rather public (IE issues with Paypal).  Some decisions were private and that insight would be valuable to future attempts at making this method work.  If anyone has an opinion on that, please comment.

*** Edit ***
There is some great discussion about this topic over on Reddit.  If you like the post, head over and give me a up vote and jump in the discussion!

Learning Java

To be less of a bad game project manager, I'm learning a coding language.  I've chosen Java.  It may not be the best language to learn for game programming (we can go over the reasons that have been explained to me once I know how to code better), but as an object oriented programming language it's a good place to start.  Also Minecraft was written in Java, and it would be excellent to code mods for the game.

What resources were used to learn Java?
thenewboston.com  (Progress: Tutorial 25 of 87)
"Head First Java", full review on the way.

Minecraft Specific Resources?
Bukkit Tutorials.

The job of an Analyst.

Carl Manneh, CEO of Mojang, replied to my tweet plugging this blog post.  I was in gamer/business nerdvanah.


Jspringfield211: @notch @carlmanneh Mojang Forecast, just for fun.blog.zorts.net/2011/06/minecr…
Carlmanneh: It sure is. Nice post, but I think your evaluation is a bit modest ;)


The strategy of being a business analyst is that you provide data based on calculations and reasonable expectations.  Did I undershoot the number?  Absolutely.  Because the numbers I generated are not for investors, they are internal business numbers.  There is a big difference between a number generated for internal use and a number generated for external use.  If I were making such predictions because the marketing department wanted to know its budget for the next three years, I would want to undershoot the number as well.  "Worst case scenario you have x% of this projected budget to sell ads with next year."


What I did wrong in that post was state "Were Mojang Specifications to do an IPO they could be worth as much as 50 - 70 million Euro" without the qualification that the numbers were internal.  To the untrained eye it might look like I was forecasting for a different group of people then I actually was.  Or forecasting as an investor, which I was not.  I was pretending to be an employee of Mojang.


Minecraft has no reason to EVER do an IPO and never should.  Becoming a public company fundamentally changes a company in unpredictable ways (And I don't even know the difference between a Swedish IPO and an American one).  The culture of the Mojang would be altered in a bad way.  At the moment they can take advice from fans or not as they see fit.  Pistons for example.  They are free to add or not add anything based on what they feel Minecraft is about.  In a public company situation they might feel pressure to add a 'feature' simply because the shareholders wanted it.  Or because the customers wanted it.  Even if it goes against the spirit of the game.


And besides, if things are going we well as Carl indicates...  They really don't stand to gain that much more money than they already have from an IPO.  ;)

Minecraft Bonus Post!!!! Mojang Forecast.

Another week, and another bonus post.  Lucky you.  This bonus post, however, is going to be a bit less project oriented and  a bit more analysis oriented.  Which you may or may not find interesting.  Consider yourself warned.  This post started because I was replying to someone on the escapist about Minecraft.