[avinium]

> Minecraft is generally known to be fairly poorly optimised, and the graphics weren't great

Perfect example.

You're not making games, you're selling entertainment. Focus on the latter first, and optimize accordingly.

I see this time and time again - beautifully architected and performant platforms that completely bomb because noone actually wants it.

[CodeMage]

> You're not making games, you're selling entertainment. Focus on the latter first, and optimize accordingly.

I agree with that. And yet, Minecraft is possibly the worst example:

- It's an exception to the general wisdom that games do have to worry about performance in order to deliver fun. Just because Minecraft became popular despite it's abysmal performance, doesn't mean games can get away with that in general.

- Notch never expected Minecraft to become that popular. In a sense, Minecraft was an accident.

- Minecraft's performance was so bad, a lot of people had to install a mod called OptiFine just to be able to play it on their hardware.

[avinium]

Oh, I do think performance matters - but that's usually only once you've discovered your underlying market. Minecraft's audience clearly didn't care about performance, so it would have been wasted effort to optimize in the early days.

That being said, I agree that performance might actually be integral to your product. Quake 3, for example, probably would have bombed if everyone was playing sub-10fps.

Either way, the priority is "figure out who wants your product and why." That helps determine when and where to focus your optimization efforts.