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by nicpottier 4877 days ago
I love Minecraft, it is genius, original and tons of fun, but you need at least two points to draw a line, one hit does not a trend make.

The game world is littered with 'one hit wonders' but it is very hard to repeat that success, doubly so on the scale of Minecraft.

For those that say Mojang is somehow unique, that Notch is the messiah of indy gaming, all I can say is survivor bias. The game industry is chock full of brilliant, passionate peeps who build really original games that just fail to spark the imagination of a large audience for one reason or another.

Hope the best for Mojang and co, love their work on Minecraft and hope they can follow it up with something just as unique, but this article is making some big leaps.

1 comments

I've been working on video games for 20 years and from my perspective Minecraft is not a one hit wonder, it's the coming of age of a genre. It reminds me of when I first saw Doom running. It was graphically beautiful for the day and a real technical accomplishment. Although it was by no means the first FPS, it was a huge hit and drove a lot of other companies to go into the genre. That industry has peaked today with Call of Duty being a $1b franchise.

With Minecraft, Notch took some really good games and put them together in a way that had much more Universal appeal. I wouldn't be surprised if the genre expands and matures and takes 15 years to play out. I think it's likely Mojang will lead that process.