At over 16,000,000 registered users as of November 2011 [cite], it’s safe to say that Minecraft has a userbase that the giants like Blizzard and Ubisoft would be envious of. Minecraft was based off of a game called Infiniminer that was pretty obscure in popularity.
So why was Minecraft an astounding success where Infiniminer wasn’t? I’m sure you Minecraft players will find these images pretty familiar. Thoughts?
In short, Infiniminer wasn’t continually developed like Minecraft. It was abandoned by the developer after release, and forked into a bunch of different versions.
Notch started work on Minecraft a few weeks after Infiniminer was abandoned.
It’s also worth noting that Notch has been really good at self-promotion from early on in the dev cycle, and he’s also been swept up in some of the booming press for indie games in general.
Minecraft is also easily described in a way that brings gamers and geeks of all ages running: it’s “living Legos.” Infinimer’s concept is a tougher pitch.
““The act of borrowing ideas is integral to the creative process. There are games that came before Infiniminer, and there are games that will come after MineCraft. That’s how it works.”’
Which is totally the right attitude, but I’m not sure I could be so philosophical about it.