The word is that Microsoft may acquire Minecraft, the wildly popular game that lets you create your own virtual worlds, and Brent Smithurst isn’t very happy about it.
Minecraft is a big part of his life and the lives of his two sons, aged five and ten. “My sons mostly ignore TV and much of their computer time is spent being creative in Minecraft,” he says. “I love it because it teaches them problem solving, logic, and creativity.” But they play Minecraft on Macs, iPads, iPhones, and the Sony PlayStation 3 game console—not Microsoft devices—and Smithurst is worried that if Microsoft acquires the game, it will be left to wither on such machines.
His attitude is indicative of many who play the game. After the The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that Microsoft is nearing a $2 billion deal to buy Mojang, the company that runs Minecraft, countless fans have vented their displeasure online. Though these complaints will likely have little effect on the acquisition tasks, Microsoft does run the risk of alienating some of the game’s biggest supporters and losing them to other games, such as Roboblox , Mario Maker, and various Minecraft clones such as the free and open source Minetest.
Smithurst asked his ten-year-old son Riley what he would do if someone ruined Minecraft. “I don’t know,” he responded. “Something might come out that is really amazing and creative, but I don’t know what.”
It’s also worth noting that the founder of Minecraft and the biggest shareholder in Mojang, Markus “Notch” Persson, has expressed similarly deep concerns over this type of acquisition in the past. Big corporations operate in very different ways from startups like Mojang, and those disparate attitudes don’t always mix. That could scupper the acquisition altogether.
Considering the popularity of Minecraft, the deal does, on the whole, make good sense for Microsoft, a company that aims to run games across not only its Xbox One game console but also its Windows tablets and phones. According to the New York Times , which also cites anonymous sources, the deal is meant to ensure that Minecraft, which isn’t currently available for Windows Phone or in the online Windows Store, runs on all of Microsoft’s platforms.
What’s less clear is whether Microsoft would support updates to the game on other, non-Microsoft devices and platforms. Microsoft declined to comment, and neither Mojang nor Persson responded to our request for comment. For people like Smithurst, the worry is that Microsoft will treat Minecraft like Halo, the game it acquired in 2000. After the acquisition, Halo became the flagship title for the Xbox, and although the game was eventually released for Macintosh OS X about two years after the Xbox release, the game’s sequels were developed only for Microsoft platforms.
At the same time, Smithurst and others worry that a major corporation—be it Microsoft or any other—just won’t know what to make of a game like Minecraft. Much of Minecraft’s success is largely due to Persson bucking game industry trends. While the major game companies pursued increasingly flashy graphics, Persson opted for a decidedly low-fi style. And unlike many other newcomers to the field, Persson built for traditional desktop PCs first, instead of pursuing trendy new platforms like mobile and Facebook. And instead of selling subscriptions or in-game items, Persson sold the game for a flat fee. These decisions, and the general independent spirit of the game, won over legions of fans of all ages.
Nate Angell, another parent of Minecraft-playing kids, is worried that Microsoft will make the game the game less creative and inspiring. “My concern over a [Microsoft] acquisition is that what Minecraft now opens would constrict,” he says. “Sudden appearances like rabbits could be less magic if they come from Redmond.”
But perhaps these attitudes indicate that a marriage between Microsoft and Minecraft isn’t on the cards. Though he hasn’t publicly commented on the WSJ, Persson sounded a lot like these Minecraft when he so publicly vented his opinion of another merger of a grassroots virtual reality project with a big name tech corporation. Persson was among the many backers of the Oculus virtual reality headset who spoke out again its acquisition by Faceboook. “There’s nothing about their history that makes me trust them,” he wrote of Facebook, “and that makes them seem creepy to me.”
In 2012, Persson had contributed $10,000 to the Kickstarter campaign that bootstrapped Oculus. That entitled him to a trip to the company’s offices, and while there, he had discussed the possibility of building a special version of Minecraft that would work with the Oculus headset. But after the deal with Facebook, he dropped the idea. “Facebook is not a company of grass-roots tech enthusiasts,” he wrote. “Facebook is not a game tech company. Facebook has a history of caring about building user numbers, and nothing but building user numbers.”
No comments:
Post a Comment