Shouldn't all multiplayer online games learn some valuable information from Minecraft?

[Irontheater]

I believe that all games should learn from Minecraft's multiplayer mode. A game as simple, visually, and mechanically as Minecraft was able to sell over 10M copies, totalling at around 300M $ for the developers. What if these methods were applied to other AAA games? Why aren't they?

 

 

A bit of background:

One year ago, I told my little brother to download Minecraft cz it was a "stunning game", as part of a prank. Much to my astonishment, he started to play the game, bought it 2 months later, and has been playing it non stop for the better part of the last 10 months.

When I initially returned back home from abroad 2 week ago, I was pretty much surprised as to why he was still playing it.

What had seemed like a stale game for me, had much more hidden under its surface.

 

 

IMO: What makes Minecraft so successful is unique to this game:

-Anyone can make their own server

-People help each other

-The online human contact is very much like real world human contact (ala WoW, if not even closer to reality)

-PvP

 

 

What most games are missing today are the first 3 points. And a bit from the last one too. Let me detail a bit.

 

 

1) Anyone can make their own server.

In most games today, afraid of being hacked or IP stolen, they choose to only run their own servers.

This limits a lot of things.

For instance, the players you play with are never the same. 

From what I have seen, what makes Minecraft so special is the way people bond, due to them being everyday on the same server.

(ex: How is it more likely to make friends? Going to different parks everyday or going to the same park everyday at the same hour, potentially meeting the same people you met yesterday?)

 

One more thing is, having independent servers makes place for ranks in the server, Donators, Mods, Helpers, Admins... etc, limiting spam, immaturity, and potentially harmful situations.

This in turn makes people act less like trolls, and more like humans. 

 

Making your own server also permits you to have full control over a server you own, personalize it, in case you just want to play with friends...

This makes the experience in each server so different from the others, even though it might always seem like you are hitting blocks.

 

 

2) People actually help each others achieving different tasks.

Starting you own big build? Just ask for help, people will be there.

Fighting monsters? People will help.

Got scammed? People will help.

 

The fact that everyone on the server knows every other player, respect, and humbleness emerge.

 

 

3) PvP:

RPG games forget this. FPS games nail this.

RP-FPS games miss this horribly.

This is an important facet of gaming. 

 

 

I know some games are starting to implement some of these ideas, but they are mostly lacking. Firefall, Planetside, Defiance are all games that miss the goal horribly, while other games are still completely ignoring it.

 

Why not make it like Racing Games? 

"Free World Roam" - "Quick Match" ... etc

 

 

Do you guys think we might see some AAA games that make good use of its RPG facet to push forward the PvP?

Would a game like this interest you, vs a Quick Match mode only game (like BF,CoD, CS.. etc)?

[Mrbluee]

I think battlefield only addressed this in their last update (xbox 360) where they gave the customer the chance to run their own servers based on what they wanted to see from it? But Xbox And PS games will never do this for free.

COD will NEVER do this. Too much room for error and TOO much to lose. 

[xRAGExSounDxRIOTX]

I think battlefield only addressed this in their last update (xbox 360) where they gave the customer the chance to run their own servers based on what they wanted to see from it? But Xbox And PS games will never do this for free.

COD will NEVER do this. Too much room for error and TOO much to lose. 

That last update was something like right before they released close quarters DLC. Their have been many other main updates from the rent a server update to now. Just a question but, why do you have a question mark after your first sentence? It 1:00 a.m where I am and I can't figure it out. Of course Xbox and Playstation games won't do this for free, it cost money to keep these servers up and running. Unless they made you put ads play when the game is over, that's probably a scenario when servers would be free. To go back to a similar thing with Minecraft, The PC servers cost money to run them also but to play Xbox Minecraft multiplayer you don't need to pay to have a multiplayer session. I think by limiting the amount of players that can be in that multiplayer session, you don't have to pay money to 4J to run the multiplayer sessions, that's the reason why the game is $20. Based on how many sales Mojang with PC, Mobile platforms, and console sales have been so high, that is probably the reason why to run a multiplayer session on the 360, you don't have to pay money at all. Also, this might be the p***ed off adult CoD payer in me but, to be able to play a game of CoD with buyable servers would be almost impossible. You would have young kids kicking and banning you constantly because they don't like the guns you use, the perks you use, and so on. That's the reason why people don't get pissed off at Dice or Battlefield that often ( unless you rage a lot ) because you mostly don't have admins who would ban or kick you the second they see what gun you're using, and what things you have equipped ( In my experience of playing BF3 ). Multiplayer games will never be free, for example Planetside 2, in order to get something quicker you can buy cert points. That's where FTP games make money, by giving you incentives like giving them money and they will give you the cert points to unlock something quicker.

[Snickerzz]

Really i think why minecraft so big is the map is infinite (on pc at least) and how friendly the game is to mods

 

also that you pay one time for the game and future updates are free, the devs are constantly adding things. 

[BAPEsta]

Minecraft is a very unique success story and we will probably never see anything like it again. Big AAA producers have such a small margin of profit that they can't really step too far out of the box. Imagine how much more than those $300M they would have made if everyone who plays the game "pirated", I say "pirated" since Mojang are totally ok with people pirating it, thus making it less illegal, if not 100% legal.

No, iOS and Android successes like Angry Birds and shit doesn't count.
 

[Legend932]

Minecraft is unique as in it's probably a one-off success that we will probably never see again, similar to Braid, Braid defined the indie platformer genre, (by that I mean a platformer centered around 1 mechanic) that game blew up, and since then there have been many more indie platformers that are better than braid that weren't as successful, soon enough a better game than minecraft will come out it

(of course won't be as successful as MC),and that's what I'm looking forward to, that's how it goes, 1 succeeds, others try to follow.

Also by the way, success on it's own doesn't necessarily mean that something is good,(Ehm, Lil Wayne? Almost all of the gangster rap nonsense we see today? pop music in general?)

Look at CoD for example (I know beating on the dead horse some more, but couldn't think of a better example off the top of my head) that franchise isn't successful because it's good, I play a lot of cod, I play cod everyday and i think that game is mediocre at best down right terrible at worst. And many people seem to share that opinion. (arguable and vague point, but you get the idea)

What I think is more important is mod support, on it's own minecraft isn't worth much without mods IMO,

maybe more devs should take notice of that too.

One last thing,

What do you mean exactly by ''-People help each other''? Does that mean a group of people cooperating and working together to achieve a goal? If so, many MP team based games do that already, nothing new there. of course most of these have a common goal, I'm assuming you meant by that people help you at something then you help them etc which is unique to sandbox type games, of which there aren't all that many, which is kind of disappointing.

[Konn]

Sorry but this will only work for a certain genre of games. 

[Irontheater]

Minecraft is a very unique success story and we will probably never see anything like it again. Big AAA producers have such a small margin of profit that they can't really step too far out of the box. Imagine how much more than those $300M they would have made if everyone who plays the game "pirated", I say "pirated" since Mojang are totally ok with people pirating it, thus making it less illegal, if not 100% legal.

No, iOS and Android successes like Angry Birds and shit doesn't count.

 

And you can pirate the game, but by doing so you won't be able to play online, which means missing out on almost everything.

 

 

 

 

Really i think why minecraft so big is the map is infinite (on pc at least) and how friendly the game is to mods

 

also that you pay one time for the game and future updates are free, the devs are constantly adding things. 

 

Mod support is definitely important, that's why I talked about having your own servers. That way you could tweak the game bit by bit to adjust it to your needs, add better stuff.. etc

Most games don't share their APIs/ don'thave mod tools, which limits the game's potential. 

 

 

Minecraft is unique as in it's probably a one-off success that we will probably never see again, similar to Braid, Braid defined the indie platformer genre, (by that I mean a platformer centered around 1 mechanic) that game blew up, and since then there have been many more indie platformers that are better than braid that weren't as successful, soon enough a better game than minecraft will come out it

(of course won't be as successful as MC),and that's what I'm looking forward to, that's how it goes, 1 succeeds, others try to follow.

Also by the way, success on it's own doesn't necessarily mean that something is good,(Ehm, Lil Wayne? Almost all of the gangster rap nonsense we see today? pop music in general?)

Look at CoD for example (I know beating on the dead horse some more, but couldn't think of a better example off the top of my head) that franchise isn't successful because it's good, I play a lot of cod, I play cod everyday and i think that game is mediocre at best down right terrible at worst. And many people seem to share that opinion. (arguable and vague point, but you get the idea)

What I think is more important is mod support, on it's own minecraft isn't worth much without mods IMO,

maybe more devs should take notice of that too.

One last thing,

What do you mean exactly by ''-People help each other''? Does that mean a group of people cooperating and working together to achieve a goal? If so, many MP team based games do that already, nothing new there. of course most of these have a common goal, I'm assuming you meant by that people help you at something then you help them etc which is unique to sandbox type games, of which there aren't all that many, which is kind of disappointing.

 

It's pretty obvious that when people make knock-offs off of the initial game, they won't be as successful.

 

More players bring in more players. Why go buy a game that has not user base while everybody knows that 10M players are already on that other game...

 

Technically, you cannot compare CoD to a successful game. You shouldn't.

Minecraft had close to 0 hype pre-release, no one had known its potential.

The huge marketing and hype campaigns as well as just people being used to go every end of November stand in line to wait for that new CoD made it a successful game. It's not for any other reason.

 

 

What I meant by: People helping each others was that even when it was not necessary, people would help, which would just entice closer bonds between the players.

In other games, people "help" because it is necessary in order to win. 

There are no side objectives that would just group people for a single non elementary objective. 

Why this is necessary brings me to my next point:

 

What makes a new game popular? If it wasn't hyped, and was not produced by a known developers.

-Players that are new to the game. (NEW)

-Players that are already playing this game. (OLD)

 

In a Perfect situation: The number of players that are OLD in game, should be stable, while the number of NEW players should go up. (which results in the total number of players going up).

 

Bringing in new players: This relies on the game catering to an existing crowd of players, and having a good first impression. Easy things to do, things you can easily learn, mostly Solo play. PvP would fit the definition.

 

Keeping old players: There is one thing that keeps people playing a game for over 300-400 hours. It's not the gameplay, not the creativness, not the graphics, or the design. It's friends.

Any game will become repetitive if you didn't have a set of friends to play it with, and with all the new mmo-fps games that put you each time in a different server, with a different set of people, it's almost impossible to guide your through.

Of course, dev support is important in order not to make the community feel abandoned. 

 

 

What fps games could do is add side objectives to PvP in order to heighten up team work that's "just for the sake of helping". Protecting a particular player, keeping someone alive, taking ---- thing from somewhere during the fight..etc would all bring pvp fps and rpg-type games closer.

If people enjoyed these stuff, then they would start to slowly understand what they could do in the "free roam" rpg-like world.

 

 

Maybe what I am talking about is a particular game, I can't be sure, but I would believe that stuff like this would add depth to a game that is essentially story-less.

[Blade of Grass]

Yeah, I really like by the fact that mine craft is a "pointless game". You can do whatever you want and set your own objectives.