Minecraft, a strange game (classmate link)

Hey guys, today I wanted to talk about a very strange game: Minecraft.

Minecraft is not actually a game in the sense that it has no storyline, no characters, no objectives, nothing.
Just as me, you may be thinking, well, why is it popular then? Minecraft is nothing more than a sandbox, where the main and basically only feature is construction. The game has no manual, tutorial or any other kind of learning experience for the player, it simply shoves you into the world and you need to fend for yourself. There is only one thing to do, mine caves. Players mine caves, and can then use the materials gathered to build anything they want. The possibilities are quite limited as far as material options goes, but hey, if you want to build a giant castle out of nothing but rock you don't really need much else but... well, rocks. The game has graphics worthy of a 1989 video game, and a basically non-existent physics engine, with nothing but basic water interaction, and not much else, it astounds me how this game has become so popular.



The creator of the game took a week to develop it, were talking about one man, and 7 days to produce a game, and yet it has over 700,000 customers who have all paid $15 to play this game. Now, I will concede to the creator that the game is put simply, fun. Building things is very fun, and very rewarding if you mined every single one of your two thousand square blocks to build your castle, the game does provide a sense of self-fulfillment and I have seen very impressive works of art made in-game. However, I do not believe this game gets even close to being worth $15, and it amazes me that so many people have bought it, a crappy, empty game. I would also like to take the opportunity to link to Calvin's blog, where he has some intersting thisngs to say about pricing strategies:  http://blogs.ubc.ca/calvinkwok/2010/11/12/43/

Anyway, the point I wanted to make is, even though this game has had no advertisements, no marketing campaign. The only two things this game relied on to get popular was product and price. The product, we have established, is... crappy. Entertaining, but crappy, very crappy. Why oh why would a crappy game charge $15, are they crazy? Well, what I believe is that this is actually the reason the game became popular. By slapping a $15 price tag on it, consumers automatically assume a certain level of quality. This makes the game stand out from the rest of the crappy, independent games, and then keeps its fan base by providing a virtual Lego game, where you mine your own Lego blocks. As you can see from the image above, Lego Rock Raiders, a game quite similar in some ways to Minecraft, had better graphics, and it was released more than 10 years ago.




In short, did not like this game at all and I think it is nowhere near deserving of the amount of money it has made.

Cataclysm

Free MMOS: Vindictus (Mabinogi Heroes)

    Ok guys, todays post will be about Free MMORPGs vs Pay-to play MMORPGs. To those who dont know what the hell I'm talking about, MMORPG stands for massive multiplayer online roleplaying game. Games such as World of Warcraft, Silkroad and Guild Wars are classified as MMORPGs. The wikipedia definition for MMORPG is: "is a genre of computer role-playing games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world. As in all RPGs, players assume the role of a character (often in a fantasy world) and take control over many of that character's actions.^[1] MMORPGs are distinguished from single-player or small multi-player RPGs by the number of players, and by the game's persistent world, usually hosted by the game's publisher, which continues to exist and evolve while the player is away from the game."
They can then be classified as FTP(free to play) or PTP (pay to play) on the basis of whether or not the game has a monthly fee.

While, both free and pay-to-play games are popular, the crowds that play them are worlds apart. In general, the Asian community prefers FTP, while the American commuity prefers PTP. It has come to such an extent that FTP games in Asia are PTP in America. Why would a company spend millions of dollars developing a game and then make it free to play? Well, they can count on more players trying them out, since they are risk-free, and have a wide range of options unlocked just because of this. Many rely on advertising, others make it so the game is free, but certain special items can only acquired by purchasing online. 

I have found that in America, free to play games are usually not even considered on the basis that since they are free, they are of poor quality. Asian FTP games have fought against this stereotype for years, and I believe FTP games are becoming more popular and in some instances are even better than their PTP counterparts, the example I wanted to give was Vindictus, a prequel to the popular FTP MMO Mabinogi. The game was released about 2 weeks ago, and I must say, they outdid themselves. The graphics are exceptional, the game play intense and the story deep, nay, epic. Now, I'm almost ashamed to admit I believed FTP games were inferior.