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[Nirolak]

Back when Mojang was first acquired, it was mentioned that over half the staff there was working on games that weren't Minecraft.

However, in an interview today with someone who was leaving the studio, they said this:

Minecraft is now so popular and far-reaching it can feel like it's been around forever, but its rise to ubiquity played out in considerably less than a decade.

Daniel Kaplan was there for almost every day of that remarkable journey. He was the first Mojang employee hired by Markus "Notch" Persson in 2010, a year after the company was founded and just a few months after the launch of Minecraft's alpha version. What happened since is one of the great success stories in the history of this industry, and as business developer, producer and production director Kaplan has played an essential role in getting Minecraft to where it is today.

However, just as Persson decided to step away from the company in 2014, Mojang's employee #1 has also decided it's time to move on.

"It's very emotional," Kaplan says, speaking exclusively to GamesIndustry.biz. "It was hard to come to this conclusion. Minecraft has been great. It's still Minecraft, we're still doing cool stuff with Minecraft, but I wanted to explore other ideas as well."

...

Source: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-07-27-daniel-kaplan-leaves-mojang-for-coffee-stain

The implication there seems to be that they're not doing anything that's not Minecraft?

 

[Guymelef]

Nobody should be surprised.

 

[Pudge]

That would match up considering that Microsoft seems to think that a studio can only work on one franchise at a time.

 

[Shiggy]

Isn't that what Microsoft has been doing with all of their studios - have them focus on a single IP?

 

[Mikey Jr.]

Back when Mojang was first acquired, it was mentioned that over half the staff there was working on games that weren't Minecraft.

However, in an interview today with someone who was leaving the studio, they said this:


Source: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-07-27-daniel-kaplan-leaves-mojang-for-coffee-stain

The implication there seems to be that they're not doing anything that's not Minecraft?

Well duh. Kind of MS m.o., isn't it?

 

[sirap]

I wouldn't be surprised if this was true.

 

[black070]

Sounds about right.

 

[LewieP]

This thread reminded me of Cobalt and I guess it came out last year!

 

[CertifiedFP]

Microsoft's model is that a studio is a Franchise Factory. So of course, their non-Minecraft projects got canned.

 

[LordBaztion]

I haven't read the whole article but Cobalt came out last year. I wouldn't be surprise if other projects were canceled, though.

 

[meirl]

what about Cobalt?

 

[Keinning]

It says nothing about a game in production being canceled, just that one person wanted to make something else and then left.

But i'm sure this thread will go well

 

[arhra]

The only other publicly-known Mojang project was Cobalt, but that released back in 2016.

 

[Wereroku]

what about Cobalt?

Cobalt was made by a different developer. I think Mojang just published it.

 

[blakep267]

Scrolls was shut down shortly after it released and cobalt came out a year or 2 ago and nobody cared. Meanwhile MC is growing at a crazy rate

 

[goldenpp72]

Prolly

 

[LastGamer84]

MS, forcing an acquired dev to work on one property?

I can't believe such a thing.

 

[CitizenVectron]

Nothing else they could develop in-house would ever be as good a return as just continuing working on Minecraft, so it's understandable (if unfortunate for the developers).

 

[Rellik]

This thread reminded me of Cobalt and I guess it came out last year!

It says on that page that they only published it.

 

[FaustusMD]

Nothing they can make will match Minecraft so from a business standpoint I do get it.

 

[Peltz]

Nothing else they could develop in-house would ever be as good a return as just continuing working on Minecraft, so it's understandable (if unfortunate for the developers).

Well... we'll never know for sure.

 

[LewieP]

It says on that page that they only published it.

Yes I can read too. Do you think they will continue to publish other developers games in the future, or do you think that they are headed in a different direction?

 

[Bits N Pieces]

200 staff working on the biggest game on the planet sounds about right, they have dipped their toes into really small games like Cobalt, Crown and Council and Scrolls but why do that when Minecraft the beast keeps getting bigger and new partnerships are being developed all the time?

 

[SafeinSound]

Kind of a bummer but not really all that shocking. Just look at how many developers activison has working on call of duty.

 

[CertifiedFP]

Yes I can read too. Do you think they will continue to publish other developers games in the future, or do you think that they are headed in a different direction?

Their involvement with Cobalt predated Microsoft buying them. Probably had some contractual obligations, and Microsoft didn't want to bother with a Breach of Contract settlement.

 

[DeathoftheEndless]

Well... we'll never know for sure.

We'll have to live with the infinitesimal amount of uncertainty.

 

[c0de]

Well... we'll never know for sure.

I guess we can agree that this is at least highly unlikely, though.

 

[Prophaniti]

When you spend a billion on something you probably want to make that a focus.

 

[JlNX]

Their involvement with Cobalt predated Microsoft buying them. Probably had some contractual obligations, and Microsoft didn't want to bother with a Breach of Contract settlement.

It was actually the lead designer at Mojang Jens Bergensten's game, that he was making with friends. Not sure if his friends also work at Mojang, probably more along the lines to keep the team happy.

 

[FonkyByNature]

One studio, one franchise, one desire...

 

[LewieP]

Their involvement with Cobalt predated Microsoft buying them. Probably had some contractual obligations, and Microsoft didn't want to bother with a Breach of Contract settlement.

Yes. The point being that post-MS acquisition they (apparently) are going in a different direction.

I wouldn't read too much into this one guy leaving, but I would suspect that their direction has changed since MS bought them (obviously, otherwise MS wouldn't have bought them).

 

[Jaguar Victory]

They'll make more money porting Minecraft than rolling the dice on something new. Opportunity cost is in favor of keeping Minecraft relevant.

 

[paulogy]

You don't service games-as-a-service by making new and exciting IP, right?

 

[Keinning]

You don't service games-as-a-service by making new and exciting IP, right?

You dont spend a billion on a company known for one game to tell them to make something else

Minecraft is a mammoth. Several platforms, mobile, VR, educational projects. It makes way more sense for a small company like Mojang to be focused on just that than 343i and Coalition to be focused on just one thing. This is hardly offensive or surprising. Dude wanted to do new stuff and left, its his right.

Microsoft is painfully single-minded

They literally name developers for the franchise they will be required to make. All their devs have been converted to milking one dying franchise each

No other options

343 devs have to make Halo
Coalition has to make Gears
Turn10 has to make Forza
Mojang has to make Minecraft
Lionhead has to make Fabl- oh

Are you being dense on purpose
Microsoft bought Mojang which was already a one-game company by that point

And all the "milking" they're doing is releasing version for other platforms and supporting it. if anything people are asking for minecraft 2 way more than they are interested in doing it

 

[peppers]

It wouldn't surprise me, but at the same time I imagine projects get cancelled every other month in videogame studios.

 

[DOWN]

Microsoft is painfully single-minded

They literally name developers for the franchise they will be required to make. All their devs have been converted to milking one dying franchise each

No other options for creative devs except to not have the job at all. Very different from Sony where very few of their studios haven’t tried doing something else

343 devs have to make Halo
Coalition has to make Gears
Turn10 has to make Forza
Mojang has to make Minecraft
Lionhead has to make Fabl- oh

 

[Shil Pencer]

This is a situation where I believe the studio should keep its focus on minecraft until the money train crashes

 

[Blam]

Microsoft is painfully single-minded

They literally name developers for the franchise they will be required to make. All their devs have been converted to milking one dying franchise each

No other options for creative devs except to not have the job at all. Very different from Sony where very few of their studios haven't tried doing something else

343 devs have to make Halo
Coalition has to make Gears
Turn10 has to make Forza
Mojang has to make Minecraft
Lionhead has to make Fabl- oh

I mean they didn't name Mojang or Lionhead I'm pretty sure.

This is a situation where I believe the studio should keep its focus on minecraft until the money train crashes

:thinking:

 

[Yearsoflurking]

This is a situation where I believe the studio should keep its focus on minecraft until the money train crashes

I'm sure they'll do small side projects like cobalt

 

[Berordn]

Lionhead has to make Fabl- oh

I mean, this right here. We already have an example of why this doesn't work, and we see shades of it at other companies (Sonic Team isn't even exclusively tied to making Sonic games and we can still see their fatigue from having to pump them out regularly).

 

[Instro]

I would assume so. They bought the company and IP for a ton of money, they are going to want to milk it into oblivion.

 

[Chobel]

Definitely. It's the typical MS m.o. for handling their internal studios, but I wouldn't be surprised if any other publisher would have done the same.

 

[theWB27]

I would assume so. They bought the company and IP for a ton of money, they are going to want to milk it into oblivion.

Soooooo.....Mojang were pumping out new IP's before Microsoft bought them? Cause I remember them milking Minecraft before they were bought up.

 

[DOWN]

I mean they didn't name Mojang or Lionhead I'm pretty sure.



:thinking:

They didn’t nor was I saying they named those specifically

 

[MUnited83]

Not sure what would even be the of making them work on anything else. Minecraft spin offs maybe, but nothing that doesn't have Minecraft in the title. That would just be a waste of money for MS.

 

[Yearsoflurking]

Soooooo.....Mojang were pumping out new IP's before Microsoft bought them? Cause I remember them milking Minecraft before they were bought up.

Notch had a bunch of failed ips in the vault. They weren't working on anything basically.

 

[chronic_archaic]

Microsoft is painfully single-minded

They literally name developers for the franchise they will be required to make. All their devs have been converted to milking one dying franchise each

No other options for creative devs except to not have the job at all. Very different from Sony where very few of their studios haven't tried doing something else

343 devs have to make Halo
Coalition has to make Gears
Turn10 has to make Forza
Mojang has to make Minecraft
Lionhead has to make Fabl- oh

I wouldn't call Forza dying - it's sort of niche to begin with and I think it turns out sales similar every year - and Playground is doing a new IP and the Horizon games have been critically well received every time around, With that said, they do have a tendency to do this but it's not like it's unheard of in the industry. Most of Activision's devs only work on Call of Duty - Naughty Dog used to be a sequel machine every generation until they did The Last of Us and of course HAL Laboratory does Kirby. There are quite a few examples.

 

[Triggerhappytel]

Well, Notch's experimental 3xC10 game or whatever it was called never took off.

Scrolls was a big fat flop, besides all the trademark issues.

Then they have Minecraft, which is a cultural phenomenon and has sold, what, 120 million copies? So it would not surprise me if MS wants them to 100% focus on that and scrap anything else, plus it fits with MS/Xbox's current focus of GAAS and having each studio tied to only one franchise.

 

[theWB27]

Notch had a bunch of failed ips in the vault. They weren't working on anything basically.

I just find it funny Microsoft gets shitted on for keeping doing what the entire industry does. Even studios with the freedom to create new IP's opt to create sequels more often than not. Not to mention we've reached a point where one failure sinks a studio.

 

[ElBoxyBrown]

I mean, this right here. We already have an example of why this doesn't work, and we see shades of it at other companies (Sonic Team isn't even exclusively tied to making Sonic games and we can still see their fatigue from having to pump them out regularly).

Mojang is good at maintaining Minecraft and bringing in the money. You don't want to fuck that up.