#1 Event Review
Before you start discussing the problem, review what happened. On 5.9, Slicedlime announced that the development team was busy with something else, which delayed the release of this week’s snapshot by one day, that is on 12.5. Since ticket skipping has become a daily routine, few people care.
On May 11, Mojang released the latest issue of the “Ask Mojang” series of videos, clarifying that “Firefly” will not be added because it is toxic to Frog; as for the “better birch forest” in the concept map, it will only exist in the concept map, and there will be no improvement. These two features were not added to the “The Wild Update” in the end, causing some Player dissatisfaction. Afterwards, on the Twitter, more and more Player began to complain that the current update content of “The Wild Update” could not fulfill the promise made at the MineconEarth Live Conference. Some users even opened a “#WeNeedARealWildUpdate” discussion area to criticize Mojang for failing to live up to their expectations. The following figure shows some messages:
#2 Extended Interpretation
According to my observation, several recent updates have not received good feedback. The main reason is that Mojang (hereinafter referred to as the official) has changed its attitude towards new content-he does not want to spend more time focusing on introducing and improving new features. Instead, he chose a “quick iteration of the version” method, this makes the “Cave and Cliff” update actually split into three versions 1.17-1.19.
Usually, officials will hold an annual “live broadcast conference” six months before the release of the first snapshot of the next update to announce the main new content of the next update. In the early days, the official practice was to first publish a small part (or the main content) of the new features as appetizers, and then introduce more new features in the subsequent snapshots to make this update more substantial. As a result, these updates have basically been well received by Player groups. In 2020, after the “The Nether Update” is released, it is time to announce the new features of the next major update. What is different from the past is that this live broadcast announced the theme of the next major update at the beginning. At the live broadcast conference, a large number of new features were officially announced, including biological voting, renovation of caves and cliffs, Deep Dark series, and archaeological features. Obviously, the scope of this update has become larger, and many Player are beginning to expect new content.
However, the ideal is plump and the reality is bony. In fact, the 1.17 did not update the “caves and cliffs”, but only added a small number of features such as new squares, objects and creatures, and the remaining (main) features were postponed to the 1.18, which has caused a lot of Player Dissatisfaction. On the other hand, for Mod creators, 1.17 has become a transitional version. Frequent version updates make it take them more time to adapt to the game version. At the live broadcast conference in 2021, in addition to the regular biological voting, the official promised to implement the “Cave and Cliff” update as soon as possible, and to postpone the characteristics of the Deep Dark series again, and join the update of the swamp group, Become a new “The Wild Update” and release the corresponding concept map. As for the characteristics of archaeology, it was not mentioned at all at this live broadcast conference, and there was no related content in the subsequent update. It can basically be judged that it will not be realized. At this time, many Player have begun to feel disappointed with the new content.
At present, the features of “The Wild Update” have basically been updated. However, the only features added so far are the Deep Dark series and the update of the swamp. As mentioned in the first part of this article, some features such as “firefly” and “birch forest update” have not been realized in the end, so many Player begin to feel that “I have been cheated” and “The Wild Update that’s all?” “Please give us a real The Wild Update”. The main reasons are Player over-interpretation and “fantasy” of new features, general official descriptions and obstacles from some technical problems. Here I would like to compare the conceptual art map with the actual screenshot:
(in order: concept map of birch forest; screenshots of birch forest games; concept map of mangrove swamp; screenshots of mangrove swamp games.)
is quite a comparison between a seller’s show and a buyer’s show, isn’t it? Perhaps many new Player will be attracted by the concept map to come to play Minecraft, and then find that “the quality of the game is seriously inconsistent with the publicity map” and give bad reviews, which will have a negative impact on the sales and even reputation of the game. At the same time, this is also a point that many Player complain about-the conceptual art map is too different from the picture in the game. Although the official has not made it clear that the concept art map is the actual picture in the game, it will still cause misleading to a certain extent. Can we say that Mojang has failed to live up to Player expectations and Mojang is developing in the direction of abandoning the community?
An important idea of management is to “do the right thing in the right way”. First of all, let’s discuss whether it is appropriate for the government to split a large version into three small versions. Before answering this question, consider the recent updates and rhythm.
in the period of 1.8-1.9, the government is not in a hurry to release the official version as soon as possible, but focuses on the construction of new content, the improvement of technical content and the repair of loopholes. Of course, the final result is that the game will not become “unstable” when the new content is fully realized, which sacrifices time but obtains greater output. Most Player have positive comments on these two versions.
in the period of 1.10-1.11, the official began to change direction, so that these two versions received relatively little new content, but the release time of the official version was greatly shortened, making updates overwhelmed. The stability of the game is not guaranteed. Nevertheless, most Player still have enough positive comments on these two versions.
in the period of 1.12-1.14, the government has become in no hurry to release the official version as soon as possible. Each official version has received a lot of “polishing” work. Also at the expense of time and Efficiency, each version has received satisfactory updates, and there are no obvious vicious loopholes. Most Player still have positive comments on these versions. 1.15-1.16
is the first attempt to split the new features. It puts Bee related features separately in an official version and cooperates with some technical improvements to make it a transitional version. And in the 1.16, all the features of “The Nether update” are fully realized. Although 1.15 are transitional versions, most Player still have positive comments on these versions, making the Mod community one of the most popular versions.
during the 1.17-1.19 period, in following the 1.15-1.16 approach, the government once again changed its approach, splitting the original “cave and cliff” characteristics into stages of the 3 (although the government claims that it is two stages, in fact, some of the characteristics are arranged in the “The Wild Update”), and there are signs of weakening and deleting some characteristics. It is precisely because of this that Player negative comments began to dominate, making the 1.17 a much criticized transitional version.
In summary, the official approach constitutes a peculiar phenomenon-on-demand selection on “content” and “Efficiency”, that is, from time to time release large versions, and from time to time release transitional small versions. I can’t guess the reason. Considering only this single factor, this approach seems to be effective, but as the Player group gradually expands and over time, the problem exposed by this approach becomes increasingly prominent-should the Player keep the latest version or stick to the old version for the next major update? This is very affecting content creators such as texture resources, Map archives and Mod. In addition, although this phenomenon of choice has been presented, it is still impossible to determine 1.20 the next update can obtain and 1.16 a large number of updates. Split a big version into three small versions for updating. I personally hold negative comments-I don’t want to make the new content “shoddy” or even violate the promise made at the live broadcast conference because I am eager to launch updates or fast iteration of the version. I hope that the government can sacrifice time to polish the new content, and at the same time fully consider the opinions of the community and make improvements, finally, the official version was released.
, after discussing the issue of version update, let’s discuss the attitude of the official team towards game development. Before being acquired by Microsoft, the government basically focused on the construction of new content for the Java version. Because there are too many platforms, various platforms have their own independent versions, making the development of the version in a fragmented state. At this time, the Minecraft has only one game, no derivatives. The acquisition by Microsoft was a huge turning point. In the subsequent updates, the Java version gradually lost its dominant position, and the original versions of various platforms gradually merged into a unified version, which is what we call the “Bedrock version”. While
in the Bedrock version is gradually catching up with the Java version update Advancement, the government has begun to consider making Minecraft an IP, starting to develop new games, and achieving preliminary results. Unfortunately, the Minecraft Earth was forced to shut down due to the epidemic, the story mode was suspended due to the closure of the outsourcing company, and the underground city was in a “rotten” state due to the completion of the main plot and the DLC content, which made these games not healthy. Development or even aborted, to a certain extent, affected the development Advancement and sustainability of the Minecraft ontology. I can conclude that future updates will be given priority to the Bedrock version, because the Bedrock version has a larger Player group and Microsoft’s “strong” support for the development of the Bedrock version. Due to the shift in the focus of the version, the development direction of the game has also begun to shift, making the addition of new content no longer important. The more important thing has been replaced by the “community building” under the leadership of Microsoft-the various DLC in the mall, and the recent influential “Rendering Dragon” event are the epitome of this.
To sum up, we can draw a conclusion: the government is no longer focusing on the development of new content and new features of the game, but turning to the construction of community content, although the current community does not buy it. By the way, there may be more derivative games such as dungeons in the future, and the composition of community members will gradually become more complicated.
After discussing the official team’s attitude towards game development, let’s discuss the last point-the future direction of Minecraft development. Following the above two discussion points, we can roughly judge what the Minecraft will update in the future. First of all, it must be admitted that the government is no longer focusing on adding new features to the Minecraft. In other words, future updates may become more and more boring. The new content of the next version mentioned in the live broadcast conference may no longer become so attractive, and faces the risk of “cancellation of this feature due to technical problems” (don’t forget that we also have the functions of arrow platform and storage bag, and the new combat mechanism has not yet been realized). The updated content of
1.20 has not been released yet, but at least for me personally, there is not much expectation. The speculation about the next content is just a guess-there is no official report, everything is just speculation, including the current so-called “sky update”, “ancient city new transmission Door and new Dimension” are all guesses, as a block The moderator of the newsletter version is very reluctant to see these unsupported speculations (even rumors) spread among Player groups, this greatly reduces everyone’s judgment on external fragmented information, and even reduces the ability to think independently because of this. On the other hand, greed is human nature, but it has no right or wrong, but because of human sociality, greed gradually becomes negative and more against ethics. It is difficult for us to return to the previous state of satisfaction. We can no longer experience the satisfaction and happiness of the portable version of 0.10.5. Therefore, all we can do is look back at the past, grasp the present and look forward to the future.
to sum up, the future development direction of Minecraft has become more and more uncertain, and pessimistically estimates that it may be in a state of stagnation for a long time, or that future updates will no longer become attractive. On the other hand, the Player community will become more and more sticky to the version, which makes the Mod community present a thriving scene, thus making more and more Player more inclined to choose such as 1.12.2 and 1.16.5. Long-term supported versions to play games (and match various Mod to cater to their own preferences), only for the development of new content, this is a negative impact.
#3 Conclusion
Management also taught us another important idea: “The result of things is not caused by a single phenomenon, it is the result of many factors intertwined”. Based on the existing information, it is still difficult to determine whether Mojang made a wrong decision. From a Player point of view, we do not have any official “internal information” to discuss the feasibility of official decisions in key areas such as human resources, company operations, financial indicators, decision support systems, public relations, and strategic policies. I believe that there must be some “unspeakable” in the official doing so now, but it is impossible to explain to the general Player through formal channels why they did so and the consequences of not doing so (I believe it is the pressure exerted by Microsoft). I will make a brief summary of the above description:
Unlike in the past, the Java version is no longer a “version” of the scene, and will become less and less of a presence, and eventually will be cross-platform, more widely used bedrock version of the replacement, or may even be completely replaced;
The pace of updates will be faster and less new content will be added each time, because the development of new content is no longer an official priority, in the future, officials will focus more on community culture, Brand Communication, public relations and other aspects of the building;
Minecraft is not just a single game anymore, it’s going to evolve into what we call “IP” in the future, which is going to evolve from a game into a separate brand, and it’s going to generate more spin-offs in the future, we’ll see;
The future of Minecraft is becoming more complex and unpredictable, as we live in a “Vuca” world today, the MOD community will continue to grow and become an increasingly negative influence on the development of the original game (I would point out that the Mod community is also to be respected, so this article is neutral)
Basically, any decision Mojang makes is subject to Microsoft. Since the acquisition, Mojang has gradually lost its independence, which can be seen in its decision-making on major issues (which, incidentally, explains why the bedrock edition has been slow to get a proper translation) . In any case, the decision is ultimately up to Microsoft.
Finally, I very much hope that Mojang can give us a real “The Wild Update”, even if it takes more time to polish and improve. Due to the limited space of this article, there will be no more discussion here. I will consider writing another review in the future to explore more details.