It's afternoon in Stockholm, and Jens Bergensten is compiling Cobalt. Created by indie studio Oxeye, it's Minecraft developer Mojang's first third-party game. It's due to be released sometime today, though the team isn't quite sure when.
The game is a bit of a mess, actually, but today is the day -- the team has committed to get it out before Christmas, and Mojang's web developer is about to go on vacation. So Bergensten, who recently took the reins as lead developer on Minecraft, skips lunch and continues working.
Today Gamasutra visited Mojang's office and spoke to Mojang CEO Carl Manneh (pictured right, on the cover of a Swedish financial magazine) about the release. He told us that publishing has always been in the plans from the earliest strategy meetings after the company was founded, but he also said the company avoids the word "publishing" as much as possible.
"It's just a word that when people hear 'publishing', they have some preconceptions of it, and we don't agree with all of that," he says. "It's so loaded, and the word breathes 'old model', and we want to reinvent the publishing model in a way that fits for Mojang."
However, he says, "from the very beginning we saw this massive opportunity of people who are interested in Minecraft, and we thought we want to make more games. And it would even be possible to accelerate the amount of games, and add to our portfolio, if more people make them."
But not just any game is right for Mojang. "We believe in a certain way of developing games, and releasing games, and especially engaging the community in a way like we did with Minecraft," he says.
"We want the companies to hold their own IP, and have control of it, and we will only work with people who we believe have very strong ideas of what they want to do with it -- and we don't want to interfere much with the creative aspects of it."
One requisite is games that release in the style of Minecraft: alpha, beta, full release. Cobalt is currently pretty shaky, and Bergensten joked that the first thing people will see on Monday is a patch for the game, to be created over the coming weekend, to address issues he knows he can't solve by launch today... whenever that is.
Bergensten works on Cobalt at Mojang HQ in Stockholm
However, Manneh doesn't think this is a problem. While some at Mojang think Cobalt isn't quite ready for release today, he says "how we want to work with it, it doesn't really matter. If we have clear communication that the game is not finished," he says, the audience, now turned onto this type of development cycle, will understand.
As with Minecraft, the game will be much cheaper now than in the future, so early adopters will be rewarded for their patience and willingness to experiment with a buggy game by a discount.
As far as finding games for Mojang to publish, well, that's a tricky process too. Bergensten has been close to Mojang since its earliest days and has taken over full-time development on Minecraft from lead developer Markus "Notch" Persson, so publishing his company's game is natural. What of the next title?
"Notch has a very strong opinion on games and he is very brilliant at knowing what a good game is," says Manneh. "A very close second is the team, because we will be working with them very closely -- it's almost the same as recruitment process," he said.
Manneh confirmed that Mojang has another published title in the works, though no details were made available to Gamasutra.
As of this writing, Cobalt has not yet launched -- but expect it sometime today at playcobalt.com.
Care to elaborate on what is "wrong"? The article talks about them releasing things the same way they released versions of Minecraft. Is that a bad plan? Releasing a preliminary version of a game, then patching the heck out of it to meet customer demands, seemed to work for Minecraft, Terraria, Magicka, Valley Without Wind... or (to a lesser extent) the X3 game series and Distant Worlds and (arguably) Starcraft II and Diablo III.
I prefer 1000% the way Mojang works, than dropping 70 euros for a game that reveals itself riddled with bugs and sometimes unplayable.
Mojang is doing it right. The customers have a very close relationship with the developers and both work together to make sure the game is the best it can be.
Agreed regarding the company. I get the feeling they're missing some key aspects with what they're doing. As an example - These early alpha and beta releases only really work for 'sandbox' games. That is to say, games that don't have a specific end goal and have a good replayability to them. The game needs to meet its most functional core features immediately. Cobalt must have this in place otherwise they'll risk loosing its entire fanbase due to such an early release with so many features yet to come.
You can't just apply this release early patch later business model to any game.
As for Notch, and I know I might reap the wraith of the Notch army, but I strongly believe he is actually quite a bad developer. Minecraft is without a doubt a genre bending game but lets be honest - Notch barely made an impact on the game since its release if you look at how long its been out for. The 1.0 release missed its mark on many promised features.
We've all witnessed more than several public childish tantrums from him as well.
All in all, I'll be surprised if Mojang continues to grow anywhere near as fast as it did with Minecraft, if at all. And I'll be even more surprised if Notch make any further positive influence on any projects other than bringing his fanbase with him.
I can see your point, but one big double edge to that is, take a look at how Blizzard works.
They tout that motto and pride them selves on it, and look at two of thier longest games
in production, Star Craft 2 & Diablo 3. Both games brim with polish but they are not that
starkly innovative at all for thier respective genre. Was SC2 really worth the wait, does it
satisfy over a decade of anticipation?? Not really. Diablo 3 looks good, but not great or does
truly anything starkly innovative. Game aficionado will tell you there are a handfull of games
that truly have innovated in both these genres and have offered fresh new feel and look
to the respective genre.
All in all what I saying is yes it is good to release a bugg, frustrating free game but not if it takes you over 5 years to make. It better be Last Guardien good and inmovative if its near five.
I am actually refreshed to see people think this is the wrong approach. Not because I agree or disagree, but because it shows that someone out there is willing to try something different.
This is the thing that indie and small companies can do. They have much more flexibility and capability to do whatever they want. Try things that don't work. Fail, and yet still survive, or succeed, and go on to do more things.
If the model does not work, it does not mean that 200 people will lose their jobs, that thousands of investors will suffer. The impact of this type of experiment is minimal and can only do good by the consumer by making it a closer more personal experience for the ongoing development of the game.
Decisions like this change how larger companies approach business because large companies can't afford to take the risk. The only reason we have a microscope on what these guys are doing is because they have already made an impact.
Sit back and watch it unfold, or get involved, play the game and see if it works. Or watch from outside and hope they fail. However you approach it everyone in the industry is going to learn from it.
Notch is shaping up to be a great next Steve Jobbs though, at least in spirit.
Mojang is doing it right. The customers have a very close relationship with the developers and both work together to make sure the game is the best it can be.
You can't just apply this release early patch later business model to any game.
As for Notch, and I know I might reap the wraith of the Notch army, but I strongly believe he is actually quite a bad developer. Minecraft is without a doubt a genre bending game but lets be honest - Notch barely made an impact on the game since its release if you look at how long its been out for. The 1.0 release missed its mark on many promised features.
We've all witnessed more than several public childish tantrums from him as well.
All in all, I'll be surprised if Mojang continues to grow anywhere near as fast as it did with Minecraft, if at all. And I'll be even more surprised if Notch make any further positive influence on any projects other than bringing his fanbase with him.
/[end cynical rant]
They tout that motto and pride them selves on it, and look at two of thier longest games
in production, Star Craft 2 & Diablo 3. Both games brim with polish but they are not that
starkly innovative at all for thier respective genre. Was SC2 really worth the wait, does it
satisfy over a decade of anticipation?? Not really. Diablo 3 looks good, but not great or does
truly anything starkly innovative. Game aficionado will tell you there are a handfull of games
that truly have innovated in both these genres and have offered fresh new feel and look
to the respective genre.
All in all what I saying is yes it is good to release a bugg, frustrating free game but not if it takes you over 5 years to make. It better be Last Guardien good and inmovative if its near five.
This is the thing that indie and small companies can do. They have much more flexibility and capability to do whatever they want. Try things that don't work. Fail, and yet still survive, or succeed, and go on to do more things.
If the model does not work, it does not mean that 200 people will lose their jobs, that thousands of investors will suffer. The impact of this type of experiment is minimal and can only do good by the consumer by making it a closer more personal experience for the ongoing development of the game.
Decisions like this change how larger companies approach business because large companies can't afford to take the risk. The only reason we have a microscope on what these guys are doing is because they have already made an impact.
Sit back and watch it unfold, or get involved, play the game and see if it works. Or watch from outside and hope they fail. However you approach it everyone in the industry is going to learn from it.