Day by day, Minecraft kept its insane level of popularity.
On major websites, anything related to Minecraft was pulling in crazy amounts of clicks.
Build videos, funny clips, and beginner guides flooded the internet.
Game designers everywhere felt like they were seeing ghosts.
...
After the New Year holiday, Nebula Games employees gradually returned to work.
At this moment, Hector, Rachel, and Anna were standing behind Lucas, curiously looking at the screen.
On it, Steve was sitting inside a tank, facing off against a huge boss with a health bar displayed above its head.
The game was very simple: the player sat in the tank, fired at the giant monster, and dodged TNT bombs the monster dropped.
It was crude, but what amazed them was that this MOD wasn't made by Lucas — it was created by Minecraft players.
After release, it quickly became the most downloaded MOD right after Lucas's earlier build showcase MODs.
In just one day, it reached two million downloads.
"You can actually drive a tank and fight bosses in Minecraft?!" Rachel exclaimed.
"Not just tanks and bosses. In theory, RPGs, racing, FPS — all kinds of game types can be recreated in Minecraft using its rules," Lucas said with a smile.
Of course, the actual feel would never match a real FPS, RPG, or racing game in terms of polish and content.
But the point was, did players really care about perfect gameplay in Minecraft?
What they cared about was the fact that Minecraft could even be played this way.
They enjoyed the uniqueness of it.
It was just like how some players love messing around in normal games, but in adult games they get absorbed in story and philosophy.
Did they really care about the story or philosophy?
Not really — they just wanted something different.
That's human nature.
Lucas had originally planned to secretly release some special modes himself — like hide and seek or master builder.
But now it was clear he had underestimated the creativity of the players.
This "Tank Battle vs Evil Monster" MOD was simple, but it had clearly opened a new door for Minecraft players.
Lucas believed it wouldn't take long before even more unique MODs appeared.
"The rest is no longer our job. Let the players handle it. But we must make sure the community and the game environment are well-maintained!" Lucas told the operations team.
For them, the focus wasn't really on adding game content.
The bigger job was keeping the community healthy.
If players engaged in personal attacks or insults, they would face punishments: warnings, temporary mutes, temporary bans from online play, or in extreme cases, permanent bans.
Of course, unless someone really pushed it, permanent bans were rare.
At most it would just be a temporary mute.
Hearing Lucas's words, the operations team nodded.
"Also, Lisa, collect information about what's happening on different online servers. Later, we can make it into a Minecraft documentary series, recording the game's history. That can include all the jokes and trends in the player community too. For example, the first player who dug three blocks at night and filled one back in, or the first player who didn't build a house and instead put their bed in a cave or mine. All of that can be made into a documentary, as part of the history and memories of Minecraft players." Lucas said to Lisa.
Lucas was very clear about how long Minecraft could last. Even ten years after release, its player base kept growing every year, and it kept setting new records for active players.
In his past life it even sold 230 million copies, becoming the best-selling game in the world, and that number was still going up.
You could say this game was nothing short of a miracle.
So when it came to the official community and maintaining the game's atmosphere, Lucas naturally took it very seriously.
"Also, we can start planning a mobile version of Minecraft, and even a VR version," Lucas said to Hector and the others.
The mobile version would share data with the PC version.
That meant if you bought the PC version, you could also play the mobile one.
But because of platform and hardware limits, the mobile version would have a lot of cut-down content compared to the PC.
First, the graphics would obviously be downgraded—there was no way mobile could match PC visuals.
Second, the controls would be more annoying, since players would have to use touch screens and virtual joysticks.
And on top of that, some modes like showcase mode or online servers wouldn't really work well on mobile.
Mods were another issue. Even though the core game and data were the same, the performance limits meant many mods that ran fine on PC wouldn't work on mobile.
The only real advantage of the mobile version was that almost everyone had a phone, so they could play Minecraft anywhere, anytime.
As for the VR version, that was actually easier.
It could even show better graphics than the PC version—at least if you only counted the default settings.
Of course, if you wanted the absolute best graphics, both PC and VR could be pushed with custom mods, depending only on how much money you were willing to spend.
But in terms of mainstream setups, VR was already a bit ahead of PC.
So all of Minecraft's content could be copied over to VR.
What was needed was just to adapt the controls for VR, since playing with sensors in a VR setup wasn't the same as playing on PC.
Unlike the mobile version, though, the VR version would definitely require a separate purchase.
(End of The Chapter)
---
Read +100 advanced chapters on my patre*n
patr eon.com/GustinaKamiya
Free Tier can read 3 advanced chapters
---