Today we bring you another sticker-covered page from the secret diary of Swedish indie dev sensation Mojang, the creators of Minecraft and arbiters of bacon.
Fellow fans of PC Gamer! The time has come for yet another update on the subject of daily life at Mojang.
Some time during Saturday, April 23, Minecraft raced past a new milestone as it passed 2 million sales. Obviously, this called for celebration, so the Mojang crew hit the town for a night of poorly-controlled fun! After dinner, a couple of the guys from 2 Player Productions showed up to join the celebrations and as it turned out, they too were magnificently bad at controlled fun and we were all happy they left their cameras at home.
Speaking of 2PP, they are back in Stockholm to continue shooting the documentary about us. For those who are unfamiliar with them, 2 Player Productions is a video and production team who contacted us in October last year and asked if they could do a small documentary about Minecraft. We accepted, so they flew over from Portland and followed us around for a week. The result of that can be found here (yes, I do go public with the fact that my two-year-old sucks at Mario Kart in it, but I assure you that he got that from his mothers side!).
As it turned out, the audience approved of the documentary and 2PP managed to raise money to do a full length version about us. It is weird to have that kind of attention as we really are but mere game developers, but at the same time we are very appreciative for it as it enables us to keep doing what we love: develop games!
On that topic, whats going on with the development?
Minecraft
Minecraft was bumped to beta 1.5 a couple of weeks ago and introduced statistics, achievements and weather among other things. A fun side note about the weather is that lightning can effect creatures if they are struck by it. So if you see a blue glowing Creeper, run. Seriously, I really do mean it. Run!
In the 1.6 patch, we'll introduce maps ! Maps will start out as a blank parchment and you will need to have it in your hand and move around for it to be filled in. You will also be able to copy maps from your friends to save yourself from the back breaking work of filling it in. Nifty, huh? Apart from maps, 1.6 will contain a huge bunch of bug fixes to make the game more stable.
Scrolls
The development of Scrolls is moving along nicely. We recently signed a contract with two awesome indie game musicians to make the music for it. Check out some of their work at http://anosou.com/ ( @anosou ) and http://jwmusic.org/ ( @soundofjw ). The stuff I have heard so far are nothing short of awesome and we are very happy to have them on board.
We are still a bit hesitant to set a release date. I know many of you are craving for one, and hopefully it will not be long before we can give it to you along with more information, screenshots and other related stuff.
Finally, last bit of information about the office renovation. It is done! As a result of this, we will be having a office warming party for ourselves and our 80 closest friends or so. I am sure you will get to see some pictures from it on twitter or at the very least in the documentary as 2PP will attend, cameras in hand.
Until next time!
Jakob Porser
Game Developer, Mojang
twitter.com/notch - Markus Persson, Game Developer
twitter.com/JahKob - Jakob Porser, Game Developer
twitter.com/carlmanneh - Carl Manneh, CEO
twitter.com/kappische - Daniel Kaplan, Business Developer
twitter.com/jeb_ - Jens Bergensten, Game Developer
twitter.com/mollstam - Tobias Möllstam, Front End Developer
twitter.com/jnkboy - Markus Toivonen, Graphical Artist
twitter.com/danfrisk - Daniel Frisk, Chief Architect
