Markus-Persson posts

A little while ago 2 Player Productions announced it was working on a documentary on the making of Minecraft and of the hit sandbox games' creator Markus "Notch" Persson. Originally the plan was to make a small 20 minute film of the first week of Persson's Sweden-based game development studio Mojang Specifications but now 2 Player Productions have announced plans to turn its Minecraft documentary into a feature film-length project.

To that end, the team has launched a Kickstarter.com web page with the gold to raise a whopping $150,000 by Saturday, March 26. So far the team has already raised about $9,000 with about 32 days to go. You can check out a six minute snip of the feature film after the jump. In addition a 20 minute version of the Minecraft documentary can be found over at GameTrailers.com.

Minecraft continues to be one of the biggest hits in indie PC game history so you might expect that there is a lot of interest in both the game and the person who created it Markus "Notch" Persson (the guy in the picture above, in case you didn't know). This week it was revealed that a documentary on the indie sandbox game and the people behind it is being produced.

The folks behind the documentary are 2 Player Productions who have done a number of short documentaries centering on the game industry. They have also been hired by game publishers to create behind-the-scenes shorts on games. There's no specifics on exactly what we will see in this new production but we shouldn't have to wait long to find out; a "tweet" from 2 Player Productions states that it should be ready sometime in February.

[Via Joystiq]

Minecraft has proven to be the "little indie game that could" as the PC sandbox/adventure game created by Markus "Notch" Persson has continued to see steady sales with almost no marketing and no use of the typical PC download services. Today (in fact just a few minutes ago) Minecraft sold its 1 millionth digital copy, according to its stats page. That number is basically unheard of for a indie-made PC game and would be impressive for any PC exclusive game, period.

The game was first launched in an "alpha" stage in May 2009 which allowed people to buy the game and be assured they would get all of its future updates and expansions for free. Persson continued to update the game with new features but it took over a year for the game to reach 100,000 units sold. That would still be an impressive sales number for an indie PC game. However Minecraft rose rapidly in sales and popularity thanks to some well placed internet postings in the summer of 2010, including a rave review on Valve's Team Fortress 2 web site in July 2010. The game had sold 125,000 units in September but it only took just over four months for Minecraft to reach today's 1 million sales mark. Even when Minecraft moved into its beta stage last December (with a 25 percent raise in its price) sales of the game have yet to slow down.

While Persson was reportedly courted to join major developers like Valve and Bungie over the summer, he decided instead to stay in his native Sweden to launch his own indie game company Mojang Specifications. The company currently has six people, including Persson, on board where they work on improving and adding to Minecraft as well as a second, unnamed game project. In the meantime Minecraft itself is technically still not yet completed. Recently Persson stated that they were looking to finally "complete" the game by the end of 2011.

Minecraft continues to defy expectations for a game that technically is still in its alpha stage of development. The indie sandbox game with a minimal graphics engine broke the 700,000 sales unit barrier earlier today (less than an hour from the post of this article in fact) according to the game's stat page.

While the game was first released in May 2009, the vast majority of its sales have been made this year as MineCraft's popularity has caught on. It broke the 500,000 unit sales line on October 29 and reached the 600,000 unit sales number on November 12. If the game's sales continue at its current rate it will break the 1 million mark in early 2011. In the meantime the developers are working to expand the game, including adding a new survival multiplayer mode, before officially putting Minecraft in its beta stage.

In the last couple of days the indie sandbox PC game Minecraft hit a couple of big milestones. One was reaching and surpassing the 500,000 sales mark on Friday (it has now gone over 525,000 unit sales as of this news post) while the other big event was the Halloween update (actually released late on Saturday in this time zone) with lots of new content.

While its main creator Markus Persson is taking a much deserved rest for a few days, he's already blogging that once he recovers "I will get cracking on Survival Mode Multiplayer, as it's still the highest priority for the game." There are still some performance issues to deal with along with getting health and enemies to work. There's no word on when the multiplayer mode for Minecraft will be released.

It's October 31 in Sweden and that mean the Minecraft dev team has released the long awaited Halloween content updaete for the hit indie sandbox game. The update includes the "hell world" addition that allows for a way to get from one place to another in the "real" Minecraft world quickly.

The update also includes some new monsters in the hell world, the ability to catch fish, and more along with a number of bug fixes and improvements. It looks like the team will be taking a couple of days off before works starts on "survival mode multiplayer and make a push towards reaching Beta." Also the team will be moving into new offices starting on November 15.

One of the things that Minecraft does differently than other PC games is a clear record of its sales. Just a few minutes ago, the sandbox game went over the 500,000 copies sold mark according to the game's official site. While Minecraft was released over a year ago its only been in the last few months that a surge of interest in the game has caused the title to reach sales numbers that few other indie PC games have reached.

So what can players expect for the future of Minecraft? Developer chatted with its creator Markus Persson who stated he would like to add competitive multiplayer modes to the game. He also states, "For the single player game and co-op game, I plan on adding some kind of overarching narrative to the game to drive the player forward and provide a sense of direction, and add many more new features, like monster towns and alchemy." His new content update, Halloween Patch, is scheduled to launch sometime on Sunday.

It's been a little while since the last official blog update from the creator of Minecraft but this week Markus "Notch" Persson updated the site with a little more info on the upcoming Halloween update to the popular indie sandbox game (which should break the 450,000 unit sales barrier by the end of the day today).

He states that the update will include "six new block types (five of them have unique abilities), one new monster, a new dimension, and a couple of bug fixes." He also gives a business update stating that the development team at Mojang Specifications is now composed of six people "three programmers, one pixel artist, one CEO and one Business Developer."

Markus has also been updating his Twitter page constantly and in one update he states, "Yes, you will eventually be able to link servers with portals. NOT SOON, though." The idea of thousands of Minecraft players linking to their games via portals might turn this indie sandbox game into an MMO title ... maybe.

Minecraft. The sandbox indie game has been the talk of the game industry for the past few months and it continues to sell well over 10,000 copies per day. Not bad for a title that's officially just in an "alpha" stage of development and was originally made by one person.

Today the game's official stats page has revealed that Minecraft has now sold over 300,000 units since it was first released over a year ago. If sales continue at the game's current pace, Minecraft will reach the 500,000 unit mark before the end of October and sell 1 million copies before the end of the year.

If you want to know the benefits of giving folks a chance to play a game for free for a limited time, take a look at Minecraft. The indie sandbox title was already gaining popularity when the game's registration servers melted down earlier this month, which caused an unplanned "free" weekend of play for people who downloaded Minecraft.

When the registration server went back online, lots of folks who played Minecraft for free decided to pay for the game. On September 23, two days later, 25,633 copies of Minecraft were sold according to m00d.net which is tracking sales of the game. That means Minecraft brought in close to $350,000 in that one day. Since then sales have dipped down to "just" over 10,000 copies a day. You do the math.

Meanwhile Minecraft's creator Markus Persson has updated his blog site with more news on building his game development company, saying that he's been occupied lately by "meetings and lawyers, accountants, banks, potential partners, potential employees, and the occasional interview. " Four people are confirmed now for the development studio with more being interviewed but they have still not secured an office.

[Via MCV]