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[Trapezohedron]

Minecraft is Mojang's one-hit-wonder, a magnum opus Notch can't ever replicate.

So, at this rate, if Notch can't get any good ideas soon, well, it's gonna suck.

[Drakale]

Yeah, with the insane expectations that are piled on him, announcing it that early was a huge mistake I feel.

[alway]

No. Ignore all the crap about it being Notch, whatever you may take that to imply.

Examine the basic premises of the game. Quite frankly... yeah, it does need more iteration. It's a boring design, all things considered. It's one of those things where it feels like it could be pretty awesome, but which it is really hard to figure out how to make it better than the not-awesome it currently is. Adding or taking away something to make it all click together while still maintaining project scope will require ideas as, if not more, creative when compared to those in the original premise.

[scrdest]

Yeah, with the insane expectations that are piled on him, announcing it that early was a huge mistake I feel.

I suppose the problem was: first, OMIGOSHNOTCHMAKESASPESSGAME! reaction, which was timed terribly. If not for Minecraft, 0x10c could be moderately successful, with Notch being a no-name programmer and voxels not being a thing, but after Minecraft, indie developers just had a field day with 'lets take voxels and add a genre and a setting!' - cue voxel FPS games (Ace of Spades, for example), outright clones and yes, space games.

The announcement of 0x10c by the famous indie developer might have inspired some folks to make their own Voxel Space Games too, and they were coding faster than Notch's relaxed pace. Cue a number of games that did what 0x10c planned to be a pioneer in charging into the niche.

Second, a lack of any clear vision. Aside from the idea of 'let's make a cool space voxel game with massive multiplayer and spaceship building and nerdgasm to the nth power', the dev videos showed that at some point, it turned into 'AND LET'S MAKE COMBAT LIKE QUAKE, BECAUSE QUAAAAAAKE!'.

Granted, some things like that happened to Minecraft as well, but Minecraft was entirely unique in its style and a degree of freedom it gave to players. It anchored firmly in the richest bay (that being the twelfth bay, naturally) of the 'blue sea' - found a completely empty and rich niche, and that gave it a virtual immunity to developer's tendency to add features somewhat erratically - there was nothing else like that to choose from - until it became robust enough in features and popularity to become unchallenged, at least for a while.

0x10c had none of those, so it was much less shielded from competition from other games.

[Trapezohedron]

Yeah, with the insane expectations that are piled on him, announcing it that early was a huge mistake I feel.

I suppose the problem was: first, OMIGOSHNOTCHMAKESASPESSGAME! reaction, which was timed terribly. If not for Minecraft, 0x10c could be moderately successful, with Notch being a no-name programmer and voxels not being a thing, but after Minecraft, indie developers just had a field day with 'lets take voxels and add a genre and a setting!' - cue voxel FPS games (Ace of Spades, for example), outright clones and yes, space games.

The announcement of 0x10c by the famous indie developer might have inspired some folks to make their own Voxel Space Games too, and they were coding faster than Notch's relaxed pace. Cue a number of games that did what 0x10c planned to be a pioneer in charging into the niche.

Second, a lack of any clear vision. Aside from the idea of 'let's make a cool space voxel game with massive multiplayer and spaceship building and nerdgasm to the nth power', the dev videos showed that at some point, it turned into 'AND LET'S MAKE COMBAT LIKE QUAKE, BECAUSE QUAAAAAAKE!'.

Granted, some things like that happened to Minecraft as well, but Minecraft was entirely unique in its style and a degree of freedom it gave to players. It anchored firmly in the richest bay (that being the twelfth bay, naturally) of the 'blue sea' - found a completely empty and rich niche, and that gave it a virtual immunity to developer's tendency to add features somewhat erratically - there was nothing else like that to choose from - until it became robust enough in features and popularity to become unchallenged, at least for a while.

0x10c had none of those, so it was much less shielded from competition from other games.

Or in short, he needs to shut up sometimes and create a plan before going headfirst? Yeah.

[scrdest]

Or in short, he needs to shut up sometimes and create a plan before going headfirst? Yeah.

Yes, plus, he'd have gotten away with having a vague plan if not for Minecraft making voxel games immensely popular. And he needs to get rid of feature ADD.

[My Name is Immaterial]

Wasn't there another game announced at almost the exact same time as 0x10c that was almost exactly the same concept? I cant remember the name though...

[Killjoy]

Haha, I called this already last year, I knew he would get burned out on developing this.

Before you guys reach for your torches and pitchforks, remember that this was a pet project, and Notch is not exactly a good software developer by any standard. All software developers have pet projects that fail all the time.

He did announce this pretty prematurely, and considering he has a huge following, doing something like that is a pretty bad move. Especially considering he has the means to throw money at this. I mean, people even went as far as make their own implementations of the DCPU. There was a quite considerable amount of hype behind the game.

[jocan2003]

Wasn't there another game announced at almost the exact same time as 0x10c that was almost exactly the same concept? I cant remember the name though...

Blockade runner? Corneroid?

[Niveras]

Wasn't there another game announced at almost the exact same time as 0x10c that was almost exactly the same concept? I cant remember the name though...

Starforge? Though I guess it is not a space game.

There have been a few flash-based games with the same concept - voxel-based mine-resources-build-a-space-ship - but they're flash and I don't expect them to do well.

There was one more game that had spherical worlds and that promised that eventually you could build ships and fly to other worlds, but I forget the name of it. The alpha I tried was very basic at the time.

[MrWiggles]

Notch is the Stephanie Myer of the video game.

[miauw62]

It's been well-known for over 2250 years: hubris is bad.

[lastverb]

There was one more game that had spherical worlds and that promised that eventually you could build ships and fly to other worlds, but I forget the name of it. The alpha I tried was very basic at the time.

Masterspace? There is a thread on it somewhere here.

[Niveras]

Yep, that one.

[Zyxl]

In other news Mikko Pulkki tweeted that he has resumed development on Corneroids and he's recruited some friends to help speed up development.

As far as I was concerned, Notch could go suck a cactus and I was looking forward to Corneroids... so it looks like I got my wish.