Minecraft is done, but it’s not really done. The new man in charge of the computer game sensation tells Kotaku that development will continue on the game even though the game is now out.
In fact, it sounds like development is ramping up.
“The current Minecraft plan is to add more people to the team and add a proper modding api,” Jens “Jeb” Bergensten told me over email. I contacted Jeb last week to hear what would be happening now that Minecraft‘s lead creator, Notch, handed over the reins on the project to Bergensten, his long-time collaborator on the game. Notch is focusing on new projects at the team’s studio, Mojang.
“The biggest advantage of a mod api is that players will be able to run mods without modifying the game’s binaries,” Jeb added. “Currently it’s quite a hassle to run mods.”
The new Minecraft team will “also work on making the vanilla server suitable for bigger servers.”
Before that new team is in place, however, Jeb says he’ll work on fixing bugs, tweaking performance and adding content, such as allowing users to write books and notes in the game. That feature was teased by Notch back in April. Jeb said he was looking into it today.
Some companies release a game and leave it be. Others release it and then charge a subscription to finance further developments and allow gamers access to evolutions of the game. For the time being, however, it seems that Notch’s company, Mojang, will be improving Minecraft piece by piece just as a way to keep the game enjoyable for the people who already bought it, at no extra cost.
Minecraft has been in various states of publicly released alpha and beta since 2009 and was officially released as version 1.0 on November 18. We reviewed it last week.
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