![]() ![]() If this happens, the only way forward is for part of the ecosystem to evolve around the gap which happens much more slowly.Įxample: A big part of Minecraft is crafting, and mods often add dozens of new things to craft and even new ways to craft things. For example one of the most famous packs "Agrarian Skies" is for 1.6.4 and will never work with a newer Minecraft but still has some players.Īs a result of players being interested in this ecosystem rather than the individual mods, it only takes one of dozens of key developers to stymie a move to a different platform, whether that's a new Minecraft version or somebody else's Minecraft clone. Unlike most games which "upgrade" like a web browser or operating system, Minecraft actually lets you pick at start time which version you want to run in order to facilitate this. But because mods are so involved, even tiny changes under the hood can mean hours of software development for the mod authors, so the ecosystem moves to newer versions less steadily, a "pack" of mods will usually be forever associated with a specific Minecraft version. ![]() The PC "Java" Minecraft associated with modding actually ships new versions relatively often still after all these years. So there's an _ecosystem_ at work here, akin to the Windows vs Unix ecosystems and that network effect applies to your whole ecosystem. "Ugh, I can't face Magic Bees without Gendustry" - Minecraft doesn't have any bees at all, bees are added by a mod called "Forestry", then magical bees are added to that with "Magic Bees" by a different author and the mod called "Gendustry" by yet another author exists _solely_ to make the genetics gameplay from the Forestry mod more. It's out of hand enough that you will see people saying e.g. Few people add one mod to their Minecraft game, what people tend to do is run a mod _pack_ which is typically dozens of mods with different authors that are integrated together by the pack author the way a movie's Editor turns hundreds of hours of pictures and sounds into a coherent 2 hour film. Modded Minecraft is pretty unlike a typical modding community. How many people are aware of and care about this particular issue? Most people aren't developers.Īs someone who _does_ know about Minecraft I will say you're probably right on the Network Effect in particular and go into this a bit more: It's hard to compete as a free-to-play competitor.Īwareness. That money can be used to build features, woo developers, and launch marketing campaigns that bring in users. Not everyone wants to be a pioneering early adopter.Įconomies of scale. Developers and modders have less motivation to build for a new platform with few users and no profits because it's more likely to tank. Not only do the network effects create value for players and spur growth, but they create lock-in, too. If Minecraft is a multiplayer game whose fun is largely derived from sharing your experiences with others, then a new and "better" version isn't really better at all if it's sparsely populated. I know nothing about Minecraft, but I'd be surprised if the factors at play here are any different from other situations where "superior" FOSS clones fail to overtake the original closed versions: ![]()
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