Thinking. Games Industry Mentor. Home. Make Games - Finishing a Game. What Indie Developers Can Learn from Minecraft news - Frozen Synapse Game. We take a look at this phenomenon and ask what it means for our business, as well as that of other indie developers... Like most indie devs, I'm a bit tired of hearing about Minecraft at the moment! I thought I would collate my thoughts on it in order to put the issue to bed. I'll be viewing everything through a commercial lens rather than focussing on the design, although in this case I think the two are almost symbiotic. We've all seen the outrageous sales stats and conversion rate which dwarf almost anything out there. You'd need to look to big MMO's like Runescape to find a comparable performance; here are some interesting benchmarks.
This game is destroying commercial games with much bigger development budgets and much bigger marketing spends - why? I've got six reasons... 1. Here we go with the breakdown... 1. Building systemMultiplayer buildingSurvival mode: enemies, dynamic terrain, day/night cycle...Crafting system That's practically the whole thing! 2. 1. [Wait five seconds] 4. 3. 4. Game Programming.