So, I’ve recently been reading the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson. If you haven’t read it, I highly suggest you to even if you hate Apple(I’m not a big fan). I’ve noticed something incredibly similar between Jobs’ revolutionizing how people use personal computers and, in a sense, how Markus Persson(Notch) revolutionized the indie game industry.

Before Jobs’ had his way with personal computers, they always came in separate parts or hobby kits, not friendly for the end user. They weren’t seen as a product but something to do/use in your spare time if you had the cash. Jobs took the separate parts, put them into a single product, and marketed it to the people who generally wouldn’t have touched a personal computer. Notch took indie games, slapped a friendly price tag on them, and you can see where it’s gone.

A few years ago, nobody cared about indie games, really. They were mostly small projects given out for free, funded by small amounts of donations. Before Markus created Minecraft, it wasn’t really believed you could have great sales on an indie game. He(and Mojang) have changed that and in a sense are ‘pioneers’ in this new indie industry.

Just some thoughts.

A subscriber on the Youtube channel recently sent me a message, telling me of quite a genius idea. That idea being that we allow people to submit Let’s Plays and such of the mod to be put on our channel.

I like this idea, so I thought we’d roll with it! To submit a video:

• Send an e-mail to miclee@minecrafter.com subject line ‘EvilMinecraft Video Submission’
• Include the following: The name of the video, a short description of the video, a link to your Youtube channel, a link to the video(less than 500MB and shorter than 15 minutes) on a file hosting service such as dropbox.

Upon receiving the video, I’ll reply if it is something that we’re looking for. If you have any questions, tweet me @Evil_Notch.

Dear Notch,

I saw your recent blog post about why Minecraft isn’t on Steam, and I see a few problems with what you have said.

“Being on Steam limits a lot of what we’re allowed to do with the game, and how we’re allowed to talk to our users. We (probably?) wouldn’t be able to, say, sell capes or have a map market place on minecraft.net that works with steam customers in a way that keeps Valve happy.”

That, mainly, seems incorrect to me. Many of the MMOs on Steam handle it just fine through either ingame stores(VALVE GAMES DO IT!) or on the sites of those things. Things such as cape sales or a map marketplace could simply be flags on your Minecraft account, not affecting Steam in any way at all. As well, if you’re serious about going this route(which I believe you are, based on the fact you’re not putting Minecraft on Steam), you’ll run into major problems and sales will likely not be that great.

For the ‘selling capes’, people make mods that add capes to the game. There’s that idea of yours down the drain. For a ‘map marketplace’, those will likely be shared publicly(it’s piracy, yes, that’s to be expected), as I don’t see how you could exactly make a map appealing for people to buy. Don’t pull a Valve and start selling hats like they sell capes, it just makes more angry people exist!

I understand selling content packs, and I believe I have a solution for how you could deal with those. Sell it both on the Steam marketplace as well as on your site, for the same price. If sold on Steam, it downloads the pack and when you start it up it gives you a code(much like other games on Steam often do). You could then have an ingame redemption sort of thing available(perhaps in a new ‘ACCOUNT’ section of the options.

EDIT: Yes, I do know those were just examples, but it applies for pretty much any microtransactions(not large DLC packs).

First of all, I need to blog more! It’s something I always forget to do. If I don’t blog enough, remind me on Twitter to.

Now, to the updates! We released the ‘EvilPack’ texture pack, which can be found below. Be sure to post your feedback on it on the forums!

http://forums.evil-minecraft.net/showthread.php?tid=111

Now, for the other thing. We’re going to need beta testers eventually, so we thought of a couple ways for you to get in on that! The first is simply by creating a skin for the dwarves. The best ones will be chosen and put into the full overhaul as a skin on some dwarves. The skin template and a ton of example can be found here: http://forums.evil-minecraft.net/showthread.php?tid=161

The second way that’s been thought up is to design some kind of shirt design. We want the image to be put on shirts and other possible merchandise. Just note that they have to be a very large image resolution! This can be found here: http://forums.evil-minecraft.net/showthread.php?tid=173&pid=1087

So, for now(as the API isn’t out yet), we’re working on a ‘preview’ mod(I was about to call it small, but it isn’t really at all). Below are the features of this. Once the API is released, we’ll be sharing the ideas for the full overhaul, for all of you wondering. These are all straight from our ideas list, so wording may be a bit rough.

Below is the list*:

• Giant chickens(3x larger than normal) that either breathe fire or lava. And drop giant eggs.
• Make the pigs carnivorous. (boars)
• Add pigmen(not villages yet, just wandering groups of different kinds. Different groups are hostile/neutral. Some can be allied by using certain items).
• Increase rate of Spider Jockeys.
• Make a new mob that looks like a pig (maybe different eyes?) and they spawn 1/4 as common as regular pigs. These explode, like ‘creepers in disguise’.Has a slight green tint.
• Wolves can poop. Poop = fertilizer. Fertilizer = like bonemeal?
• Camouflage creepers. - simply different colours for creepers for each biome
• Torch in hand glows
• Chance for dirt to have a fossil in it, when in turn can be used to make bone tools or used to tame wolves. Would use ore spawn system.
• New tools system with bones, has the same durability as iron tools.
• Underground temple ruins.
• Larger dungeons.
• Sledgehammers!
• More Mushrooms
• Mimics! Chests in dungeons that are actually hostile mobs upon opening.They have the same item list as chests, as a drop list.
• Spreading moss. Longer the cobblestone sits there, the more chances it’ll become mossy cobblestone. Can go over more than just cobblestone, possibly.
• Make lightning strikes explosive. Change to cause electrical damage every few ticks.
• Blood(for now just a particle effect on-hit?) Also turns water to blood water, if touching.
• Spectres - Basic mockup: http://forums.evil-minecraft.net/showthread.php?tid=48

*All ideas shown here are subject to change.

So, I’ve seen a lot of people asking things like ‘Why did you start this all?’ and ‘How’d you come up with this idea?’. This blog post addresses that!

So, it all started a week and a half ago on a Thursday evening. I was sitting around bored, talking with people on IRC. Someone discussed Trollstam, and then an idea hit me. I then quickly went and made ‘@Evil_Notch’ on Twitter and began randomly tweeting things. A couple of days later, I had 150 or so followers. I then caught the attention of Notch, and he retweeted a couple of my tweets. That’s when things took off.

A few of us decided to team up and make the rest of the Evil Mojang crew. A day after all of that happened, we decided upon making a mod. Originally, the mod had pretty small plans, with just a few things changed. At the same time, we had also started making a texture pack. We decided to instead make the mod a full overhaul.

This brings us to now. We’re gathering ideas for the mod and the texture pack is coming along nicely. We have a few people on our mod team, which is quickly growing. All in all, things are going well.

Now, about the future of EvilMinecraft and such. I’ve been in contact with Carl Manneh(managing director of Mojang) about a few things. Simply, provided that we get enough popularity(which I don’t believe will be a problem) for our mod by the time that the mod API comes around, we may become an official mod. Before the mod API, we will not be creating the full mod, instead just some of the random features that would be in the full mod all put together. After the mod API comes out, and our small mod garners enough popularity by then, thing will be very good. This may mean that the mod will cost a small sum of money(5 euros, perhaps), but it means that the mod will be able to grow into something much more. It will be a complete overhaul, including its own launcher/client.

I could probably go blabbering on about this all day, but I felt I said enough!

• ‘Mimics! Chests in dungeons that are actually hostile mobs upon opening.’
• ‘Cave ins.’ (elaborate discussion on exactly how followed that point)
• ‘Alcohol/drunk effects.’
• ‘Make it so that if lightning strikes blood water, all the blood water in that chunk is electrified for 5 minutes and will hurt you if you touch it.’
• ‘Disease. Farm animal mobs have a 1/10th chance of being ‘diseased’ and can spread this disease to certain blocks and animals. Causes 1/2 heart of damage if infected every Minecraft hour. Introduce actual medicine from plants to cure.’
• ‘Blood and gore! It’s a must have, seriously.’
• ‘Reduce regular carrying capacity to 9 slots. Add craftable bags to carry around with you.’

What is EvilMinecraft?

EvilMinecraft is going to be a mod that is a complete overhaul of Minecraft. The basic gameplay(digging and building) will remain the same as Minecraft, but everything else will change, mostly. But more on that another time!

When will EvilMinecraft be released?

It currently has no release date, as we’re waiting for the mod API to be released to begin on a majority of it. We do have a texture pack in the works that will be released soon, though!

Are you going to change the application picture and the launcher for the mod?

This will be dependent whether or not we can get licensing to do so. If we receive permission, we will!

I’m a modder who knows java, how can I help?

Send an e-mail to minecraft@evilmojang.com with some examples of your previous work.

Who are you(EvilNotch), really?

It’s not hard to figure out, so I’m not saying!

What server do you(EvilNotch) play on?

I generally play on mau5ville.com! You can find me there, a lot of the time.