With all of the money Minecraft is pulling in, Mojang is in a position to help other independent developers get their games out there.
The story of a lone game designer making something special that happens to catch on with a wide audience all over the world is really quite remarkable. Selling Minecraft before it even left the alpha stage has made Markus “Notch” Persson a vast amount of dough (more than $33 million), and with that capital he formed a company called Mojang to continue making games. The business development director of that new company, Daniel Kaplan, now finds himself in the excellent position of being able to invest in whatever he would like. But what is Mojang interested in funding? Well, more independent development of games, as early as this year.
“We are in a great spot right now, we can basically do whatever we want to. The hardest thing for us right now is to say ‘no’ to all the deals we’re being offered,” Kaplan said. “We’re looking into publishing our own games too though, bringing indie games under our own brand. We’re still figuring out how that’s going to work.
“We hope to have something out this fall at least, some co-published games.”
Kaplan knows that there are opportunities for Mojang to enter the console space, perhaps with its new game Scrolls, but for now the company wants to use its clout to empower other independent studios. “We hope to help people, to keep them involved in the process and create a successful game, to make sure people know about their games so they can create better games later on by themselves. So we’ll see how well we can work that position,” he said.
Mojang really is in a unique position. The company is lean, with only ten or so employees in a setting not usually associated with game design – Stockholm, Sweden. But the company has a hit game that is self-published, netting a huge amount of cash. Most independents have to scrape the barrel to find any kind of funding, but not Mojang. I think it’s awesome that Kaplan and Notch have resisted the temptation to sell out and join a major company, and are instead hoping to help other developers get their start.
I’m glad they want to use that money for good, not for evil.
Source: Games Industry.biz
