The Mojang Theory

Like many of those who grew up on Minecraft, I’ve often struggled to understand its developer’s philosophy when it comes to game updates. Like, I get it, they don’t want to change the game too much and risk undermining the core identity of the game, but there’s so much that notion alone doesn’t account for.

It’s bullshit to begin with – I mean in practice, Mojang has done plenty to rip away the core of Minecraft as an experience. The game was built on dynamic systems and, in the beginning, had its identity entrenched in multifaceted mechanics and items. At some point we started getting a slew of updates with one-off ideas that failed to contribute to the greater dynamic gameplay of the game’s foundation.

“Sure, let’s add a mob called the sniffer that only has use for a brand new entirely superficial fossil digging mechanic. For the lore.”

I can’t honestly tell how much mojang cares about maintaining the game’s identity. If that’s what they’re going for, they’re not doing a very good job.

Regardless, the game has bugs that haven’t been addressed for over a decade (see item stitching, for example).

Thankfully there are an endless number of mods that can account for mojang’s inaction. And this is where it hit me – does Mojang not see bugs as issues so long as someone in the community fixes it for them? Even further, does this extend to actual game features? I mean, surely overhauls like sodium and optifine takes the onus off them to optimize their game.

So here goes the theory: Mojang does not care to do any work that has not already been done for them. If a mod has done so, then their hands are clean. They don’t even need to implement it themselves! Just quietly let each unsatisfied player shuffle over to fabric and forge and figure it out themselves. It’s genius, really.