Summary
- Minecraft creator Notch has claimed he wants to make a spiritual successor, asking fans whether they’d actually like one.
- Notch later stated that he’s “100% serious” about the idea, even though he thinks spiritual successors can feel “washed up”.
- However, Notch’s homophobic and transphobic social media comments in the past have already caused some pushback to his announcement.
Minecraft is easily one of gaming’s most iconic franchises. Its original creator, Notch, grew the game from humble beginnings back in 2009, to the absolute juggernaut that we have today, mostly thanks to the sale of Minecraft studio Mojang to Microsoft over a decade ago for a whopping $2.5 billion.
We’ve seen very little from Notch in terms of new games ever since that sale, which isn’t that surprising since he’s now set for life. He does develop games in his spare time though, and recently began talking about future projects on Twitter a couple of days ago. It’s during this round of tweets that Notch dropped the bombshell that he has a desire to make a spiritual successor to Minecraft.
Minecraft Creator Wants To Make A Spiritual Successor
On January 1, Notch took to Twitter to ask people whether he should continue making his “traditional rougelike”, or put it to one side and make “a spiritual successor thing to Minecraft”, worried that his fans may not actually want to play a game he’s made in a different genre. This is pretty much the first time Notch has ever so blatantly stated that he’s actually down to make another Minecraft-style game, and he later clarified in a different tweet that he’s “100% serious about all that”.
However, Notch is a very different figure in the gaming industry now than he was back in 2009. For starters, Notch has been involved in several controversies due to statements he’s made about LGBTQ people, particularly transgender people, going so far as to claim that those against the idea of a Heterosexual Pride Day “deserve to be shot”. He was even excluded from the game’s tenth anniversary by Microsoft because of his comments on social media.
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There’s not going to be any Sonic-style tweaking this time.
It’s these controversies that have made several Minecraft fans turn their backs on the creator over the years, so any potential successor would already lack the support of a large chunk of the original game’s fanbase. There’s also the fact that Minecraft is absolutely gigantic – big enough to get a live-action adaptation starring Jack Black, at least – so there will be no dethroning that any time soon.
We’ll also have to wait to see if Notch backs up that promise with action too. It’s all well and good saying you want to make Minecraft 2, but as developers such as LocalThunk, Lucas Pope, Eric Barone, and Toby Fox can probably tell you, solo development is hard and time-consuming. We’ll have to wait and see whether Notch has the same drive.
