Minecraft is a game that needs no introduction; it’s easily one of the most popular video games that has ever existed, and it’s literally the highest-selling video game of all time, having sold 300 million copies. To be clear, that’s almost as many people as there are in the United States as a whole. But what would a Minecraft 2 game look like? Well, we might be about to find out… spiritually anyway. Minecraft‘s original creator Markus Persson, also known as Notch, has shared that he “basically announced Minecraft 2” on his social media. It sounds like he doesn’t really want to make a Minecraft 2 (a spiritual successor to the game, anyway), but he will, if that’s what the people want to buy.
On his Twitter, Notch posted the following message, “The new game I’m passionately working on is currently set to be a traditional roguelike (i.e. ADOM, nethack, etc) mixed with a tile based first person dungeon crawler (ie Legend of Grimrock (esp 2), Eye of the Beholder) But then I gots to thinking that maybe there are people who like my work but might not share my taste in retro nostalgia and would prefer for me to make a spiritual successor thing to Minecraft, and I mean sure, I’d take that cash.” He then shared a poll… and to no one’s real surprise, the Minecraft 2 option won the day by a landslide.
To that end, Notch followed up his post with another saying, “I basically announced Minecraft 2. I thought that maybe people ACTUALLY do want me to make another game that’s super similar to the first one, and I’m loving working on games again. I don’t super duper care exactly which game I make first (or even if I make more), but I do know I’m making one, so I figured I’d absolutely be willing to give it an honest shot in the form of a spiritual successor to Minecraft and put up a poll about it.” Notch does caution that “spiritual successors are usually kind of… you know… washed up. Tragic.” He seems to imply that could be true of the Minecraft spiritual sequel as well. But hey, money talks.
Ultimately, whatever game Notch makes (or doesn’t make) will not literally be Minecraft 2. Notch sold Minecraft and Mojang, the video game studio that develops it, to Microsoft in 2014, over ten years ago. And it would be up to Microsoft to determine what a true Minecraft 2 would look like. And so far, we’ve heard no talk about any spinoffs or sequels to the title. (Although a live-action movie is coming soon.) But, of course, what is in a name? Ultimately, Notch doesn’t share much about what his spiritual successor/sequel game to Minecraft would look like, so it’s hard to know if we should want it to happen or not. In additional tweets, he notes generally, “I’d make a similar game based on what I think the audience that says they want that game might enjoy. Probably do early access to make sure we’re on track.”
So we guess we’ll have to wait and see if anything comes of all this Minecraft 2/spirituall successor/similar game talk.
