2011 round-up: indies

Minecraft's stunning success, bundle overload and other highlights from the year in independent development.


Minecraft

It may have been our 2010 indie game of the year, but last year was merely the beginning for Minecraft. In January, developer Mojang confirmed the game had been bought one million times, just eight months after launch and while still in beta. It was still very much in active development, even though Mojang announced its new project, Scrolls, at GDC in March. At the same event, Minecraft won both the Grand Prize and Audience Award at the IGF Awards.

Peter Molyneux hailed it as "a complete work of genius ... the best thing I've played in the last ten years," and the audience agreed: in April, it hit 1.8 million sales. By this point it had grossed £20 million for Mojang, with charismatic studio head Markus Persson saying: "I try not to look at it ... but there's a big pile somewhere." To celebrate, he announced the game's final release date: November 11. By the end of the month, sales had passed two million.

Its unprecedented success on PC meant that the spread of Minecraft to other platforms was inevitable, and so it proved, with the announcements of releases on iOS, Android - a timed exclusive on Xperia Play - and Xbox Live Arcade, Kinect support included, the port handled by Dundee developer 4J Studios. By the middle of June, sales stood at 2.5 million, total revenue amounting to almost £30 million. A few weeks later it hit 10 million users. It was still in beta.

Mojang then announced Minecon, a Las Vegas convention set for November where Persson would launch the final version of Minecraft on stage. It didn't quite go off without a hitch: there was a brief but very public fallout with Yogscast, the YouTube sensation whose creators told us they deserved some of the credit for Minecraft's success. With Minecraft finally at version 1.0, Persson stood down as lead developer, passing the torch to Jens Bergensten while he moved on to other projects.

It's a true indie success story: four million sales while still in beta, users not only funding but assisting in development of the final product by giving feedback and suggesting new features. It's created a new business model, one that Mojang is following in publishing Cobalt, a side-scrolling action game developed by fellow Swedes Oxeye Game Studio.

Humble Ennui Bundle?

While the first two Humble Indie Bundles were released last year, 2011 saw the pay-what-you-want indie promotion become one of the most immediately lucrative business models available to independent developers. All games in the promotions are DRM-free and compatible with Mac, Windows and Linux, with buyers able to stipulate how they would like their payment to be split between the developers involved, the bundle's organisers and charities EFF and Child's Play.

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