Okay Geek Farm
FortressCraft copies Minecraft - Why you shouldn't be angry
Brandon Davenport
Minecraft is one of the biggest sensations of the modern indie gaming era. Minecraft has amassed a userbase of 8.7 Million people (only 27% have purchased the game legally) and it has taken the creative world by storm. Awaiting an official release later this year, Minecraft fans have been foaming at the mouth for a console version, and Notch hasn’t mentioned much info in that regard. Then, along came FortressCraft.
Yes, FortressCraft is a pretty obvious copy paste job taking all of its core game elements from Minecraft, and planning to make some hard cash in the Xbox Live Marketplace, and some folks are pretty pissed off. Think about it: your favorite game now has a clone, and everything you love about Minecraft has been ripped into FortressCraft and given no credit. When you think of it it’s pretty devistating, but I think we need to take some time for a quick history lesson…
Infiniminer, the original Minecraft
Minecraft is actually a copy itself, a copy of a game developed by Zachtronics Industries called “Infiniminer”. The Minecraft community is fairly blinded by the fact that Minecraft is a copy paste project itself. In May 2009, Notch played a bit of Infiniminer and was instantly inspired, so he went onto create a clone of Infiniminer and called it “Cave Game”, which was later re-named to Minecraft and has since sold over 2 million copies and through all of this, the origonal creator of Infiniminer has seen none of the pay-off, and his game has essentially been pushed off the table.
But there is some more to this story, and it’s not so black and white. When Notch created Minecraft, he not only cloned Infiniminer, he actually made it better and turned it into a very polished, finished game. That’s why Minecraft is so succesfull. It’s not a run-of-the-mill indie game, it’s a game based soley on creativity, and the user is only limited by their imiagination. It re-charges our imaginations and because of this, Minecraft has been able to take the world by storm.
FortressCraft, the only competition to Minecraft
Minecraft took an original game, built on it and left the original creator in the weeds — this is exactly what FortressCraft has done. FortressCraft has taken the world of Minecraft to the console on Xbox 360, and has taken the core elements of Minecraft and blown them out of the water. Updated graphics, better gameplay, Xbox avatar integration, PVP, vehicles and the development team, ProjectorGames, is promising big things for the future.
ProjectorGames has even taken their information to the official Minecraft forms, and some users are warming up to the new Xbox Indie title, which has reached the tip-top of the charts in the Marketplace. FortressCraft is the very first real and strong competition to Minecraft, and is maybe preventing us from slipping into an indie game monopoly (wait, what?), but the real magic of FortressCraft is pushing the Minecraft team to innovate and strive to stay one step ahead. The competition will be fierce, but the games will be even crazier.
The best shall succeed, the others will fill the gaps
Runescape copied World of Warcraft, Torchlight copied Diablo and Saints Row copied Grand Theft Auto — the gaming industry strives on innovation, and the only way to do that is to take great ideas and make them better, and in-turn the “oroginal” will fight back. Nobody wants people to copy their games, and nobody wants to switch from Minecraft to FortressCraft — but this is how we get great games.
You can’t craft a useful, timeless and great game with one piece of ore - grab a copy of FortressCraft in the Marketplace for 240MSP and get a taste of the competition.
