In The BeginningTo understand the success of MinecraftEDU , it is important to understand how the hugely popular sandbox building video game, Minecraft came to be. The driving force behind the Minecraft phenomenon is Markus "Notch" Persson. Since the age of 8, “Notch” as he is commonly called, knew that he wanted to create video games and began programming on his own and actively engaged in playing video games. Games like Dwarf Fortress, Dungeon Keeper, and Roller Coaster Tycoon are credited by Notch as influencing his later development of Minecraft. A native of Sweden, he cut his teeth in the gaming development business by working on big budget game developments in Stockholm like Wurm Online (2009) and a titles from King.com. Notch became disillusioned with big budget game design houses and quit his job to set out designing games on his own.
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With the increasing popularity and success of his Minecraft game, Notch decided to launch a video game startup company in 2011 called Mojang. Without a clear business plan in place, he decided he needed 3 initial staff; a business guy, a programmer and a graphic artist. At the height of Minecraft’s popularity in 2015, Mojang would have a compliment of 51 staff. The initial cost to develop Minecraft was minimal mostly due to the fact it was developed as an Indie game through coding in Java. Costing only $13 for the Alpha version. By March 2012, the company had accumulated revenues of over $80 million.
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Partnership with MinecraftEDU
The organic growth of Minecraft’s popularity was finding an ever increasing loyal user base that responded to the ability to customize the game to their needs. A computer teacher named Joel Levin began working on a modified version of this at the private school in New York City. In 2011 he started experimenting with the possibility of using Minecraft in his own class. It wasn’t long till he began to see the potential of this game for teaching practices using GBL (game Based Learning), with this focus he approached Santeri Koivisto, a Finnish entrepreneur, to start a company called TeacherGaming. They took what Levin was developing and approached Notch at Mojang explore the possibility to licensing a version of the Minecraft game Their goal was to take what Levin was working on and develop his customized version of the game for teaching purposes. Mojang, welcomed the grassroots movement. What came out of that business collaboration was a version of Minecraft called MinecraftEDU that would let teachers run the game off their own servers and control the parameters their students interacted with it. MinecraftEdu used the same technology as the Mojang edition, with the same gameplay, items, and graphics that are included in the commercial version. However MinecraftEdu is a separate edition of Minecraft and like the commercial edition includes client software for both individual and multi-player play.
With the go ahead to sell MinecraftEDU to schools now in place, TeacherGaming charged $41 for teachers to set up the server, then a onetime $15 fee for each student license. The number of schools signing up began to grow, Since 2011, MinecraftEDU from TeacherGaming LLC has reached thousands of classrooms in more than 40 countries around the world.
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The Tweet That Changed Everything
Mojang’s version of Minecraft, arguably the biggest game of the first decade of the 21st century, found itself at a crossroads in 2014. Mojang’s founder Notch found himself spending less and less time working on the game. His interests were focused more on developing new game prototypes. It was at this time that Minecraft customer’s perceived crackdown on infringements of their EULA (End User License Agreement) as a restriction to the organic grassroots development that they had enjoyed. Notch was not prepared to field the angry backlash from its customers. In Mid June 2014, Notch posted on his Twitter account his frustration
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Within in days Notch was fielding multiple inquiries from Activision Blizzard, Microsoft, and Electronic Arts Entertainment to see if he was serious. Notch decided he wanted to be free from the product, his tweet was not a ploy to get in investors to build the company and set up a big exit strategy, he just wanted a clean break from it. On the 15th September 2014, Notch sold his company to Microsoft for $2.5 billion dollars.
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Small Business Meets Big Business
Microsoft’s acquisition of Minecraft and Mojang for $2.5 billion dollars may seem like an astronomical purchase price, however with $85 billion dollars in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments, the company expected to break even on their investment by June, 2015. This is possible by calculating that the $2.5 billion needed to purchase Minecraft and Mojang was just sitting in the bank and if left uninvested would accrue $25 million on interest payments. Microsoft calculated recovery of the $25 million could be recouped in sales of this flagship game by the end of the 2015 Fiscal year.
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Constantly updating sales stats from https://minecraft.net/en/stats/ show that:
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Microsoft and Minecraft: Moving Forward
With the sale of Minecraft complete, Microsoft turned its attention to MinecraftEDU. Seeing the potential that this independent modified version held for educational use, they purchased the product from Teacher Gaming LLC in late 2015 and rebranded it Minecraft Education Edition. Microsoft has not reported how much it was paying for MinecraftEdu. It unclear how Microsoft will incorporate the game into their existing product line, but the focus of the company will be to incorporate Minecraft Education Edition as an educational tool as an extension of its business plans for the Minecraft game, requiring students to access Minecraft Education Edition through their Office 360 education accounts. There is also an indication that Microsoft will make changes to the way it charges schools with a $5 per student annually fee for access to the Minecraft Education Edition, this potentially could limit how widely it is adopted by schools.
By embracing independent creative input and customization individuals have been able to adapt this game for learning purposes making it a successful example of how GBL can be a success in the classroom. The founding owners of Minecraft, Mojang, welcomed these grassroots movements of user-made modifications for its Minecraft game but it is still early days to understand if Microsoft will reign in this independent, freewheeling culture in the name of more control and higher profits. |
This just in…
As of June 9th, Microsoft announced that the new Microsoft Education Edition of Microsoft has been released and is free for a limited time. The Education Edition will be "available for purchase in September 2016 and will cost between $1 and $5 per user, per year depending on the size of your school and qualification for volume licensing offers." New features being introduced into the Microsoft version of Minecraft include:
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