Credit where credit is due: Mojang has made some incredibly smart bets about ways to expand the Minecraft franchise. Back when Microsoft announced its purchase of the studio and its monolithic IP, I struggled to imagine exactly what could be done with Minecraft beyond the base game. Sure, that would continue to expand and grow – but did people really want to do anything else in that universe?
At the time, I reasoned that it didn’t matter if the universe could expand or not. Minecraft alone was big enough and important enough that it was worth every penny of the $2.5 billion Microsoft paid for it. But then, something magical happened: Mojang kept making smart partnerships that expanded the universe in brilliant and often unexpected ways.
Lego Minecraft went from a one-off set for nerds to a fully-fledged series of toys, beloved by children everywhere. Minecraft Story Mode released its first episode not long after the acquisition, and then 2019’s Minecraft Dungeons, which was a truly brilliant pairing of the established traditions of Minecraft with a kid-friendly Diablo clone. The Pokemon Go-like Minecraft Earth was a swing-and-a-miss – but that was an AR mobile game that launched right before a pandemic locked everybody indoors – so I’ll give them a pass.
About Author
