Minecraft's Jens Bergensten 'looking forward to big companies' making similar games

Author: by Staff

In a new Gamasutra feature interview, Mojang's new lead developer, who took the reins of the project from Markus "Notch" Persson in December, says that he is excited to see what major developers come up with when making similar games. In a discussion of whether Minecraft could arise at a major studio, Jens Bergensten conceded it could not, but he thinks that similar games may arise -- and he looks forward to them. "No, it would probably be a very different game if at a large company. But I'm kind of looking forward to bigger companies taking on the same kind of genre, if you should call it that. Because I think it could make quite cool games, you know, the sandbox environment." The first major studio game to cop to an "inspiration" from Minecraft is Epic Games' upcoming title Fortnite. Its lead designer confirmed via Twitter that "Minecraft was an inspiration for sure." Still, he sees one bigger advantage for Mojang over big companies -- open communication. "One thing that I like about Mojang is that we're allowed to communicate directly to everybody. We don't really have much secrets," he said. While many studios do allow developers to communicate with fans, others forbid it or have restrictive policies. The full feature interview, in which Bergensten discusses how he ran afoul of those policies while trying to find out what's going on with the company's Zenimax lawsuit, as well as his plans for development of Minecraft now that he's taken the lead role in its development, is live now on Gamasutra.