Above: A custom-made creeper add-on in Minecraft.
Microsoft is giving Minecraft fans a way to remix the building game however they want.
Minecraft: Pocket Edition’s latest update is live, and it introduces two key features for iOS, Android, and other mobile operating systems. Microsoft and developer Mojang have finally brought boss fights into this version of the game. Now, players can take on the Elite Guardian and the Ocean Monuments in epic battles. This patch also introduces the Add-Ons feature that Mojang first announced earlier this year. With Add-Ons, any Minecraft player can dig into its files to create custom edits and remixes. Minecraft is one of the biggest games in the $99.6 billion gaming industry, and it is consistently one of the best-selling games on consoles, PC, and mobile devices.
Add-Ons is one of the ways that Mojang is keeping Minecraft appealing. By making it easier to create unique experiences for the game, the developer is making it more likely that fans of Minecraft will transform it into exactly what they want. Previously, most fans had to wait for community creators to build mods, but Add-Ons makes it so that you can change nearly everything about Minecraft by changing a few numbers in a text file.
Here’s how the Add-Ons feature works:
When I talked to Mojang at the Electronic Entertainment Expo trade show in June, the company explained that the process to make something like a UFO is so basic that almost anyone can do it.
““It’s really not that difficult,” Minecraft senior producer James Webster said in June. “It’s just a matter of creating the geometries, which is just a bunch of points in space. And then adding the textures to that. It’s really simple to make these massive changes. Add-Ons, we hope, are going to encourage people to be super creative. It’s a simple thing to change things, but then they can take things a step further by remixing all of these elements to come up with brand new ideas.”
While Add-Ons are coming to the Pocket Edition first, Mojang plans to eventually roll the feature out to every version of Minecraft. That’s part of a long-term road map to bring the various versions of the game together while consistently expanding all of their features. But if Add-Ons is a hit with fans, then the Minecraft community may keep the game feeling fresh and exciting all on their own.