Mojang interested in co-publishing other indies

Daniel Kaplan, business development director of Minecraft developer Mojang Specifications, has told GamesIndustry.biz that the studio is interested in co-publishing other indie games with external studios, hoping to get something on the market by Autumn.

Kaplan says that the ambitious developer wants to bring new games under the Mojang brand, although the details are very much still under discussion.

"We are in a great spot right now, we can basically do whatever we want to," said Kaplan. "The hardest thing for us right now is to say 'no' to all the deals we're being offered. There are tonnes of opportunities out there for us right now. But we have to wait it out and figure out what's the best thing for us to do.

"We get requests every week, it's quite hard to sort them out, to figure out, okay, this is what we're going to do. If you take one path then you can't take the other, you know?

The hardest thing for us right now is to say 'no' to all the deals we're being offered

Daniel Kaplan, Mojang

"[The offers] they're from hardware manufacturers, other publishers, ad networks, all that stuff. We're looking into publishing our own games too though, bringing indie games under our own brand. We're still having to figure out how that's going to work out.

"We hope to have something out this fall at least, some co-published games."

Kaplan also hinted that it's unlikely that Mojang will remain a PC-exclusive developer for too long, pointing out that the console market has definitely sparked interest.

"We're always looking for new platforms, and consoles are very interesting for us, obviously. There are huge possibilities for us there."

Mention of consoles was raised by the discussion of a forthcoming XBL title which has openly taken great inspiration from Minecraft - a fact that Kaplan and Mojang are philosophical about.

"I try to believe that Minecraft will be looked at just like Doom was. That created the first FPS game, if Minecraft is the first game to start a genre of voxel engine, sand box games, whatever you want to call them, we'll be really proud of it.

"There will always be copies of different genres in games, so the only thing we can do is to be even better. They're challenging us to become even better. If they want to compete with us then we'll happily compete with them."

A full interview with Daniel Kaplan is available elsewhere on GamesIndustry.biz now.