Minecraft Passes World of Worldcraft on Google Trends!

Behold the power of user-generated content: Minecraft, the cult indie sandbox game, is now more popular on Google Trends than World of Warcraft itself. This doesn't mean Minecraft has more users -- at the moment, according to Minecraft's posted stats, it has about 1.4 million registered users, 435K or whom are paying customers, compared to WoW's 12 million players. However, Google Trends is a better indicator for general engagement and excitement, as reflected by aggregate Google searches. And there, Minecraft dominates Warcraft. (Even though Blizzard is having its annual WoW convention this week.) Impressive results for an extremely low budget game that's basically made by one developer, Markus "Notch" Persson, who I interviewed last month. However, it's not surprising, given Minecraft's emphasis on user-generated content, like the Minecart video I wrote about last week, which has since been seen over half a million times. That enthusiasm magnifies interest in Minecraft, in the same way that Second Life has always punched above its weight in terms of engagement.

Speaking of which, Minecraft is also trending much higher than Second Life, and for that matter, FarmVille, even with its 60 million active players:

Notably, Minecraft is still in Alpha! How much larger will it get before officially launching, or when server hosts complete their plans to create Minecraft mini-MMOs?

Got Minecraft news you want to share? Contact me, part-time Minecraft reporter Wagner James Au at wjamesau at well dot com. (My Minecraft avatar was made by Bone Mosten of Punching Trees).

Comments

[Sonitus Randt]

Soon after I stumbled onto Minecraft and found I enjoyed it so much, I tried figuring out why. I first thought it was the great sound of the blocks breaking apart, or the sense of danger as night falls, or the nice physics implementation, or even the beautiful way light is rendered. Finally I saw that because it's so incredibly fast, easy and fun to build things that look good and work the way they should, I was overlooking the user generated content as the MAIN addictive aspect. Digging mines, you are building empty space essentially, so, at least underground, the construction aspect wasn't so obvious to me at first. As you say. "Behold the power..."

[Hitomi Tiponi]

Minecraft shows that often a simple, addictive idea can beat lots of fanciness at times.

Incidentally, I did a Google Trends and found that Unity 3d and Open Sim are trending higher than Blue Mars with Onverse further behind, though they all flat-line when compared against Second Life.

[Adeon Writer]

I picture your Minecraft avatar reporting all of this. I hope you know that.

In my mind, it's adorable.

[Rin Tae]

I find it very interesting, that the line for both WoW and SL shows the same general development from 06/07 to today ... not that I woud give much for trends and new things usually get high instant ratings when lots of people want to check it out. The true success will only be revealed in a few months.

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

I cannot wait to try this game. Looking at the videos reminds me of the joy of pushing those little 'dozers all over SimCity 2000 landscapes, then making infrastructure over a decade ago.

There's something addictive and immersive about making stuff if it's easy enough, and it's not in most virtual worlds.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Further findings from Google Trends:

* Minecraft is currently bigger than the Beatles.

* Jesus is much bigger than either.

* Depending on her most recent arrest, Lindsay Lohan is on some days bigger than Jesus.

* On other days, Shakespeare is bigger than Lindsay Lohan, indicating some small ray of hope for the future of humanity.

* Google Trends is fun. But if you want to draw meaningful conclusions, compare the launch spike of Minecraft to the launch spike of other games. That a six-year-old game garners fewer searches than a new title isn't all that startling.

[Eladrienne Laval]

Minecraft is my guilty pleasure. So much simple fun. Takes me back or something.

[Mark Essel]

I discovered Minecraft not long back and was floored by the potential. Notch's work was like a smack in the face to BigCo game design. As gatekeepers of the content they're holding back a flood of builders. Markus opened that door with Minecraft.

Some tools I'd like to see:

Image to Minecraft world rendering
I have some ideas about how to do the projections with a slide bar but it will be good for crude external shells only.

Connected Minecraft worlds for seemless infinite world traveling. Cache 27 cube neighborhoods for long range view (need some code to efficiently render adjacent nodes). Neighborhood clusters could emerge as a fresh virtual world comes into being.

[lethal commission]

Minecraft is a lot better. It's has better features.