Why isn't Minetest more popular?

[Chinchow]

I think purchasing lots of customized Minetest USB Flash drives would be genius!
Then, installing XUBUNTU via LIVEUSBLINUX, using a casper persistent file, getting Minetest installed on it, and selling them!

Quote from jmf:
"Play minetest EVERYWHERE... With the new MINETEST FLASHDRIVE!!! Plug it in, select it in BIOS menu and there you go"

If you do that, players will be forced to use the open source drivers which are much slower (unless you're on Intel GPUs, where the official driver is open source, but Intel GPUs are quite slow). Also, selecting something in the BIOS menu is too hard for like 80% of the people out there.

I agree but how about your at a library and want to play minetest the flash drive would be a secondary choice for on the go

[kaeza]

I wish we could make action figures of the 3D guy, Vombies, and Dungeon Masters; but that is way too out of our league.

EDIT: I also agree that changing BIOS options is not for the average user (and especially not for children).

[jmf]

USB-Sticks are quite expensive. You would have to take 100 for over 500€.
That's really risky. Where will we take the money from if the selling fails?
I thought a bit about it and I think, that T-shirts are best for this purpose.
There is no risk if we sell them in an online shop like the one I mentioned above.
They PRINT everything for you, they SELL it and you get the money.
This shop is only an example (it has too high shipping costs)
If you buy there you have to pay the price:
7,90€ (t-shirt with printing) + 7€ (goes DIRECTLY to minetest as donation) + shipping costs.

There might be shops that sell it cheaper, but I think that Ragnar's idea to print t-shirts without
asking anybody what he/she wants AND giving just a little part to minetest is an egoistic, bad thing.
You can't sell t-shirts to promote an open source project and then let go most of the money in your
own pocket. I won't buy such a t-shirt. In addition to this I don't even know how the shirt looks.
There should be a poll deciding it and not some cash-hungry guy.

EDIT: Typo fixed

[Ragnar]

well, if i sell shirts, then i only get money if i sell any...

[Ragnar]

oh, and im not getting the whole money they pay for the shirts, i get maybe 20-30% and that isnt that much...-.-

[Ragnar]

oh, and also john, you are banned from my server til further notice.

[jmf]

jmf: im working on it, and if i will start it, then i think i will split the money 40-60 (60 to me =P, 40 to celeron maybe...) cause i know a guy -_o

Here it was 60% to you

or 50-35-15 (50 to me, 35 to celeron, 15 to winners (ill explane later))

There some money goes to "winners" but still 50% to you.

I'm sorry, I overreacted a bit in the last post, but minetest is a community project and
at least asking what motif should be printed on the shirt would have been nice.

[Liandri]

Selling T-shirts smells like a small failure to me, the objetive is to make the game more popular, not to earn some cash.

Also, as happens with the movies, music, etc, the popularity usually comes before products sales. You cant sell anything related to something that is not known (yet).

To achieve this, everyone here must put aside his/her fanboyism (A known disease very well spreaded everywhere), look at the game objectively (comments like "Don't listen to people that say negative things about minetest" it's not wise) take note of it's flaws, and let the time, developers and modders do the rest.

[Casimir]

I wish we could make action figures of the 3D guy, Vombies, and Dungeon Masters; but that is way too out of our league.

We have .blend files and there are some low-cost-open-source-3D-printers out there. You can make them for only some cents and give them away as presents (this makes the people happier than selling).

[jmf]

Liandri:
I mentioned this point in IRC already.
The shirts are advertisement for minetest.
The primary goal is to show around these shirts and show:
"Hey, there is something out there that is better than minecraft".
Money is secondary, but I think when money is made, it should at
least go into the project fund to help pushing minetest forward.
More features = More users.
And when money is made, people may finally realize that minetest
isn't one of millions of games, but a thing, that has got potention to grow to something huge.
But, as I said, I agree that this post is about popularity, maybe cheaper shirts will bring the game
more forwards as expensive shirts that bring in a bit of money but that aren't bought in masses.
EDIT: typo

[jmf]

Other ideas without all this selling stuff and licensing problems:
*More/Better documentation for newbies
*A Website like this one: http://en.minecraft-server.eu/?go=serverliste
-> Newbies don't want to dig through the whole server forum post
*A friendlier IRC
-> Here everybody has to help. Don't be annoying, don't talk off-topic too much, don't spam.
I don't want to fill this post with selling ideas any more, because this leads to nothing.
It's all about advertising.
So the next post should be about these ideas, further ideas and how to achieve these aims.

[rubenwardy]

Other ideas without all this selling stuff and licensing problems:
*More/Better documentation for newbies
*A Website like this one: http://en.minecraft-server.eu/?go=serverliste
-> Newbies don't want to dig through the whole server forum post

I might make a graphic interface for http://minetest.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=2239
Which would work the same. No promises, I am busy on "Minetest Extensions" and the following:

Why isn't Minetest more popular? (Why are people playing minecraft instead of minetest?)
5. (Most important IMO) Minetest is not very good documented. Somebody downloading it doesn't knows what is possible, what mods there are around. As I started playing it, it took me some time to discover all the things like keys, privileges, mods, texturepacks and so on (best example: using the mousewheel to craft ten times).
People just downloading the release, test that and don't see all the things there could. With all the things I changed and all the mods, the game I play is very different from the release version. And people don't see it.

I am thinking of doing an online introduction manual. It will be part of a set to which this is one section: http://tinyurl.com/mt-tut

[jmf]

It is not only important to HAVE this documentation or the server
list, but also to LINK them on different places.
If I would not have been on this forum for so long i would never have seen
the minetest.ru server list.
One day it was in "new posts", because someone posted a commentary on it.
So I found it. Newbies without experience should find the stuff without having
to search forums or wiki for hours.

[kaeza]

I wish we could make action figures of the 3D guy, Vombies, and Dungeon Masters; but that is way too out of our league.

We have .blend files and there are some low-cost-open-source-3D-printers out there. You can make them for only some cents and give them away as presents (this makes the people happier than selling).

Hmmm, that is now interesting.
We could make small keychains and give them away.
Yes, the cash is nice, but we are looking for ways to make minetest popular. As someone said, we can start *selling* Minetest merchandise once this game has *enough popularity*.

[Topywo]

So if you want the millions out there who play minecraft to play minetest, you have to do what segfault did, and create an installer. Then you need to add a tab for mods and a tab for textures.

Make minetest that easy to use and everyone and their brother would use it.

Do not overestimate the users of any app.

I agree with Neuromancer.

Maybe a start (for some Linux versions) would be to get a newer 'stable' in all the ( )ubuntu's software centers, that during/after downloading shows (in the menu?) how to easily install the latest version. In my experience most mods and servers tend to us the lates 'unstable' version.

edit: typo a.u.

[Josh]

We could make minetest hat's or lego :)

[tux_peng]

Same reason LibroOffice isn't used more than M$ Office.

OpenSource is a very scary word to most people because they have been convinced that OSS is always horribly buggy stuff that crashes mor than Win95

I opened a thread at a large minecraft server, with players that are generally very open-minded

http://www.brohoof.com/forums/topic/26991-have-you-ever/page__hl__minetest

[rubenwardy]

I have made a manual: http://minetest.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=4239

[sdzen]

name the player Dennis Ritchie.

[Dopium]

Well with all the mods that Minetest has and the recent progression of the game Minetest is becoming popular'ish. There is still alot of work to be done, but with some mods installed and a play with textures its not very far off Minecraft. Reasons i like Minetest over Minecraft is OpenSource and the community. Opensource is great as it CAN be trusted, the whole code is there for all to view, thus any problems with the code will be noticed by others in the community.

Another great feature with opensource is if there is something a dev has implemented within the app you dont like or wish to change its value/action you have free will. I must say Minetest has opened my eyes to opensource apps and im now planing of switching from Windows to Linux aswell. Thats my thoughts anyway

[LionLAD]

well minetest has enuff mods already to make it exactly like minecraft. but by in the o.4 stages of this game minetest is actuly already better than minecraft so the time we get to the 1.0... stages it will most like even better than minecraft and than we will have a cult here playing this game