Big news in the game world today is that Notch has passed development of Minecraft to his number two at Mojang, Jens Bergensten. I was surprised at first but it makes a lot of sense. Jens, who goes by the moniker “Jeb,” has become the personable face of Minecraft over the past six months, guiding the community through the glut of development that led to Minecraft’s official release.

In the meantime, Notch has created his fair-share of public snafus. His involvement in social platforms is admirable, especially considering the size of the Minecraft community, but Notch has used his massive fanbase to air more than a little bit of dirty laundry off the cuff. It’s an ugly way to do business, particularly when you consider how much of Minecraft’s development has been a community effort at this point.

That’s only going to increase. Jeb’s primary focus at this point is implementing an API to make modding more accessible. We probably won’t see anything until March, but this is the next big step for Minecraft’s open world.

It’s funny how hot-and-cold I feel about Minecraft at different times. I’m in a cold spell now. We had a huge dearth of content for a while, then a massive boom. Unfortunately that boom required new worlds on a nearly bi-weekly basis, and I just burned out. With API modding I’m sure I’ll get interested again. I like the promise of easy mod access, especially for community run servers.

I realize I’m rambling a bit, but that’s how Minecraft goes for me. It’s a game that slips in and out of my consciousness but something I’m sure I’ll be coming back to for some time. I’m glad to know the game is still in good hands.

I’ve been hesitating to write about Minecraft for about a week now because I wanted this article to go live on our main site first. I first heard about Minecraft probably six months ago or so. In fact, I think I remember taking a peek at it last April, but that could be wrong. At any rate, I didn’t get too involved with it. I was deep into League of Legends at that point, so there really wasn’t time in my gaming schedule.

Fast forward to today, when my LoL schedule has become fairly casual. Now I understand the appeal of the open world. It’s an incredible game, despite the primitive graphics and the fact that the game is still in beta. If you’ve played it, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, well, you need to.

I won’t say much more than that for now, mostly because I’ve written an article for our parent site about the importance of Minecraft’s design. Here’s a quick excerpt:

For all of the fun and magic that makes “Minecraft” great, the thing that makes “Minecraft” important is its design. The game’s original developer, a guy named Markus Persson that the “Minecraft” community knows as Notch, did something a lot of AAA developers would laugh at. Instead of trying to immerse the player in a world by using narrative, he chose to focus on gameplay. By simplifying the controls, the world, even the graphics, Persson created a game world that players can call their own, a world they want to shape and be a part of in ways that other games don’t allow. My own first experience with “Minecraft” was so overwhelming I actually sat and giggled as I played. There is so much potential – truly unbounded creative potential – that I was immediately transported back to childhood, sitting in front of an upturned bucket of Legos, wondering what I should build next.

You can check out the full article on Bullz-Eye.com.