Terraria is a much better game than Starbound, the platforming is better done, the design is tighter, the bosses way more interesting. But it's still a pale imitation of Minecraft.
Ultimately Minecraft does more by doing less. The art and design are more interesting because they're cute and different. The roughness becomes part of the charm. Notch understood keenly that mechanics are way more important than polish.
Minecraft has a tighter focus, it doesn't waste developer time doing stupid shit for stupid reasons. So much crap that went into Starbound I could really just do without. The procedurally generated worlds, who really cares about the zillions of worlds you can explore, after you've visited five or so, you've seen them all. A lot of design effort went into making a stupid thing look and feel good.
It's like they went and built an MVP by throwing shit against the wall. You're just wasting your potential audience's time by not doing basic research. I see a ton of games like this, crap that might be good in the future, but I don't want to tough it out because the game isn't fun to play now.
Now, Starbound in all likelihood still made a shitload of money, goes to show you how much opportunity is still there in video games, but the free lunch is going to end at some point.
Ultimately Minecraft does more by doing less. The art and design are more interesting because they're cute and different. The roughness becomes part of the charm. Notch understood keenly that mechanics are way more important than polish.
Minecraft has a tighter focus, it doesn't waste developer time doing stupid shit for stupid reasons. So much crap that went into Starbound I could really just do without. The procedurally generated worlds, who really cares about the zillions of worlds you can explore, after you've visited five or so, you've seen them all. A lot of design effort went into making a stupid thing look and feel good.
It's like they went and built an MVP by throwing shit against the wall. You're just wasting your potential audience's time by not doing basic research. I see a ton of games like this, crap that might be good in the future, but I don't want to tough it out because the game isn't fun to play now.
Now, Starbound in all likelihood still made a shitload of money, goes to show you how much opportunity is still there in video games, but the free lunch is going to end at some point.