Mob Vote – A balanced perspective – Addressing the Mojang accusations

People love to point out that Mojang has 700 employees and a multi billion dollar company behind them. But have you considered that running a game development company for hundreds of millions of players across multiple separate platforms involves more than just pushing an update? I won’t even mention the fact they also have Minecraft Story Mode, Minecraft Legends and Minecraft Dungeons. They need to:

• Code, design and test the tiniest feature to work with every other thing in the game
• Do public relations and marketing, branding, writing blog posts, creating videos etc
• Deal with support tickets, the bug tracker, suggestion box and other official outlets
• Create official artwork, merch and manage brand deals with other huge companies
• Manage marketplace and teams, manage their own employees, and profit margins

How effective their efforts are is another, subjective question entirely. You can be the judge of that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying they don’t outsource some work, and I’m not excusing them for certain controversies, which we’ll get into now. THE MOB VOTE.

Voting: problems and solutions

In theory, the mob vote is a prefect tool for community engagement, and many game companies wouldn’t even interact with the community in the way Mojang does. But as we know, in practice, it’s a 2 to 1 elimination game that creates a heated divide across the community every year. A vote, by design, eliminates the others based on subjective opinion. You cannot avoid controversy with a mob vote.

What I would suggest to fix the vote is three things. Better direction, a plan for losing mobs and a different voting set-up. Let me explain.

• First, based off 1.20, future updates need better direction. And that includes the mob vote – it always adds some exotic mob that has nothing to do with the update. The sniffer was an absolute joke, it’s comically large and just sniffs flowers. And it doesn’t even spawn on its own – it could fit in with the cherry biome, but instead it was added as a side quest to the half-baked archeology update. Imagine Mojang focused on archeology for a single update, revamping mine shafts and going in-depth on every feature to enhance what’s there and not clutter the game with CONTENT.
• Second, the 2 to 1 controversy: Mojang needs to have a back-up plan for each mob that becomes popular but does not win – for example, if the penguin loses, they could add a rarely spawning puffin as a cute easter egg, or a similar mob like a seal.
• Third, to avoid the controversy and overhyping altogether, Mojang could tease the mobs but never reveal them until the vote – that way players come to the vote with a clean slate and make their own individual decision. There’s a whole 48 hours to vote, which is still plenty of time to discuss. But this part is just a personal idea I just had, so maybe it’s flawed.

The vote is meant to be FUN. Instead, this dumpster fire reveals the flaws of both Mojang and the community. Yeah, don’t get me started about the Minecraft Memes subreddit. What is Mojang gonna do, just cancel the mob vote? You don’t like it, but millions of unaware kids are gonna vote and enjoy it.

Change: On updates and biomes

Everything aside, the mob vote seems to get more controversial every year. I’d be looking forward to a change – specifically, a sequel to the 2018 biome vote. While some updates have failed, many like the 1.13 Update Aquatic, the 1.16 Nether Update or the 1.19 Caves and Cliffs managed to have a single theme, stick to it, and bring life to a bland or overlooked part of the game.

For example, imagine an update focused on the Ice biomes – giving more detail and purpose to the desolate winter landscapes. Maybe, better terrain generation with impressive icebergs. A unique type of plant or tree. An ice pyramid hidden in the ice spikes, with a hidden room like the ocean monument. I made these examples up 5 seconds ago, but you get the point. The savannah could use an update too.

I could go on, but I think I covered some main points I wanted to say prior to the Minecraft Live and vote. Now go out there and enjoy the game. Can you complain? Of course. But do it in a civil and effective way like the suggestion box, discussions with good alternatives, or reaching out to Mojang employees.

Share your own thoughts, I hope this has been an OK outlook on the issue!