Minecraft Developer’s Canned Game was an FPS

Mojang, makers of Minecraft, recently canned a project they were working on with an unnamed studio. Why? Minecraft creator and Mojang founder Markus “Notch” Persson offered his short and simple answer in a brief conversation with PC Gamer.

“We’re trying to figure out what we want to do long term with the position we have now. We only recently decided to stay as independent as possible and cancelled an unannounced project that we were doing in collaboration with someone else. It’s going to be an interesting future.”

In a later conversation with Joystiq, Notch unveiled that the project was a first-person shooter, but still refused to name the studio Mojang collaborated with. He and the team “did not want more external dependancies,” reiterating that “The success of Minecraft meant we could focus on projects fully owned by us.”

Mojang isn’t opposed to collaborations going forward though, so long as they’re “not to make money.”

Beyond Scrolls and ox10c, we’re left questioning what upcoming project Mojang is hard at work on. Hopefully we’ll find out soon enough.

Just a little extra food for thought: does anyone remember Guncraft, that little indie game that combines Minecraft elements with the FPS genre? That seems particularly fitting for this story, no?

[via Joystiq and PC Gamer]