Burning Down the Minecraft Launcher

Minecraft’s players love the quirkiness and little pieces of whimsy that make up the game’s unique voice and personality. …but with a busy team, how do we build the evidence we need to show leadership that something that seems “silly” is worthwhile for both player and business needs?

…throw a sheep? tease Microsoft? spoof Doom? create a library dimension? We know that our players look forward to turning on Minecraft April 1st, to see what funny jokes the team has managed to sneak into the game.

For this project, we wanted to bring the holiday spirit into the Minecraft Launcher for the first time. (The Minecraft Launcher is an application that players use to start various Minecraft games, see game news, and adjust settings.)

One of my Launcher team members hatched the basic concept: “Let’s set the Launcher on FIRE!” Players are familiar with fire – having your house catch fire is a common disaster in the game!

I researched Minecraft lore and came up with a design where fires gradually sprout around the Launcher screen, with the familiar “fire crackling” sound effect from the game. When a player hovers their mouse over a fire it fizzles, again with the game sound effect.

I used game graphics: a water bucket as an icon to turn fire off, and a flint and steel as an icon to turn fire on. We also added audio controls – I didn’t want players feel like they were forced to be a part of a joke if they weren’t in the mood for goofiness!

Also, I decided with the team how we would measure success. We would be tracking interactions with the fire (when players hovered a cursor over a fire to put it out.) We would also be tracking how often players turned the fire on or off, and how often they turned the sound off. We didn’t use sound often in the Launcher, and we wanted to learn if sound was something players were averse to. Total number of fires extinguished was tracked too, since it might be an impressive metric to show the amount of interactions with players.

We watched social media for player feedback during the event, and the positive posts gave us a sense that the event was going well!

…and then the data came in!