Sarah Stone - Tableau Conference 2014 - theCUBE
Channel: SiliconANGLE theCUBE
Date: 2014-09-11

Sarah Stone, Texas Rangers, at Tableau Conference 2014 with John Furrier and Jeff Kelly

@theCUBE
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gmont, the UK children’s books publisher, has been given the global publishing rights for handbooks that accompany the game, an annual, poster book and magazine, by Mojang, the Swedish independent game developer.  Unfortunately, Egmont wasn’t given the rights to publish in the US so Minecraft fans stateside may have to settle for purchasing the materials online.

“We are thrilled to be working with Egmont to create exclusive and engaging content for our fans,” said Mojang CEO Carl Manneh.

The published materials will include four handbooks: The Beginner’s Handbook, The Redstone Handbook, The Combat Handbook and The Construction Handbook which will all retail for £5.99;  The Minecraft Annual priced at £7.99; and the Minecraft Poster Book for £9.99.

“We knew whatever we created needed to be fun, informative and centre on the Minecraft community,” added Egmont’s Sarah Bates.

“The fans are extremely important to us and we want our publishing to both feed their thirst for gaming knowledge through an engaging reading experience, whilst also offer exclusive content from the developers which they can’t get online.”

Aside from working closely with Mojang for the published materials, Egmont is also in discussion with some Minecraft superfans regarding the materials’ titles.  A design competition will also be launched next month for fans with the price being the chosen work of art published in Egmont’s Minecraft Poster Book.

Minecraft is a paid app but there’s a demo you can try for free before you decide if you really want to purchase the game.  Though Minecraft has been a success as a paid game, Mojang is looking into the subscription model to let more people enjoy the game.

Minecraft is “primarily a single player game with multiplayer attached by allowing an instance of Minecraft to act as a server,” and Mojang stated that parents who are tired of serving as server administrators so their kids can collaborate with other players, will be the one benefiting from Minecraft Realms.  Those who subscribe to Minecraft Realms will be able to keep and administrate their own Minecraft world.