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Collaborative Consumers: Here’s Why Minecraft, Wikipedia, Waze, and Google Maps are so successful
When the immensely popular video game, Minecraft, was first released in 2011, it attracted a unique user base unlike any other. The game’s lack of a manual along with its inherent mystery, forced players to theorize, work together, and learn how to survive, craft, build, and explore.
Minecraft’s success is a testament to the power of collaboration and user-generated content. By offering players a platform to create, collaborate, and explore, Minecraft was able to foster a community of passionate fans who have transformed the game into a hub for their creativity, innovation, collaboration, and self-expression.
However, Minecraft’s “formula” for success is not unprecedented. Numerous other products owe their success to the contributions of their users, whether through user-generated content, crowdsourced data, or collaborative tools.
Let’s take a look at why products built on collaboration tend to endure, and explore additional examples of successful products that largely owe their success due to the contributions of their users.
1. Minecraft
Collaboration, Creation
I think the best example of a game creating an “everlasting” impression, infinite replayability, and virtually timeless favor would have to be Minecraft. This entire article could be on Minecraft alone, but I’ll summarize the reasons here:
A) The game’s massive procedurally generated world
When users create a new game, they choose between Survival Mode or Creative Mode. In both modes, a new “World” is generated randomly with random locations of different biomes (Desert, Forest, Snow, etc), materials, and landscapes.
The random nature of these worlds prompts discovery and exploration. What’s out there? It creates endless possibilities for discovery of the new.
B) Creative Mode
In Minecraft’s Creative Mode, players are given access to an unlimited supply of every type of block and material to build with. Users can fly and do not have the health limitations that limit the user in survival mode. They are free to roam and build whatever their…
