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josquarebox · 10 months

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*cracks knuckles* sooo have you ever heard about Hytale?

This Game has been my neurodivergent obsession for a few years now, despite having never actually played it, since its not even out lol.

If you dont know what Hytale is, buckle up because you are stuck with me here and will have to listen to me rant about it >:)

Hytale is a Game being made by Hypixel Studios, an offshoot from Hypixel inc. who run the Hypixel minecraft Server. The Game has been in developement since somewhere around 2016 and has yet to release. Why so long, you might think? Well, its complicated.

Back in the ancient year before memorial (2016), Minecraft was at an all time low in terms of player numbers due to many factors, both a lack of interest in the games updates, minecraft being considered cringe and other games such as fortnite having pulled both players and creators away from the Game.

Dont get the wrong impression though, Minecraft was still being played a lot, but not very much talked about, and especially java editions days seemed numbered by a lot of creators, including the owner of Hypixel, Simon, as well as Noxy, who will be important later.

Simon, as far we know is a cool guy, and has made stonks with the Servers revenue during Minecrafts peak, but these times seemingly would never be coming back.

Minecraft just lacked the aspects nececarry to sustain its community, be it the lack of content updates, creator support through a modding api or freedom in policy through recent eula changes.

Due to these and other factors, the Hypixel Team realized that running their business long term in an enviromen, where so many sweeping large changes outside of their control could end their entire livelihood, they realized that there was basically nothing stopping them from just making their own minecraft, free from the restrainst of their creativity, community and buisness, and thats why Hypixel Studios, the Game company, was born.

As stated by noxy and Simon back in 2016, they had over 25 people working full time, funded by simon in an aruably risky move to build their own legs tto stand on, and by 2018, they were far enough into developement to share their project with the wider Hypixel community, and mabe even the entire Minecraft community...

In late 2018, Hypixel Studios released a Trailer on their Youtube channel for a new Game they had been working on for over 2 years called Hytale:

Hytale was advertised as a Blockgame Sandbox RPG, utalizing simmilar voxel based terrain as minecraft, but other than that completely different: Where Minecraft was an open-ended Sandbox for the player to shape the way they like, Hytale was designed to be an Adventure RPG with a Story/Campain, Lore, more in depth combat, a fully realized fantasy World with Bosses and dungeons and content galore, but also open for other people to create their own experiences inside the game using modding support, live scripting a model maker and so on. Not to mention an upgraded version of their minecraft server, now unchained from minecraft and let loose on a Game under their full control.

Simon and the others new that there was interest for that kind of game, but the response from the wider Gaming community was beyond their wildest Expectation:

Their Prediction laid at around 100, mabe 200 thousand views on their first look trailer, but boi did they underestimate:

The Trailer now sits at 60. Million. Views. 60. MILLION.

Many AAA Studios wuld dream of that kind of success, and now they were sitting there, with the pressure to perform in front of the entire Minecraft community, they were harolded as the bringers of Minecraft 2, the ones who would give them what minecraft was sorely lacking, they were now asked to bear a community of that size on their shoulders, and well, they marched on.

On their Twitter Account, they said they were aiming for the game to be in everyones hands by 2019, but as we all know, that never happened, but why?

They decided to delay the release until 2021 to try and reach the expectations now put on them, expand the team, explore new possibilites and see how they can harness the attention the game had gotten.

Over the course of the next two years, they would release blogposts after blogpost updating exited fans on the developement of the game, sharing details on how the game shaped up, and sometimes announce new hires, along with simon handing of the torch to noxy as head of the company.

At the Start of 2020, theythen announced that Hypixel Studios had been aqquired by a major Studio called Riot Games, that would be funding the further developement as well as oversee and give advice to the rapidly growing Team. For many, me included this sounded dangerous, since as gamers we were well to aware of the many cases where studios like Electronic Arts have acquired smaller studios, only for them to ruin their future games and close the studio after a small failiure.

But as we now know, this did not happen in this case, in fact, riot is built on very simmilar ideals and spirit of entrepreneurship, their flagship title, league of legends, was inspired by Dota, a popular warcraft 3 mod - a journey not too dissimilar from what Hypixel went through with minecraft.

If we now skip until today, Hypixel studios has grown from somewhere around 30 employees to over 130, they have hired talent from the minecraft community, like the developer of sodium, they hired people from the pre-release hytale community, they have hired people they themselves grew up playing games made of, and as stated by their Game director John Hendricks, a former Mojang employee, they have now largely ,,Charted the iceberg" in terms of what is now in their scope to expand hytale into: Hytale is now not only a big game, its a Plattform for People to come together, explore and create, for people to go on the same sort of journey they themselves took initialy with the project.

This has obviously meant that, to utalize the immense amount of talent, reccources and experience, they need time, and this has pushed a possible release farther and farther back.

The Game that was being developed back before 2020 is now left to be an overengineered prototype of their full vision, while they rebuild the games technical side from the ground up to have an engine durabe enough for over a decade to come, and take their time doing it, not under pressure from riot to crunch developement, as other publishers and parent companies have done in the past.

As for me, I have been exited for what they do with the Game since that announcement back in 2018, and I have hopes and dreams of what playing and creating in hytale will be like. I cant wait to explore the world of orbis, play minigames and explore what others may create, or create myself.

The Game Industry is a tough place, where funding, good management, talent, experience, and an exited playerbase cannot guarantee a good game, but mabe, just mabe, lightning will strike exactly where I want it to, and mabe Hytale will be the game I have hope it has the potential to be.

If you have read this far, thank you. I may post more in the future about this kinda stuff, but for now I hope to have relieved myself of some of that hype that has been pressure sealed behind my fingers. I hope you have a great day, and may this post age well ;D

#Hytale #Rant #gaming #hyperfixation

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