Today on the podcast, our host David Taylor dives into the world of Minecraft’s massive creator-driven ecosystem with two of the most influential creators:

Raf, co-founder of Spark Universe, a studio behind one of the most widely used Minecraft tools: Essential Mod, which connects millions of players through a live services platform. With over 50 million downloads and nearly 2 million monthly active users, Spark Universe is one of the largest Minecraft creative studios around. Spark Universe also led the development of all official in-game content tied to the Minecraft Movie—including a DLC, Add-On, and live event.

Zed, Director of CubeCraft Games, one of the most popular Minecraft multiplayer servers in the world. Since launching in 2012 and becoming a Minecraft Partner in 2017, CubeCraft has reached over 100 million players. Known for its fast-paced minigames and long-form experiences like Skyblock, CubeCraft continues to be a staple in the Minecraft multiplayer community.

We’d also like to thank Reforged Labs for making this episode possible. This YC startup automates the traditionally costly and time-consuming ad production process, delivering high-quality, cost-effective video ads in under 24 hours – and it’s all powered by a proprietary AI engine trained on thousands of successful game ads.

We’d also like to thank Heroic Labs for making this episode possible! Thousands of studios have trusted Heroic Labs to help them focus on their games and not worry about gametech or scaling for success.

If you like the episode, please help others find us by leaving a 5-star rating or review! And if you have any comments, requests, or feedback shoot us a note at [email protected].

This transcript is machine-generated, and we apologize for any errors.

David: Welcome to the Naavik Gaming Podcast. I'm your host, David Taylor, and today we're diving into the world of Minecraft. Not just the game, but the massive creator ecosystem that's grown around it. To help us unpack it all, I'm joined by two of the most influential creators in the Minecraft ecosystem.

Raf is the co-founder of Spark Universe, the Minecraft UGC studio Behind Essential Mod, a live services platform connecting millions of Minecraft players. With over 50 million downloads in nearly 2 million monthly active users, Spark Universe led the development of all official in-game content tied into the Minecraft movie, including a DLC, add-on and live event and are the minds behind Realism Craft a first of its kind overhaul of vanilla Minecraft. Joining him is Zed, director of Cubecraft Games, one of the most popular Minecraft multiplayer servers in the world. Since launching in 2012 and becoming a Minecraft partner in 2017, cube Craft has reached over 100 million players and is known for fast-paced, combat mini games, as well as long form content like Sky Block.

Together, we'll walk through their journeys as top Minecraft creators. Explore the evolution of the Minecraft UGC ecosystem and dig into what it takes to succeed as a creator on the platform today. Welcome to the podcast, guys.

Rafael: Hi. Yeah. Nice to be here.

David: So just to kick things off, maybe we can start with, Raf, I'd love to hear your story of how you got here today as a top Minecraft creator.

Rafael: I think, I think my story starts how, how most people's story starts that ended up in any place in this industry, which is, I was a Minecraft player when I was a kid at this point over 12, 12, 13 years ago, and very early on started creating worlds and continent Minecraft just as a hobby. So I made a server with friends, I think in, in 2013 as my first real project and then kind of branched out of that.

And for years and years, just made projects for the fun of it. And then, when I got a little bit older, I think there was around 2015 or 2016, we started having some opportunities to work for YouTubers, make a little bit of money. Nothing, nothing big, but when you're, when you're a kid, you are, you'll take it, right?

And, and had them the opportunity straight out of school to found a company with friends that, that we called Spark Universe and which turned into a pretty major player in the space.

David: Awesome. And just a follow up question, like, we'd love to understand sort of the journey of Spark Universe too, of like, you know, you, you founded it, but was it all, you know, did you immediately become the top creator? Or did it take some time to get there?

Rafael: We, we did get pretty lucky early in what we definitely weren't, weren't the top creator from day one. We, we really, when we started, our goal I think was to make a little bit of money and, and see if we can make a living. We didn't start with really any idea of how far we could go.

But we did have some opportunities very early on that allowed us to take it very seriously. Like I think half year after we found it, commit to it full time with a bigger team and so growing it. So, so we had a lot of privilege there early on to actually say, let's, let's go all on in on this. Let's grow the team and let's make this something serious.

David: Awesome. Zed, how about you? I'd love to hear your story as well.

Zed: , Yeah, so I'm slightly different from Raf. I was a bad Minecraft player. So, I quickly found, I went into the server side, running the Minecraft servers and SMPs with my friends at school. And then from there, that's how I got more into the, the dev and tech stuff. Similar, I did a bit of work for YouTubers and smaller servers. And then I met my friend Rubik, who had founded Cubecraft in 2012. And I joined the team towards the back end of 2014, start of 2015. I think I was about 14 or 15 at the time. And that's where I kind of, I really sunk my teeth into the tech of Cubecraft and building out the service and more.

And we, we were seeing some pretty big play accounts even back then on the Java version of Minecraft. We used to be used to be quite large in Europe. And, yeah, kind of escalated uncontrollably from there. And, and here we are now.

David: Awesome. I, I'd love to just take a moment to, like, when you say you started a server, like what does that entail exactly?

Like what, what does it mean to start a server and what's sort of the, the pieces you need to pull together, and then how does a player experience that?

Zed: Yeah, I think so. One of the great things about Minecraft is actually the story of how Cube Craft starts, and the story of how is very similar to how the story of how any Minecraft service starts.

You start kind of with an idea. You find plugins on spigot forms or bucket forms or whatever it was back then, or mods. If you're doing kind of a, a modern experience, you, you put them all together in a way that you think works and you, you put it out into the world and people. Like it and come and play it, or they don't, and you try again.

And, you know, we're, we, were very lucky that we, we got it right and we, we got players. But you, you know, we, we started there, you know, the start of Cubecraft. We were downloading plugins. We then got into writing our own code for, for the, the server software. And now obviously we're a much more complex technical operation.

But our, our origins is the same as, as every other, every other Minecraft server.

David: And just, just so that I can sort of better understand or in the audience as well, like what is a plugin and what is ah, mod and how do you think about these different, you know, product types.

Zed: I. Yeah, so I mean, they're, they're pretty similar plugins just within Minecraft generally mean server side.

So you'd, you'd be on a normal Minecraft client and then you join the server and the server's got a customized experience with plugins. Mods generally refers more to client side, so, well we've got a client model on the call with Raf who, who runs a, who runs essential. And that's usually customizing stuff within the, the game that you have on your computer which may or may not have a multiplayer component as well.

David: Got it. Got it. All right. Thanks for that. Just initial, I think it's important to level set on like all the different things that need to come together to create an experience for the player. Before we get deeper into that side of stuff, I just wanna ask like, uh, on the Minecraft movie side, did you guys see it?

What was Lloyd, what did you guys think? Also, and then also just curious, like how did that affect your respective audiences? Do you see a massive spike in players? Like what's, what's been the effect of that whole moment?

Rafael: I think, I think anyone that works in the Minecraft industry will have, have seen the movie.

It's, it's pretty impossible not to definitely had a fun time. I think it's a, it's a great moment for the franchise and just generally bringing it to more people's minds. The amount of people that have started talking to me about Minecraft now that know I work in Minecraft, but previously never had any understanding of what it was, I think has, has significantly increased.

So it's definitely doing something to. Kind of bring it even more into the mainstream and, and make people understand what Minecraft is that maybe aren't gamers themselves. So I think that's a really nice impact it's having. And then from an audience perspective, we've definitely seen it an, an increased interest and, and people playing Minecraft.

I think lots of people that used to play Minecraft maybe years and years ago are coming back to it now out of nostalgia. And I think that's something we can see reflected across all of the things we're, we're working on. I think more so. Even like I've most, so for essential, where we're a platform for players to play with together with their friends.

So that's really been powerful for us.

David: Awesome. Zed, how about you?

Zed: Yes, so I mean,, I'm a big fan of School of Rock, which is a very famous Jack Black movie. So I, I really enjoyed it. I thought it was good fun. You know, it was. We went as a team and watched it. It was, I guess, somewhat of a surreal experience to see this franchise that we've been working with for, for over a decade up on a, up on a big screen.

But, yeah, I mean, phenomenal moment for the brand. We've definitely seen really actually on our kind of legacy and nostalgic content is where we've seen the, the resurgence as well. So, that's been on our Java network and some of our older content where people have. I played with friends years ago, either aged out or moved on to different things and are now coming back and yeah, I, I mean, I, I still meet lots of people who don't really understand what my job is, but they're definitely more, more likely to recognize what Minecraft is now.

David: Awesome. So it sounds like the movie sort of did a good job of, of, embodying the Minecraft legacy story IP. You guys are pretty happy with how it was, how it was portrayed.

Rafael: Absolutely. I think, I think there's something that, that Minecraft keeps saying about the movie, which is that it's not the canonized story of Minecraft, but it's just an adventure or a story told within the, the universe of Minecraft.

And I think that's, that's a great reflection of, of what the Minecraft community is all about. And I think they did a great job. So very much loved it.

David: Awesome. Cool. All right, well let's dive into the sort of the, UGC side of things. Could you give us, you know, you talked a little bit about your histories, but as you see it, could you give us a brief history on the Minecraft creator ecosystem, how it's evolved over time, the different platforms that existed and that now exists today, and how that has.

Shaped, you know, your respective roles in the space.

Rafael: I, I think you're asking a very, very complex question there, which is like a general interesting thing about the Minecraft ecosystem, and it's, it's a big reason why people struggle understanding it is there's two different versions of Minecraft.

There's the bedrock version, which one's on, mostly used on consoles, mobile, and all of that. There's Java edition, which is the original version of the game. Those are. Two pretty separate ecosystems. And then within those ecosystems there's another layer of separate ecosystems that exist and that makes it incredibly difficult to talk about what the history of it all is, where, where it's coming from.

Which part specifically want like okay, we are working on, or someone else working on.

David: Well let's, let's start, so you got Minecraft Bedrock. You've got Minecraft, Java.

Rafael: Yes.

David: Are there any other versions that. You know, existed and no longer exist, or should we just focus on those two and then you can give us sort of like the different segments of those platforms as well?

Rafael: So that there used to be a pocket edition that then was retired and replaced by Bedrock. I'm not sure. Was there something that was like a story mode?

Zed: Yeah. There was also raspberry. There was the raspberry pie edition, which had some like educational parts of it. There's also a whole Minecraft education edition is a whole separate thing as well.

Yeah, I mean, I think from, from my side, you know, my Minecraft is the story of UGC. Before it, before it was called UGC. You know, even when in the very, very early, Mary Young days, before Minecraft was our household name, it was released and people started modding it or tweaking it and making it their own.

You know, you can trace back some of the, the, the, the origins of some of the projects that are still used today to as early back as kind of 2010, 2009 and, and, and even earlier. And I think that's what was always special about the Minecraft brand was that it had that flourishing ecosystem of, you had the content created by the studio, and then you had the content created by the creator ecosystem around it.

And, and it's only really been in the past four or five years that we would use the label UGC, it, it was just, we were just modding and making, making cool content.

David: Awesome. Anything to add there,

Zed: Raf?

Rafael: Yeah, I, I think that summarized it really nicely. And Minecraft has definitely been a UGC ecosystem for as long as it existed.

And I think, I think Roblox is also very old now, but I think, I think Roblox really had its big, big moment and its, its big jump into relevance much later than, than Minecraft had. Its big content ecosystem already. And especially with, with servers and mods in the early days, Minecraft has always.

Had this massive community of people, lots of which are doing it as a hobby, just creating this amazing content that people, people love to play.

David: Got it now, so, so going back to the original question though, like, like how has the platform evolved, right? Like Minecraft, Java, I believe was the earlier version.

What was happening on that? What was the creator experience like on Minecraft, Java? What were they built? What were creators building? And then how did that transition to Minecraft Bedrock, and how has that changed what a creator does on the platform?

Rafael: I, I think there's a few things that happened.

Creating content. Minecraft has always been scrappy. I would say it's still scrappy today, but in very different ways. And that's, that's maybe very difficult to explain. But I think when we started out, we had to build all, all of the, like, all of the custom server, like. Integrations and technology from the ground up nowadays.

There's lots of community tools for that. There's also lots of support that Microsoft is giving and lots of, lots of tools that they're building. What's, what's happening nowadays is more so pushing the boundaries of that and kind of trying to go further than what the technology should be allowing and trying to find ways to do things that nobody else has come up with and pushing the boundaries.

So I think the scrappiness has shifted from. Originally we had to be scrappy just to build content at all. And now we have to be scrappy to push the boundaries of what content we can build. So that's a very positive development. I, I think another thing that's, that's really happened is that it's.

Become a bit, it's become easier to build a commercial operation on top of Minecraft, which not everyone loves that, but I think reality is, is that lots of creators started as kids and then grew up and, and started, , having to, to make money and earn a living. So, so nowadays, I. I myself, I wouldn't be able to still be making projects on Minecraft to the extent I'm now if, if I wasn't being paid for, if it wasn't earning, earning money for us.

And I think that that goes for thousands and thousands of people creating content on Minecraft every day, that they can now do it as a job because the ecosystem is enabling monetization to a much greater extent than originally where we had to do everything ourselves. And we're also limited to some extent on what was possible.

Zed: Yeah, I, I, I unfortunately have bills to pay as well now. You know, I think the big difference with Minecraft compared to roadblocks and Fortnite is that in those ecosystems, you, the creator tools are given and packaged and you are constrained by the platform a lot more. I think the culture within Minecraft has always been, well, what do you want to build and find a way to build it?

And the, the level of modification and, you know. Raf would call it scrappiness, I'll call it hacks, you know, whatever. That, that's always been inherent of the creator culture in, in Minecraft. We break the game in ways that Mo Yang never envision. And that creates brand new experiences for players.

You know, the difference in, you know, the difference visually from a gameplay perspective, from a tech perspective, from the. The base vanilla game and some of the experiences both on Java and also pushing the boundaries in marketplace and on the Bedrock Edition are, are, are so vast and, and really unlike what you see in in Roblox or Fortnite or any other UGC platform.

David: Okay. You just laid out a couple of different terms that I think the audience may not know. So we had, so, so I think we need to define a few things. Minecraft, bedrock, Minecraft, Java, Minecraft, vanilla version. I, what else? There might have been something else, but I can't remember what the, what the fourth was.

Zed: Yeah, so vanilla is how we refer to the base game. So that's if you download, uh, Minecraft from the Microsoft store or wherever, wherever you get it and you, you play the game, the single player version of it. That's what we kind of call the vanilla base. And then when we add stuff onto that, whether that's through.

Servers, whether that's through marketplace packs, we, we, that's generally referred to as non vanilla content. It's not, it's not part of the default flavor of Minecraft. With Bedrock edition and Java Edition, it's really just a thing of history. When Minecraft was first released, it used programming language called Java.

That's why it's called the Java edition. Unfortunately, it's not based on coffee or an island And that's the one which had the biggest moding ecosystem around it. Bedrock Edition came later. That was a rewrite of the Minecraft engine from scratch, so that it could run on consoles, so PlayStation switch, Xbox, and also on mobile devices, Android and iOS. And that's a total, almost effectively an entirely different title and game engine to the Java edition of, of the game.

David: Got it. So Minecraft, Java is PC only Minecraft, Bedrock is every other platform, plus PC as well. Yeah. And then sort of segueing into the, into the next question around, you know, business models.

You know, you guys have two very different businesses. Could you sort of contextualize the platforms themselves in terms of the business models and, and how you guys make money as creators?

Rafael: Yeah, so I, I think with, with Spark we're a bit unique as to, we have actually two separate things we're doing that are two entirely independent business models.

I'll just talk about both of them. I think the, the first one and the one we started with is creating content for Minecraft Bedrock edition, where is an official Minecraft marketplace, which is, powered by Minecraft, and it allows us to create content and sell to users. And that content ranges.

Very wide, we can create skins for people to wear. We can create cosmetics for people to wear. We can create like big expansive story DLCs that with, with hours of content, we can create mods that just change the Minecraft vanilla gameplay experience. We can create texture packs that make the game look a bit different and then change the textures of the game.

So there's lots of things we can do there. That's a really big part of our team. And, and where we started is just creating content that players can buy and hopefully have a better time playing the game with. And then the other side of our business is the essential mode, which we also already briefly talked about, but that's a mode we make for Minecraft, Java Edition, and it's effectively a quality of life and social platform that people can add to their game.

And we have in-game integrated friend system chat system, letting people play together in their worlds with just peer to peer hosting without having to buy a server somewhere else. Having an in-game screenshot manager and editor and all these kind of things. And the idea was kind of to make Microsoft Java Edition more accessible to casual players and also players that may be coming from Bedrock and now have a PC and wanna switch to the, the more prevalent version on, on, on, on pc, which is Java, whereas.

Like Z ed said, the Java edition is the one that was started at this point 16 years ago. And it still kind of runs like, like software from 16 years ago in, in some ways where it's just not all that easy to use. And we're trying to, to bridge that gap a little bit with, with our Project

David: Zed, you wanna take us through? Do you say?

Zed: Yeah. So, so Cubecraft as a server, we monetize on top of it with ranks and cosmetics mainly. So ranks are kind of like battle passes. You can buy a rank for a certain game or for, for the network, and that will give you the ability to vote for game options allows you to, you know, fly in a lobby and a few other, like non, we're, we're not paid to win.

We're quite small on how we do our commercial model, to be fair. And then we, we do cosmetics, which is, um, you know, skins, pets, whatever that might be within the, within the, game itself so that you can customize the look and feel, , of your gameplay, depending on what you want. I think for, for us and our business model is, is we have a pretty, pretty simple one, which is quite a player first centric approach.

I think our general idea is that if we have millions of players, it doesn't really matter if we're quite bad at the conversion into the, the actual dollar amount per player, because,, even if you're doing it on fractions of a penny, you're, you're probably gonna be all right at the, at the end of the month.

And I think that's a big reason of why Cubecraft has been around for well over 10 years now is that we've never really optimized for, for revenue extraction. It's always just been play account., And then, somehow it all adds up at the end of the month with, with the stuff that we desell. And hopefully it continues to do so.

David: So, so could you give us a little more color on like, what, what are the  like, what are the different game modes that you've created? Are you creating new game modes within a single experience? Are you creating entirely new experiences? Like how does, how does the, how do you like manage your, your content so that you're continually keeping players engaged?

And what is also, I'm just curious to get, like, if you could give us the user experience of how a Minecraft player engages with your content.

Zed: Yep. So. I think for, for Cubecraft, you effectively join us. So on the bedrock editions, we're we're pre-list. When you install the game on the Java edition, you type play cube craft.net into where you want to join.

And then you are effectively connected to our infrastructure and, and we then take control of your clients, and what you see in the worlds that you're presented with. So. The best way I could explain it is we treat Minecraft as a game engine in its own right. So on top of Minecrafts and the mechanics and the graphics that are already there, we add new game features.

We're quite well known for what I call islands in the sky game modes. So. Sky Wars, Egg Wars, Bed Wars, Lucky Islands where you are in matches of anywhere between eight to, well, some of them are 50 50 V 50, you know, but you're in matches with other players. Usually team-based or sometimes solo.

And you are battling through pvp to win.

Rafael: Yeah, I, I think, I think for us, with, with our bedrock content,, we create separate experiences where, where every time we release something is its own name, its own brand, and its own type of content. Something that we've seen shift over the last few years is that I think when the marketplace ecosystem started, you had to release new content all the time because content stopped being relevant a few months after that was released and it would just go to absolute zero and it wouldn't make you anything and you couldn't sustain a business on top of it.

That's shifting nowadays where we can, when we create something really cool that people really want, we can keep it relevant for a lot longer and it's become a lot more viable for us to. Have a product come out and then maintain it. Update it, and, and build a brand around it, which is a really awesome development 'cause I think as, as a content development team, it's very exhausting to do something new every three months. And it's much more fun to build something really big and then update it and keep it relevant. So that's really awesome, And then I think, I think the way we generally approach creating content, especially on better, is that we're not really trying to make games in Minecraft, but we're trying to make Minecraft games. And what we mean by that is that we're trying to not just use Minecraft as an engine for whatever we come up with, but that we're trying to leverage the features and the, the brand and the experience that is Minecraft and just build on top of it instead of just replacing it.

David: Got it. So what's an example of something that you, and, and I know that there's items and there's experiences like. What's an example of, and, and if you've done both, like would love an example of, of the actual like experience you created or the items that you created in to help clarify that.

Rafael: Yeah, I mean, I can talk about realism craft, which also was, was briefly mentioned in the intro.

It's a. Project we released at this point around about a year ago, and it's a complete overhaul of the vanilla Minecraft experience where we just did a lot to change the atmosphere of the Minecraft world and, and to kind of overhaul the visual feel, but also the gameplay of, of what Minecraft is in a way that, that we would like it to be in a way that we would imagine it to be.

And that's really hit enough with players and we're actually working on a really big update to it right now that will take it another step further. So, so that's a really cool project that's, that's been going on fast for the last year or so.

David: Cool. And, and so Zed, you mentioned sort of, you know, my ears perked up when you said Bed Wars 'cause you see Bed Wars on, you know, Fortnite and, and Roblox as ecosystems as well.

I'm curious like, how do you think about like, actually not even, how do you think about it? I'm, I'm, I'm just trying, trying to understand like the, the origin of those, of those IPs or of those game game types, like where did they come from? Do you have a perspective on like, on how these different types of gameplay get translated across different ecosystems?

Zed: Yeah, I mean, so it's, it's quite interesting, really. Bedwas is a great example of how ideas iterate and bounce around the Minecrafts creator ecosystem for years and years. Really. You can trace, you trace it back probably to I guess survival games is probably its origin, which was kind of, you know, inspired by the Hunger Game series.

You then have a, you that came into Minecraft. Someone then had the idea of putting it into the sky. And so that you were spawned on these islands. And then that probably evolved and another service spun that and had a, I think, a cake to defend. I think on my had one of the first ones to have the, had the defense point, we then spun it with egg wars on our server, which is kind of one of our precursors to Bed Wars, which is, which probably was one of the main reasons we grew.

We grew so large on. Originally, I think, a few other networks then took that into Bed War style. And that then exploded into other kind of Fortnite and roadblocks. And we've now got a, an iteration of an iteration of an iteration that's been kind of passed through, you know, generations of, of game concept, of, of game concept iterations.

And that's, that's quite common actually throughout, throughout the Minecraft space is that there's a lot of ideas which one server will do, another server will do a spin on. And you know, and, and in some ways that's quite controversial, you know, it's, it's quite hard when you've released a game and then someone does a very similar version of it, and then it gets more players.

But from a player perspective, I actually, that's, that's, you know, it's, it's the better game if it's got more players. So, you know, it's, you've gotta, you've gotta keep up and, and, and stay competitive with it.

David: So from a game design strategy, would love to hear how you approach, both on the new, new game side.

Like do you, are, are you looking to innovate on an existing game game style or have you, do you ever think about doing something entirely new that hasn't been done before? And then the other side of that is when you have a successful game with a lot of players in it, how do you think about.

Protecting yourself from, you know, somebody coming in and, and adding a, an innovation that sort of steals all your players away. Like, are you constantly trying to anticipate what those innovations could be and make sure that your existing audience has them? Like, how do you think about, you know, keeping that audience when you, when you have it?

Zed: Yeah, so I, I guess with, with Cubebraft, we run a lot of internal pitch sessions. That's been one of the big, big things. So almost every week actually, we will kind of throw ideas out. Some will be based on a, you know, oh, we've seen, you know, this big game on Roblox or Fortnite, or I've been playing this game over the weekend, and does this translate into Minecraft?

Others will be totally original concepts or narratives that we, we take on. We'll, we quite, we, we quite like to prototype something quite quickly and just to see if it works. You know, I think Raf talked a bit about earlier the importance of acknowledging that you are a game within Minecraft. You know, Minecraft has some innate mechanics.

Mining and crafting and other, other options are, are available. And, and playing into those helps. And we found that when we've tried to do something which isn't, too comfortable or, or is too far out there, it, it's, it's, it's too disjointed for the player that, that, you know, they don't get the, the kind of intuition, you know, you have to remember, our player base is, is very young. They're playing lots of different experiences. They're probably playing lots of different servers. And so it needs to be an intuitive experience. So we, we wanna make sure that it, it feels natural to them.

We keep a good eye on like what's, what's going on and trending out outside of the service space, whether that's in marketplace content or just kind of YouTuber content. We, we have had quite some success of kind of talking to YouTubers quite informally. We, we don't ever do really. Paid partnerships, but often if they've got a cool content idea sometimes we'll kind of work with them and prototype it into a game and, and get it out there.

And we've had existing games that we've created that YouTube has come and played, and then we kind of help them make cool content around that as well. In terms of the protection of IP, you know. Ultimately there's, there's not a lot you could, you, you could do other than make a better game. I think that's kind of the, the response that, that we have.

You know, you know, we, we obviously protect our core trademarks, you know, Q craft games. If you go and release a world on marketplace called Cubebraft Games, I'll probably be quite upset at you, Raf. But you know, if you, if you, if you, if you are spinning one of our game modes or doing something interesting with it, then to be honest, that, that that's, that's part of, that's the competitive process.

You know, we're not gonna go and send out, send out kind of angry tweets about it. We'll look at what you're doing and we'll figure out why we've not done it better sooner.

David: To be honest, I mean, I think that's a very honorable of you. You know, you see in Fortnite in particular, a ton of DMCA strikes against people who create similar game modes. You see it a little bit in Roblox as well, but it's just, you know, sort of anti-competitive behavior on game modes that have been invented long before. You know, the, the creator who is claiming to have their IP infringed against thought of it. So I think that's really, you know, good perspective to have, that's healthy for the ecosystem.

Zed: It, it, and it's, it's, it's healthy for players as well. Like ultimately, , you know, players want games, which are fun, And players don't really care about your dramas and your dcas or anything like that, you know, if, if, if you are in an ecosystem, you are, you are serving the players. And so you need to be making experiences that they're wanting to play.

And the way to do that is to make better experiences and not try and legal your way out of it. I think.

David: So we're talking about the competitive dynamics. Raf, I want to throw it over to you on the bedrock side. How does your, you know, how does your competitive set look and how do you think about, you know, being I.

You know, how do you maintain your, your position as like what top creator, how do you think about your competitors?

Rafael: Yeah, I think it's, it's in a very similar spot where I think there's, there's lots of themes that, that reoccur all the time that everyone's trying to make content for. Um, and, and we always keep an eye on what's going on and we, we off, like we, we try to.

Bring new things to marketplace sometimes, but obviously we can't, we can't always make something that nobody has done before. Another thing we try to do is that when we, when we adapt, the theme that already has popularity is to push it further than it has from push or do something with it nobody else has done.

And that's, that's a general strategy for us as well, to just do things at a, at a scale or, or with a level of innovation that we don't think someone else can match in a, in a, in a quick timeframe 'cause if it takes someone like six months to a year to reproduce what we've made, then it's probably not worth for them to go and take the risk of reproducing it.

And we, we have the, the benefit of being. Probably the largest studio in, in the Better Ecosystem. Maybe. Maybe one of the largest. Probably the largest. So we, we have the ability to just make content that's, that's quite big and expansive, and we have the ability to do a lot of research and development, to do a lot of polish and, and to just push things further than most other studios could.

And that's, that's a big protective strategy for us, generally speaking. Most, most content on the marketplace, if not all continental from marketplace in its themes and principles is like super simple. And, and nobody can really own the idea of, uh, like an overhaul, like a overhaul of Minecraft with, with like a realism theme to it, right?

That's not a thing that, that we can say that we can, we can or want to own sort of thing. Will we expect everyone else to stay away from? I think we're just trying to do it in a way where we have given it our own spin that nobody else can replicate just as, just as we have made it.

David: Got it. And, and just on the note of competition, how many creators are on the bedrock ecosystem and how many on the, on the Java?

Rafael: I, I think for the bedrock ecosystem, like it's definitely thousands of individuals that, that work on content for Bedrock. And I would say hundreds of studios, but it's difficult to put exactly if it's the lower hundreds or the higher hundreds. I think none of us have have that overview at the moment.

And then for Java is that probably knows a lot better than me.

Zed: Yeah, so the, the Java ecosystem's quite thriving, really., It doesn't have the formal partner program that, , you have in the bedrock side. And so, there's tens of thousands realistically of kind of small, independent creators doing interesting things, whether that's on the server space or within the, within the modding space.

I could probably, yeah, I can, I can probably think of. Hundreds off the top of my head of, of, of companies and, you know, commercial organizations within the Java space. And there's definitely thousands that I have not heard of doing interesting stuff. So yeah, it's, it really is quite, quite thriving.

David: Got it. Okay, cool. And you both of you mentioned sort of having worked on YouTube, with YouTube creators in the past. How, how does that all factor in? I know that. Like Minecraft is the most, I think Minecraft is the most streamed game on YouTube of all time. And I can't remember the numbers, like a hundred and over a hundred billion views or something like that, that they announced about three or four years ago or something.

But, yeah, I'm just curious to get your guys' perspective on how you leverage YouTube creators or what their role is in the whole ecosystem.

Rafael: I, I think, I think YouTube plays a really. Key role for popularity of Minecraft? First of all, I think that's pretty clear to see for everyone that Minecraft is, I think, the biggest game on YouTube.

Maybe I'm wrong about that, but at least it, it used to be a for long time and it's driving a lot of the popularity of, of the game. I think other than that, it's also the YouTube ecosystem is a great starting point for. People like z or myself to get out horse wet with content creation 'cause I think there's a, there's a very different thing to create the content to be shown in the video versus having to create something that hundreds or mil, hundreds of thousands of millions of players will play.

There's a very different level of just. Tech, tech required of, of considerations to make. So it's a great place to start. It's also, I think, a place where lots of people start making a little bit of money and realizing that Minecraft is an interesting ecosystem. Um, and the interesting thing that I think is happening in Minecraft community is that very little of the commercial organizations like us directly work with, with YouTubers.

At least not in a commercial sense, it's, it's something I, I've always found, found a bit curious, but never really, really. Put much, much forward to as to why that isn't the case and why there aren't more relationships between YouTube creators and operations, like our, our own ones.

Zed: Yeah. So from our side, I mean, Cubcraft spread in its early days was basically driven by big YouTubers.

You know, we made games which were both fun to play and made good content, , which is kind of a bit of a. Golden goose egg for, for, for growth. And you know, I think we, you know, there's definitely been times where our relationship with YouTubers has. Been better and more busy, and times where we've been more separated and that that's part of it.

You know, we generally take the approach that we want to do content collaborations and creative collaborations. You know, realistically from a commercial side, these YouTubers can just get way much more commercially lucrative deals on out of gaming brands doing, you know, I dunno, whatever, whatever.

Cleaning product or, you know, I saw someone advertise sausage rolls on a, on a, on a YouTube once, and I was like, you know what? If it works for you and or sources, that seemed to be the latest craze as well. But you know, that, that, that works for their commercials. And, and actually what I'm interested in is, are, are we making games which make good content for them?

And what, what could we do to help? We've tried running like formalized partner programs before, and it's, it's just never, never quite worked. We think they're kind of informal and, you know, viewer demand driven response from our side is, is, is, is what's better? I think we are a live server operation and so we have had quite a few funny incidents in our history when we've had in incredibly large YouTubers just come and players and, and again, no existing relationship.

They just hop on and, and they say to their 50,000 viewers, oh, let's go play Cube Craft. And then, I see a vertical play account going straight up at all of our, all of our servers, while it's, it's, it's, it is the dream. And then you have the, the, the technical problem of making sure you can still support all of those players because it's all running on our infrastructure and all of our servers.

David: And wait, so what does that look like? What do you have to do when that happens?

Zed: Yeah, I mean, so, I guess, this, this is gonna be a bit of a tangent, but I guess a big thing with Minecraft is on the service side, we run all the, the infrastructure. If you look at Fortnite or Roblox, you, and I guess for the marketplace as well actually, is you make a bit of content. And then you give it out to the platform and they distribute it for you. They put it in front of players and they handle that technical distribution. Um, the process of making that content is obviously still incredibly involved and difficult. But for, for us as a server on, on Java edition and Bedrock Edition, when you are connecting to Cubecraft, you are connecting to our server infrastructure.

Those are servers that we manage. It's code that we've written that you are talking to, you know, we have, you know, it's something like three or 400 active kind of code projects, which, which make up Cubecraft. It's, it's, it's tens of millions of lines of codes. And, you know, hundreds of actual physical machines sat in data centers wearing away, uh, letting people hit each other with swords.

But like that, that is obviously. Some, some of it's elastic resource. So if we have like for example, a load of people come join us, then we basically dynamically scale into clouds as well as our kind of base level bare metal provision.

David: Got it. So this may be a good segue to talking about the costs associated with running a studio.

Curious from both of your guys' perspective, like what are the, what are the biggest costs associated with, with operating your, your games and content?

Rafael: I, I can say for, for us at Spark, and this is across both, both of things we do, it's people, we, we have very little operational cost. Like we, we have, we have some servers, we have a little bit of infrastructure, we have tooling.

We pay for all those things happen. But I would say 90%, if not more of our costs. It's just paying the salaries of the, at this point, I think 60 to 70 people that are working, uh, on our projects and Wow. That's, that's really where we spend all of our money. Same, same for you.

Zed: We have definitely much higher infrastructure costs.

So obviously just because we are running it, it's, it's a, a cost of success. I guess. If you are a really small creator, then, you know, you could get away with, you know, it's, it's only 40, 50 quid for a server or, or whatever. We're obviously running at quite large scale with quite complex both operation technical operations and commercial arrangements with kind of the actual providers and data centers and stuff like that. So that, that means we do have a bit more overhead and just. Like corporate function to make, to make that all work.

David: Yeah, I was gonna say, if you have multiplayer games, I would imagine you can't just have a single like server location running all these games.

Zed: No, we're, we have, presences in Asia, Pacific, Europe, North America. We're looking into South America as well. And we do a lot of network engineering around that to make sure that, you know, with multiplayer gaming every millisecond counts, you know. People are very sensitive about, about a lag.

And actually, you know, trying to get a stable connection to all 8 billion people in the globe is, is apparently quite complicated. So is, is a, is a continuing struggle for our team.

David: Awesome. So I want to change the topic to this, be more a little bit more forward looking. I'm curious to know, like from your guys' perspective, do you see opportunities for growth?

I wanted to ask about Minecraft, China. I'm curious what if you guys have a perspective about the ecosystem over there? But what are the things that you're also excited about for the future?

Rafael: Yeah, so I, I think first of all that Minecraft is, is definitely still a growing brand. I think, I think people always talk about Minecraft, Ty or Minecraft, that, and I think that's, that's not at all what, what we see in, in our projects and, and our, what, what we're doing.

It's, it's always growing. It's just sometimes it's growing a bit quicker and sometimes it's growing a bit slower and that's, that's the difference that we see. So, so we definitely love the ecosystem. I, I Minecraft, China is, is an interesting, interesting question 'cause honestly I have very little insight into it.

And, I'm, I'm curious what, what's that? Will I have to say on it? But it's, it's really quite obscure, I think for, for like, at least a marketplace creator, what's actually going on over there. And if there's any opportunity for us, which I, I am not aware of, if there is.

Zed: Yeah, so I, I guess just picking up on the Minecraft China Point is something we've, we've would, would, I think most of us would be interested in doing.

If we can get, if, if there are more people out there who wanna play our games, then we're happy for them to play them. I think it's quite complicated the arrangements between like how the brand operates in China 'cause I don't think it's operated directly by Microsoft. And so, I think I, there's usually, we've had some preliminary conversations in the past, but yeah, I don't, I dunno what the, the current deal is.

I, it, it'd be interesting, I'm sure, but I think there's quite a lot of other emerging markets coming into the, in, into the space as well. You know, we've got all, all across kind of South America and, and the Asia, Asia Pacific, and kind of the African continent as well. I think these are all quite up and coming places that we're seeing pockets of Minecraft activity.

Rafael: Yeah, I actually, actually wanna expand on what I said earlier as well, which is that I. And like we said earlier, we think that that Minecraft is the earliest real UGC platform. But I also wanna say that I think it's, it's the best one. And I think that's, that's a bit obscure because Minecraft has so many issues and it's so complicated and so difficult to explain.

And probably from a business perspective, it isn't the best. But I think from a content creation perspective Minecraft. It's the nice fun.

Zed: We have fun

Rafael: Minecraft. Minecraft has a, has a great foundation for creating content. Much, much better than I think the other u GC con, ecosystems out there. And it has so much.

David: So What do you mean? What do you mean by great foundation?

Rafael: So, I, I think Minecraft. I don't wanna draw direct comparisons 'cause I don't want to dig into any other ecosystems or hurt anyone's feelings. But I think, I think mine has an awesome brand and I think the, the just simple Pixel Art voxel style of Minecraft lends itself for people for it to be really accessible for creating content.

But that can instill to be really awesome. 'cause I think you, you can, you don't have to be. Someone with years of like modeling and art experience coming from uni to be able to make a really good looking asset in Minecraft because of the simplicity of the art style. And I think similarly because like, like we established earlier, Minecraft has its foundation of mechanics you're building with, you don't have to build every mechanic for, for making game content.

You have a very, very strong foundation to build on top of. So, and I think these two things make Minecraft a, a really great, great foundation for anyone to build content, and I think that's something that has ahead of any of the other UGC ecosystems I'm aware of.

David: Well, that makes me like, that makes me think it's more like a, it's more of a mod, right?

When you have an existing game that you're building on top of, it's, it's more of a mod than a UGC platform. And what are UGC?

Rafael: I would argue

David: Well, they're definitely UGC. I just wouldn't necessarily describe it as a UGC platform where, so like, like I would think of it more of like, you know, uh, you know, Baldur’s gate mods, right?

Where you're, you're building new experiences on top of the existing one. But in any case, I, I, I, I get your point on the, on the, the foundation. Is that on your end? Is there anything like you're excited about when you think about the next few years? Like what do you see coming down the pipe? What, what's sort of the big opportunities you wanna pursue from a business perspective?

Zed: Yeah, I mean, again, we are just, just wanna make games that play, that players wanna play. We've got some quite exciting projects in the works that we think players are going to want to play and enjoy. And so we, we want to get those. Out into the open. I, unfortunately, I don't think I have an exclusive that I can share with you otherwise I'll probably get something thrown at me in the office for, for leaking.

But yes, we, we, we've had some pretty successful game releases this year and we've got some,, bigger stuff in the works upcoming. I think just to kind of expand on the. The, the point you were making there with, with the, with the modding. And what is modding and what's UGC? I think one of the unique positions that minecraft's in is to actually take the modding ecosystem and, and put that UGC platform around it, you know, third parties have done that.

If you kind of look at what Curse is doing and in the modding space it's, it's, it's really quite interesting on, on how they've done that. And, and you know, I think I, I'd, I'd quite like to see a, a situation where, where Minecraft looks at those, you know, moding fringes and, and looks to bring them in into the house.

David: Awesome. Raf, you brought up that you didn't want to go into Roblox in Fortnite, but I'm curious, have you guys ever thought about building on those platforms?

Rafael: I, we actually, we, we've, we've built a Roblox game before and, and I failed with it. But I, I, I think a, a thing we realized through that process is that, that we're a Minecraft company.

Like our, we started as Minecraft players, 12, 13 years ago. We've been building on Minecraft ever since we can remember, and Minecraft is in our DNA and we don't necessarily. We like, we, I think we probably could adapt to our platform. So when we've tried going to Roblox, we kind of tried to make content the way we wanna make it, and that's not what the platform wants.

And I think that's, that's the thing we realized is that what we're, what we're looking to make, what we're passionate about making, and, and how we wanna build content works on Minecraft and nowhere else. And that's why, why we love Minecraft and that's why we're gonna stick with Minecraft with, with.

David: Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I think that a lot of, you've seen like some of these other platforms trying to recruit creators. I don't know if they've reached out to you, like, I don't know if Fortnite has reached out to you to see if you wanna make Fortnite masks, but you see them doing this and I think that there is a lot of, a lot of friction around creators changing platforms because you know, they've been building on these platforms for so many years and they understand the audience on those platforms and that's what's made them successful to go and try and do that somewhere else is.

You know, it doesn't really make a lot of economic sense for them.

Rafael: And I think it's, it's even more than just the, the audience. I think, like we said earlier, like it's not a switching from making Minecraft content to making Roblox from the, it's not like switching a game engine, but it's really about like, like you're changing the DNA of what you're building on top of.

Because we're not just building a game that is independent of the platform it's on, but we're building a game that's building on top of the platform we're riding on. Like it, it's. Really a much bigger shift to go and, and work on another platform.

Zed: I think there's a culture to it, really. Like there's a culture to all the different platforms, which is, which is quite intangible.

But, you know, the, the way, you know, we, we, the way that Roblox and Fortnite creators approach their work and the. Their history. You know, like the Minecraft ecosystem is a 16, 17-year-old story. You know, uh, Raf and I are absolute massive Minecraft nerds. We're not Fortnite nerds. Right? You know, and, and we we're not as engr in the, in the culture and the history of, of, of their ecosystems and, and so authentically moving. So I think, you know, I think we're, we're, we're, we're talking about, you know, I know we're, this is kind of a business eco podcast, but you know, it's, you have to be creatively authentic with what you're building. You know, you have to believe and be passionate about it.

Otherwise, players can tell, you know, there's no mechanical formula to, to making a, a viral or great game. It, it has to come from a, a creative spark that you believe in.

Rafael: Yeah, I, I think nobody should ever go into Minecraft to, to build a career, to build a business with that being the reason they're going through the ecosystem.

I think it's like, it's really a, a place where you have to be a passionate member of the community. You have to be building out of passion and then have the opportunity to turn into a business and not the other way around. Otherwise, you, like, you will not succeed in the Minecraft ecosystem if you're coming in just for the sake of, of building a business, you have to,

Zed: There's easier ways to make money. There's much easier ways. Oh yeah.

Rafael: This, this is not a good place to come if, if you're trying to maximize, maximize revenue.

David: This is the, I mean, this is the challenge of, of industries that are really fun to be in.

You know, they're, they're more saturated because people are willing to accept less money in order to do them. And so if, I guess if you're trying to make money just in general, you should avoid gaming altogether because it's so much fun to operate in this, you know, in this industry. I. That, that you're gonna have people who are willing to do it for, for free or for very little money, and that makes it extremely competitive and, and hard to, to break through.

Zed: And, and, and that leads into questions about what you're wanting out of work and, and a much bigger life, life podcast. But, you know, it's, it's, it's quite a common and, and a lot of industries, I work in the events industry as well, and, and there it's very similar. You've got a lot of. Passion driven individuals in, in that industry.

And it's the same, you know, in sporting as well. Like you have that. , And so, you know, we're, we're incredibly privileged to be able to have work that we, we love doing and build stuff with teams that we enjoy spending time with, , and do cool things, which, you know was not on the careers pathway when we were in school and 12 years old.

Right. Like, yeah. You know, if, if, if we wanted a, so something like that, you know, we can, I dunno, go, go join a public sector organization or something, which, you know, is, is a very different approach to work and, and, and balance, you know?

Rafael: Yeah. It's, it's almost. It's almost a bit uncomfortable talking about the business of Minecraft 'cause I think we're like, nobody that's successful in Minecraft is inherently a business driven individual or someone that that's here to, to squeeze revenue or to make the most money. But we're all just, we all had a vision for something cool we wanted to make, and then we were lucky enough to, to turn it into a business.

Zed: I don't have a Lamborghini. I dunno if you do Raf, but.

Rafael: No, no. I mean.

Zed: I.

Rafael: I wouldn't want to, but No, I.

David: I mean, you guys have, you know, 60 person companies, so clearly you, you have some business acumen to be able to, to operate at that scale. But I, I catch, I get your point. Anyway, I think it's, I mean, it's been awesome to have you guys on the podcast.

I feel like if you could ask your, if you could ask your 12-year-old selves, like what they thought about what you're doing today, what do you think they would say?

Zed: Oh, they would love it. Yeah, I think, I think, I think they'd be pretty much on board. Yeah.

David: Yeah. They'd be like, are you kidding me? You're doing this for your job.

Rafael: For, for like almost 10 years. What?

Zed: I mean, it, it's, you know, I think it was, it was. You, you joke that you're doing it for the job, but actually if you go back to that, the Minecraft of the early 2010s and it was a bunch of like under 16 year olds basically running that entire industry. And you know, when, when we started Cube Craft, you know, I was, I was 14 when I got involved.

Rubik was about 13 when they started it. And you know, you try registering for. Paying tax when you are 13 and making, not insignificant amounts of money and, and the, the, they weren't ready for it. But you know, like from, from the start, you know, it had that, that feeling that it could, it could go somewhere and, and

Rafael: We chased it. I, I sat together with a tax advisor once as a kid with my mom and tried to explain what we do and they just told me to stop.

Zed: Yeah. Stop making money. You're too young. Yeah. Been there.

David: That's awesome. Well, thanks guys for joining the podcast. It's been awesome to have you here educating, you know, our, our viewers on, on the ecosystem as it stands today.

And you guys are obviously very, you know, very knowledgeable, very talented individuals. How can people, follow you and follow your, your, your respective journeys?

Rafael: I, I think for, for me, it's the best to just follow the essential Mod and Spark Universal socials. I don't really use social media all that much anymore.

But all the awesome work we do is post it on both of those accounts and they're basically all platforms. So that's where you can find what we do.

Zed: Yeah. So for me, all of our kind of consumer gaming stuff goes through our cube crap brand. And the socials on there for that. And then kind of our B, B2B or behind the scenes stuff goes through our, our, our kind of parent ZX brand.

And you can find me on LinkedIn as well if you really wanted to, to find out more. Both Raf and I have plenty of war stories to share about, about Minecraft over the years.

David: Yeah. Plenty of war stories that couldn't be shared on this podcast for, for various reasons. Anyway, thanks guys. Really appreciate you coming on and hope everyone enjoyed it.

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