Minecraft Dungeons

If you’ve played any sort of “Games as a Service” type video games over the past several years, then you’re surely aware of content seasons. This is when a game offers a limited-time window in which you can earn exclusive rewards. Typically, once that timeframe expires, those old rewards are lost to time.

However, if you play Minecraft Dungeons, which is currently in its second season of content (Luminous Night), you might have noticed that the first season (Cloudy Climb) is still available for purchase. Does that mean the first season of content is still available, or is that some kind of mistake in the shop?

Minecraft Dungeons - Adventure Hub

As it turns out, this is intentional. Minecraft Dungeons is breaking the mold by making its content seasons permanent. If you don’t believe me, you can check out the Seasonal Adventures FAQ on the official Minecraft website. It very clearly states:

While some portions of Seasonal Adventures change, such as Tower layouts, Adventure Passes do not expire. When another Seasonal Adventure begins, you will still be able to earn rewards from the previous Seasonal Adventures without the fear of missing out!

The active season can be changed in the Adventure Hub so you can still earn rank and rewards from previous seasons. Setting the season in the Adventure Hub will make all Adventure Points go toward ranking up in the selected season!

When you’re at your camp in Minecraft Dungeons, simply visit the Adventure Hub. When you do, it will give you a rundown of all the items you can earn in the current season. However, you can also toggle back to the previous season and look at those rewards too. All of them should still be available to unlock.

Minecraft - Cloudy Climb

This is actually really cool, and I wish more developers would consider this sort of seasonal model. Instead of forcing players to participate during limited-time windows, this gives them the freedom to unlock those juicy rewards on their own schedule. It completely takes the stress out of content seasons (and believe me, seasonal content can be super stressful).

On the development side, this also means that all those assets that need to be created for each season won’t go to waste; instead of designing something for a limited-time window, that content becomes permanent. I have to imagine that over time, this would also lead to more money for the studio. Sure, these seasons exploit the psychological fear of missing out (FOMO), which is probably how these passes make their money. However, if a game has a lifespan of multiple years, it seems like over time, the long-term fanbase would probably outnumber the impulse-buy crowd. I don’t have any data to back this up, mind you; it’s just a hunch.

Either way, Minecraft Dungeons‘ permanent content pass idea seems like it could be the future of seasonal content. I really think they’re onto something here, and I hope more studios take note of this.

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Fuck
Fuck
1 year ago

They half-ass copied Deep Rock Galactic. They copied the concept, but added the price tag. So no, this is not the way to do it, the way to do it is included in your game, not as a extra purchace.

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