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A Study In Popularity:
What People Like
Planet Minecraft contains a vast trove of treasures. If it's good Minecraft content, it's probably on here somewhere. With amazing content comes popularity and success, which is why most of us have heard the names Greytopher or Hypixel before. That's not to say these people are the best PMC has to offer: they just have appealed to what the general public are looking for! So the question now is: what does the public find worthy? I'm here to answer that question and open your eyes to a bit of human psychology!
Projects:
Most Popular: Temple of Notch
Worst Type: Simple Spam
People like replicas, that's a fact. I've seen people make giant trees out of wool and get 15 diamonds within seconds. Whether the replica is intense, like the full-scale Beijing City being constructed (6, 738 diamonds and counting!) or just a cool Death Star duplicate, you will get noticed. Believe me.
Another thing the public enjoys is "Modern Houses". These are very controversial because some people don't like them as much as others, stating that they abuse the shader mod, but regardless they pack a very large punch and get you diamonds.
If we now could turn our attention to the above popularity chart, we could see that the top Project in all of PMC is neither a "Modern House" or a replica: it's a mini adventure map. This is the final project type that garnishes tons of diamonds, adventure maps are held highly no matter how good they are. If you can make an amazing one, well, you my friend have broken into the popularity party! Congratulations!
On the opposite side of the spectrum, the least popular projects have annoying titles, terrible descriptions, and the actual builds themselves are simplistic in the extreme.
Texture Packs:
Most Popular: LB Photo Realism
Worst Type: Defaultish
So, as you may or may not know, Texture Packs are hard to create. It's like making a skin over 500 times. The people who do create them either make a masterpiece or a piece of garbage. The most popular texture-packs all have one thing in common: resolution! No 16x16 texture packs get as famous as the 32x32 or 64x64 competitors. Just look at Photo Realism! It's popular because the resolution spikes to over 5000! People want their texture packs to be different from default, that include resolution.
Texture-Packs need to have a theme. If it's all different styles, then the people who download aren't going to be happy. Things must work together, because when you play Minecraft, textures are all around you, and the glaring differences in style will make the experience terrible!
As a word of caution, if you do something like have a crappy cover photo, don't update your pack very often, only do about 5% of stuff and quit, make it look amazingly similar to default, etc. You may just end up with ZERO diamonds. Yeah, that's possible.
Skins:
Most Popular: Honeydew's Dwarf Skin
Worst Type: Remix
Skins are a big part of PMC, but while there are tons of good skins, there are also tons of bad skins. What makes a skin popular is a little bit foggy, but I think I've found a pattern. Hoods. Skins with epic robes/hoods get lots of attention, with at least 4 of these in the top ten skins. The more mysterious and awesome a skin looks, the more people will want to download.
Another popular skin trend is characters. By characters I mean skins people will recognize, like Batman or Homer Simpson or any fictitious individual. If a person knows that character, they will be inclined to diamond. If a person loves that character, they will be inclined to download.
Bad skins have many things in common. They all are way to similar to other skins. Steve Remix, Herobrine HD, Notch Reloaded, nobody wants this! So what if Steve has a red shirt, that's just plain dumb! If we wanted Steve, we'd have kept Steve! Not only is that unoriginal and lazy, but the community won't appreciate it. Stahp. Nao. Plz?
Youtubers have an enormous effect on skins. If a famous person uses a skin, that skin becomes popular, regardless of how good it might be. People like to wear what famous people wear, plain and simple. Create a skin for a Youtuber, have them get popular, and bam! Insta-classic skin, such as the most popular skin on PMC, the red-bearded dwarf.
Blogs:
Most Popular: Minecraft Seeds
Worst Type: .... almost everything.
This is where things get really nasty. Everything you may have thought about Minecraft blogs is incorrect, and I'll tell you why: The top ten most popular Minecraft blogs are about plugins and seeds. Plugins. And. Seeds. Not the incredibly well thought out blogs you see on the Pop Reel every once in a while, no, these are lists of good seeds and compilations of good Bukkit plugins. What is the meaning behind this?!?!
I'll tell you the meaning. People want simplicity. They don't want to read words, I mean, the average human doesn't give two biscuits about your beliefs. They want to be entertained, and get something out of it. If they want a Bukkit plugin, well, now they've got one. Diamond. Need a good seed for your new survival world? Here you go! Diamond. Want to read my story about how I was bullied on a server? NO (leaves page). That's the human nature, as sad as it may be.
If you ignore the blogs based around informative lists rather than true content, you will find that the blogs go from relevant Minecraft stuff, to things that belong in an inspirational pamphlet. "Why Bullying Hurts" is the best example, because once or twice every month someone will decide to tackle this subject. The message is kind and relate-able, so they get tons of diamonds, but when you start to question the originality of the blog things go down-hill fast. Basically, short-term popularity.
The worst blogs are simple, ugly, and created to ask a question or advertise something. These come up a LOT, and are always amazingly terrible in their own way.
--- Conclusion ---
The public likes specific things. No matter how good your Fan-Fic is, or how detailed your awesome Notch skin rendition turned out, they just WON'T reach the same height as the competition. Or will they?
Everything I've said above is true... to an extent. Trends are passing, one day Modern Houses will be as common as teen skins, and no-one will give them any thought. Perhaps a new Youtuber will wear a skin, destined to outshine Honeydew's dwarf. Maybe you'll be the one to make a blog more popular than those seed showcases. It all depends on what the future holds. Popularity is nice, but is it worth giving up your originality for a few diamonds? No. No it's not.
- Tomandgreen
[PS: If you enjoyed this blog, feel free to Diamond, Favorite, or Subscribe! Thank you! :D]
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Non-Specific Examples : by Tomandgreen 03/05/2013 6:51:48 amMar 5th, 2013
Do to popular demand, I have removed the examples from my work and made it more general, also adding a new paragraph to the BLOGS section. Hope that's better!
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Nah, just kidding. Great blog, man, and you hit every nail on the head.
Good work though, you get your point clear.
Anyways, good work.