The creators of Second Life are making what appears to be a spin off Minecraft, in a game called Patterns.

Not a huge deal is known about this game apparently, but it does have a trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJeD9nwm43o

It will be a sort of sandbox MMO, where players build portions of the "universe" from basic building blocks.  These building blocks are patterns used to create anything from structures to trees to what appears to be complex mechanically operated machinery, complete with physics as to how an object moves, rotates, or even falls/thrown (and is destroyed).  To the Minecraft Reference, Linden Lab seems to be trying to 1-Up Minecraft.

From their website (http://www.buildpatterns.com/)

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Patterns is still in a form of development, with "Founders" having access to it currently.  Seeing as how this is coming from the creators of Second Life, could this be turned into a social sandbox MMO?

It looks suspiciously like Minecraft with Triangles instead of Cubes.

I think people are getting tired of block games at this point.  They should be concentrating on building sandbox games with more traditional settings and mechanics.  They are way late to this subset of games anyway.

What the hell is wrong with game devs?  They seem clueless these days.  They are constantly way behind player trends.

EDIT:  I know Linden Lab is into the full on sandbox thing.  I play around in SL once in a while, though it seems to have stagnated in evolution in the past few years.  It's not a game, it's a creative and social space.

So what are they trying to accomplish now?  I guess a more "safe" and watered down sandbox using Minecraft as a touchstone.  I suppose it will remain to be seen if there is any "game" in their game.

I'd prefer they took the tools they built for SL and put them in an actual sandbox MMO setting.

Originally posted by MindTrigger

I think people are getting tired of block games at this point.  They should be concentrating on building sandbox games with more traditional settings and mechanics.  They are way late to this subset of games anyway.

What the hell is wrong with game devs?  They seem clueless these days.  They are constantly way behind player trends.

EDIT:  I know Linden Lab is into the full on sandbox thing.  I play around in SL once in a while, though it seems to have stagnated in evolution in the past few years.  It's not a game, it's a creative and social space.

So what are they trying to accomplish now?  I guess a more "safe" and watered down sandbox using Minecraft as a touchstone.  I suppose it will remain to be seen if there is any "game" in their game.

I'd prefer they took the tools they built for SL and put them in an actual sandbox MMO setting.

I supposed it depends on the creations.  I took fondness to this game when I saw the trailer because I saw some potential.

I may remind you that mindcraft is a very popular game with a huge playerbase.  Players who didn't just play a week or a month and throw the game away, looking for a new game.  They are still playing.

It's not huge, but Minecraft still holds #8 on XFire, which is saying something after knowing how non-complicated the game is and how long it's been out.

As of Sept 29, 2012: