Notes

Minecraft Ditched Fireflies In The 1.19 Update So Kids' Real Pet Frogs Won't Croak

Minecraft 1.19 launches today, loading up the Wild Update's new biomes, mobs, and technical changes. It's the final push of (almost) all the new features that were originally presented to players during Minecraft Live in 2020 and the last of three pretty major updates.



As usual, there are no secrets hidden on launch day, Agnes Larsson, Minecraft game director, and Ulraf Vaknin, developer, assure me. Servers Mojang is still committed to player feedback. Or else why bother with snapshot build, release candidates, betas? The developers discussed some of the changes that 1.19 went through after players had a chance to see them.



The Wardens who can be dangerous have likely changed the most in the course of development. Vaknin explains that this was a place where we sought feedback from both our technical players as well as our challenge players. The Wardens were quite frightening when I first tried their hand in March's debut snapshot. They made a very intense heartbeat noise when agitated, roared in my face, and obliterated every poor chicken I spawned in their path to distract them.



Now they also have a sound attack-a ranged ability emanating form their chests to deal effectively with players who managed to sneak past their long arms. The Skulk, those new snitch-y, Warden-summoning blocks found in the Deep Dark biome, also underwent changes based on feedback from players who love the redstone tech side of Minecraft.



Minecraft update: What's new? Minecraft skins (opens new tab). New looks Minecraft mods. Beyond vanilla Minecraft shaders. Spotlight Minecraft seeds. Fresh new worlds Minecraft texture pack. Pixelated Minecraft servers. All cheats.



Vaknin states, "It's quite technical." He then explains that the Skulk sensors stopped registering the first sound in the code and now respond to the closest one. "We looked at some contraptions players tried to make and they didn’t work due to quirkiness in code. We adjusted it to feel more intuitive."



Mojang also continues to use feedback to influence the decisions made about ideas that are being dropped. Leading up to the Wild Update, fireflies (originally pitched as frog food in Minecraft Live 2020) have been a surprising point of contention, so much so that a recent Q&A video on new Wild Update features was titled "What happened to the fireflies in Minecraft 1.19?"



Anna Lundgren, the producer of that video, explained that players had pointed to how fireflies can cause poisoning in frogs. In our chat, Larsson and Vaknin elaborate that it wasn't just players who sounded the alarm. Vaknin says that pet shop owners told me that there was already a problem. They don't know how to educate people about this, and there are memes about fireflies eating frogs. "So people already make the same mistake, and Minecraft makes it even worse."



Larsson claims that "we reach millions of players." Larsson says, "And that should come along with great responsibility. We realized that releasing a feature such as fireflies, which are poisonous to frogs, and having frogs eat them, could lead to people killing the real frogs.



We have millions of players. This should come with great responsibility.



Although my gut instinct is to support developers changing their minds regarding in-development features for any reason, Larsson's measured explanation is probably more sensible. Minecraft has been much more than a video game for years. It also markets itself as an educational tool. Mojang has to think beyond the Bedrock vs Java editions and PC vs Xbox interfaces when developing new Minecraft features. It also has to consider its role as an educational tool for its vast audience of young children.



Larsson claims that the new bugs were much more limited without fireflies as frog food. Mojang decided to eliminate them completely and send them back to the grand ideas catalogue. This will allow Mojang to focus on other features in the pipeline.



Vaknin, who is looking forward to seeing new Allay friends flying about houses and buildings, has some ideas. Larsson, a player who is truly a friend of mine, is excited about finding new mangrove swamps, and creating new builds using the reddish mangrove wood set, and mud blocks.



Minecraft 1.19 launches today with a long-list of patch notes. You can find it as an available version in the Minecraft Launcher. Today is also the day that all Minecraft users will have access to both Java or Bedrock versions of Minecraft, even if they previously owned one.


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