Have we reached the bedrock yet? These Minecraft interviews keep on coming! This time I had a chat with Aigar, owner of Minelink. This North American based community has been around for over 5 years now and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon! Minelink offers a variety of game modes “to satisfy your Minecraft addiction”. Think Creative (with access to World Edit), Factions (PVP) and Cannon. Besides that, Minelink states its a full-time custom developed experience, interesting!
Greetings Aigar! Cheers for doing this interview with us. First of, how are things going?
Everything is going great! Can’t complain
Can you tell us a bit about yourself and Minelink?
I bought Minelink a few years ago and my team and I have spent the last few years growing the network and introducing new game modes. We have been through many ups and downs and it has been a great learning experience.
Did you have any community experience prior to Minelink?
Yes, I ran a SkyBlock network with a few youtubers for 6 months. We grew to about 500 players but did not have a development team, so eventually it became out of control and I had to let it go.
The world of Minecraft houses many communities. What makes Minelink different from the rest out there?
Minelink’s community is a bit more mature than your average network. This is because the server is a bit older and original players have grown up with the server.
Minelink has been around for a couple of years now. How did you guys get to where you are today?
Minelink’s growth can be attributed to regular updates and features additions. There is something new every month on the server. This helps retain player counts as well as welcome new players.
This month your Survival, SkyBlock, Prison and PVP servers saw a reset. What made you choose to do so?
Timing. We have noticed that the lifespan of said game modes are reducing across all servers around the world. Survival and SkyBlock maps used to last 6 months to a year, but now they have reduced to 3 months. So by resetting now, we have another 3 months to prepare for an even bigger reset for the summer.
You guys have hundreds of players playing on your servers on a weekly basis. I bet your staff team has its hands full at times. Can you give us a little rundown on your staff/moderation team?
We try to keep things simple, we have junior and senior staff. Junior staff handle player reports. Senior staff handle purchase/customer and bug support. This has to be done every day to ensure we stay on top of everything.
Are players able to become part of the staff team? If so, how does this work?
Yes, applications are always open. I won’t advertise the link here because we prefer active and dedicated players to find their way to the staff team. A tip is to be active both in game and the forums.
Do you have time to actually play on your own servers? If so, how do you balance this?
No, I haven’t played on my server or minecraft for more than 7 years. I login to talk to players, fix issues and test out features. I just don’t have time to play as much as I’d love to.
To give a little insight. What does a typical day in the life of a community owner look like?
I start my day by responding to emails, then head to purchase/customer support. Then we work on bugs and issues and eventually we work on features or future projects.
Do you guys host events within the community? If so, any events coming up?
We haven’t been focusing on events lately. But we plan to in June/July when summer arrives.
Since you have been going at it for years now, there must have been times where your motivation was low. How do you handle these moments?
The biggest motivation is goal setting. We set goals each month of where we want to see the server at the end of the month and what we want to accomplish. By doing this you are not only motivating yourself and your team but you can be accountable when you don’t reach your goals.
I noticed Minelink has four developers (AJHandler, Byteflux, CullanP & AlexMl). What can you tell me about the development team and how they operate?
The development team is split up into various roles. We have backend development, this refers to the infrastructure that runs the server e.g log block tracking, rank/permissions system or chat/action logs etc. Then we have frontend development, this is the stuff the public sees e.g our boss plugin or skyblock islands plugin. The developers usually rotate roles every week or on a project basis.
Anything new the development team is working on? 😉
We are currently working on the Factions rest. After that we will be working on multiple large features for the summer update. Some of which have never been seen before.
I bet you have seen some great and funny moments during your adventure. Anything worth sharing? Be it, big achievements or highlights.
My favourite moments are when I login to the network and see players telling me how much they love the server.
As always, we like to end our interviews with some tips! Any pointers you can give to (starting) communities out there?
Listen to your community. There is no way we would be where we are if we didn’t listen to our players. We have a dedicated feedback section on our forums that we check weekly.