>As soon as this deal is finalized, I will leave Mojang and go back to doing Ludum Dares and small web experiments.
It has always amazed me how down to earth Notch is. Now, he's going to be a billionaire doing little game jams. It's hard to believe and quite awesome. It's like Bruce Wayne deciding to spend the rest of his life playing with legos.
Or just more like Tony Stark from IM1/IM2 movies, period. He has a lot of money, but he basically outsourced every day-to-day company decision making somewhere else (up to making his secretary a CEO) just so that he could do what he really loves, i.e. high-tech tinkering and saving the day (and drunk parties).
There was a school of thought that the only reason that Steve Jobs liked being CEO of Apple was so that he could build the products he wanted, how he wanted, without anyone else telling him what he could and couldn't do. He basically created a role where he was a Product Manager with near unlimited resources who didn't have to answer to anyone else.
>It's like Bruce Wayne deciding to spend the rest of his life playing with legos.
I like this image. Bruce Wayne's character in batman is always thinking big. He tries to push things in the direction he thinks is right. The idea that someone would have all the power and decide to play with toys makes me worry about the rest of us. I would like to see people like Notch (creative, thoughtful people) having a say in what the future holds. However, it seems inevitable that after a certain point, you have to choose between living the life you want or ceeding at least some of your time to the whims of the masses of the public.
Someone else mentioned Jobs and Wozniak - Notch feels like Wozniak and Mojang has no Jobs. How can we keep the Wozniaks and Notchs of the world involved in making decisions in a way that keeps them happy? We don't want to have to choose between scale and creativity.
> I would like to see people like Notch (creative, thoughtful people) having a say in what the future holds.
I don't. I have absolutely nothing against Notch, in fact I have the deepest respect for the guy as a hacker and as a person with, clearly, a lot of personal integrity. However he says quite clearly himself he's just interested in tinkering. Minecraft wasn't a deeply though out, perfectly executed, planned exercise in mass market game publishing. It was an entirely accidental result of pretty much randomly hacking ideas together. He had absolutely no idea what the future held for Minecraft when he produced it. Expecting him to have any deep insights into 'what the future holds' is projecting attributes and expectations on to him that I don't think he'd welcome.
> It was an entirely accidental result of pretty much randomly hacking ideas together. He had absolutely no idea what the future held for Minecraft when he produced it.
That the game became a financial success is indeed somewhat accidental. But that the game was fun was certainly not. Since Notch was "just tinkering", he optimized for a fun and interesting game, not for a profitable game.
I think this is the distinction aeturnum had in mind and I agree with him. We need Notches, Wozniaks and Musks to have more say in where the future goes, because they care primarily about the problems they're solving, and not about the money they're getting.
> That the game became a financial success is indeed somewhat accidental. But that the game was fun was certainly not
Yeah, it's amazing to me how many people who even play Minecraft and enjoy it don't understand this. The default state for games is not fun, and it's an incredibly deliberate (and usually difficult) process to get them there.
Bruce Wayne's character in batman is always thinking big. He tries to push things in the direction he thinks is right.
No, Bruce Wayne is incredibly myopic. If you have billions of dollars and you want to fight crime, the last thing you should be doing is developing fancy equipment so that you can personally go after criminals one by one. If Bruce Wayne truly wanted to use his money to reduce crime, he would be donating it to preschools and after-school sports programs.
Getting off-topic of course, but the key insight here is that Bruce Wayne does NOT really want to 'reduce crime'.
Instead, he wants to take revenge on criminals, like the criminals who killed his parents. 'reduce crime' isn't the same as 'fight crime', he requires the FIGHT part, and the revenge part.
Yeah, that makes him somewhat less sympathetic, but isn't that what everyone likes about batman these days, the darkness?
> If Bruce Wayne truly wanted to use his money to reduce crime, he would be donating it to preschools and after-school sports programs.
To be fair, Bruce Wayne does, in most versions of the Batman stories, incredibly vast amounts of local charity of that type (and others), as well as personally going after criminals one by one, and there's probably limited capacity to productively absorb those funds (Wayne's pump-priming charity would probably also be increasing that capacity and enabling Wayne to shift more money into those approaches productively, were it not for the fact that it is somewhat counteracted by the rather extraordinary frequency of supervillian-initiated civic destruction in Gotham, which probably has a negative impact on capacity-development efforts.)
So we could say that Bruce Wayne knows well how to purchase fuzzies and utilons separately [0]. He spends a lot of his resources to help effectively by donating to local charities, and he gets the fun and good feelings from helping people by chasing criminals himself as Batman.
I wouldn't say that. After a certain amount of charity work is done, the Batman work gets to be as effective on a per-dollar basis by reducing crime through the method of intimidation.
And removing lead paint and lead from automobile exhaust and putting more cops with better technology on the street and funding abortions and birth control and funding internet pornography and keeping funding prisons to criminals in there longer.
I think notch summed up what we're all focusing on here:
>If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I’ll probably abandon it immediately.
He doesn't want you (or anyone) excited about what he's doing. He doesn't want people to like what he creates - he wants people to like the process of creation. The product is much less interesting to him.
Many people here are working towards the sort of success Notch achieved. Strangers everywhere enthusiastically adopted his creation. His considered reaction is to cut all ties to what he made. He's been to the top of the mountain and he thinks the mountain sucks.
Now, that's fine. It's his thing, he can do whatever he wants with it. I'm not of the school that thinks he "owes" anything to anyone. But I think we should all worry a little about this as a 'case study.' Notch did a good job keeping minecraft on track. Some people might quibble over its direction over the years, but ultimately it's continued to be updated be extremely popular. But, even with massive financial success, near universal acclaim, abundant funding and total creative freedom - he decided he would rather build toy games on his own. Maybe that's just how Notch is, and it doesn't say anything about how we've organized the industry most of us are a part of, but I think it probably says /a little/ about the industry.
Notch had (nearly) every advantage a creator could have if they wanted to take a small project and scale it up into something else. He decided to walk away - I just think we should examine the forces that led him to sell Mojang. We may find we're focusing on the wrong things in our own attempts to make ourselves happy.
> He doesn't want you (or anyone) excited about what he's doing. He doesn't want people to like what he creates
I don't think that's what he's saying at all. He's simply saying the spotlight makes it difficult for him to stay sane (see first and last paragraph) and he doesn't want to be pushed into roles he's not (e.g. CEO, entrepreneur). He wants to be himself without all the issues that come with fame (see the video he linked).
> he wants people to like the process of creation. The product is much less interesting to him.
He likes the process of creation, but he doesn't necessarily want others to like it too.
> Many people here are working towards the sort of success Notch achieved.
That's the big difference. They are working towards this sort of success, Notch was not -- it just sort of happened (see first paragraph).
> Notch did a good job keeping minecraft on track
Yes, ultimately he's responsible for that, but there are others that deserve at least as much credit as Notch for keeping it on track.
> But, even with massive financial success, near universal acclaim, abundant funding and total creative freedom - he decided he would rather build toy games on his own
This isn't surprising. Many of us would only be able to do what we really wanted with the freedom that comes from (financial) success.
> Notch had (nearly) every advantage a creator could have if they wanted to take a small project and scale it up into something else.
And he still has those advantages should he wish to do that.
> How can we keep the Wozniaks and Notchs of the world involved in making decisions in a way that keeps them happy?
I think you come up with a publishing model. E.g., you front them money, provide staff, orchestrate delivery/maintenance, handle legal issues, but otherwise you leave the creative control in the hands of the author. This has worked in movies, music, literature, etc. The key is that creative control can never be challenged by business priorities (and if it is, the author needs to be able to take their IP and find another publisher).
Edit to add: at a certain point, a project ends and people like Notch need to move on to actually contribute (to society). No one complains when bands switch labels or directors stop making sequels.
He comes across as a great guy, that made something great - so it seems that he deserves this, so why be bitter about it?
Sure, I envy his success and would like to make something great that will leave its mark on the world, too. I haven't, yet, but if anything, I'm inspired - and been so way before he sold his company.
Full text of post until the site becomes less overloaded:
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I don’t see myself as a real game developer. I make games because it’s fun, and because I love games and I love to program, but I don’t make games with the intention of them becoming huge hits, and I don’t try to change the world. Minecraft certainly became a huge hit, and people are telling me it’s changed games. I never meant for it to do either. It’s certainly flattering, and to gradually get thrust into some kind of public spotlight is interesting.
A relatively long time ago, I decided to step down from Minecraft development. Jens was the perfect person to take over leading it, and I wanted to try to do new things. At first, I failed by trying to make something big again, but since I decided to just stick to small prototypes and interesting challenges, I’ve had so much fun with work. I wasn’t exactly sure how I fit into Mojang where people did actual work, but since people said I was important for the culture, I stayed.
I was at home with a bad cold a couple of weeks ago when the internet exploded with hate against me over some kind of EULA situation that I had nothing to do with. I was confused. I didn’t understand. I tweeted this in frustration. Later on, I watched the This is Phil Fish video on YouTube and started to realize I didn’t have the connection to my fans I thought I had. I’ve become a symbol. I don’t want to be a symbol, responsible for something huge that I don’t understand, that I don’t want to work on, that keeps coming back to me. I’m not an entrepreneur. I’m not a CEO. I’m a nerdy computer programmer who likes to have opinions on Twitter.
As soon as this deal is finalized, I will leave Mojang and go back to doing Ludum Dares and small web experiments. If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I’ll probably abandon it immediately.
Considering the public image of me already is a bit skewed, I don’t expect to get away from negative comments by doing this, but at least now I won’t feel a responsibility to read them.
I’m aware this goes against a lot of what I’ve said in public. I have no good response to that. I’m also aware a lot of you were using me as a symbol of some perceived struggle. I’m not. I’m a person, and I’m right there struggling with you.
I love you. All of you. Thank you for turning Minecraft into what it has become, but there are too many of you, and I can’t be responsible for something this big. In one sense, it belongs to Microsoft now. In a much bigger sense, it’s belonged to all of you for a long time, and that will never change.
The timed link in the grandparent post goes to this point in the video (the video uses “I hate Nickelback” as something to compare and contrast "I hate Phil Fish" with):
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On the internet, celebrities are famous only to the people who talk about them, and they’re only famous because we talk about them, and then we hate them for being too famous, and make them more famous by talking about how much we hate them. Could there ever be anything more self-defeating than this?
If Nickelback decided tomorrow that they didn’t want to be famous anymore, they would have to give up the tours, the roadies, the record deals, the billboards… things most of us don’t have. They would have to settle for normal life.
The only way out for Phil was to give up what most of us consider normal life – openly being ourselves on the internet. Because his normal life is what made him famous. Anything Phil says in public is newsworthy. He had to quit or privatize all social media. He had to stop speaking to his friends in public. If he goes to GDC or PAX or IndieCade, even as an attendee, there will be photos.
It's hard for me to describe it in simpler terms. It does make interesting points about fame and how people react to those that are considered famous.
It makes an excellent example using Nickelback. When people say they hate Nickelback they aren't necessarily saying they hate the band, but the music industry system that they somehow represent. But it doesn't seem to suggest the possibility that when people say they hate Nickelback, that they mean they actually do hate the music the band produces.
It attempts to say that maybe Fish isn't as bad he's made out to be. But it goes about it in a strange way. First it says that people overreact to the things that Fish says or does because he's famous, but then it goes into how he isn't really famous in terms of traditional fame. Basically, if you didn't know who Fish was then you wouldn't care what he said.
Which is probably true.
But my feelings about Fish is based off of what I saw of him in the Indie Game doc before I even knew who he was or that I was supposed to think of him as famous. Then there's his behavior after the Fez release that didn't necessarily make me think more highly of him, whether he was antagonized by others or not. As the many versions of the saying goes; if you are the only reasonable person always surrounded by assholes, maybe you are the asshole.
In all of this, I really hope Notch doesn't think of himself in terms of what people think of Fish. They are most definitely not the same, nowhere near close. There's a difference between saying I've had enough of this path in my life to wish to go down a different one and rage-quitting like a child.
Multiple times.
I for one, hope that he finds what he's looking for and I hope to hear about the new things he creates. If I never hear of Notch ever again, that's okay too.
People on the Internet get famous without necessarily trying or asking for it.
Famous people are turned into symbols, and are expected to act a certain way. People stop caring about the fact that they are people.
Famous people are held to a different standard, and their audience feels they are owed something by a famous person. In the case of Notch, for instance, people feel like he owes them his continual support on something like Minecraft, despite the fact that he likes to make little games, and one of his little games happened to explode.
Because people just being themselves on the Internet might result in them accidentally becoming famous, it's not trivial for them to stop being famous, unless they stop being themselves on the Internet.
It's sad that there are so many griefers and haters out there, but there are worse problems to have than being wildly successful.
I pity what people do to society in general with their self-destructive attitudes. We all suffer as a result when we drive people like Notch out of positions of leadership.
You see the same in politics where the truly good and earnest people are also the ones with a conscience and too much self-respect to submit themselves to the abuse of public office.
Only heartbreaking in the sense this is the new reality for many people. If you ever gain some semblance of popularity, everything you say and do is over analyzed. From your Twitter feeds, your work, your public comments, everything.
Notch just secured the best thing he could have. Now he has the money to do what he wants and not be at the forefront of what he created. Something I'm sure he's been wanting to do for a long time. Just like he said, he gets to step back into the shadows, where he's more comfortable, out of the limelight and content to do what he really wants to do.
I can only imagine what we'd be writing had he opted out say a year ago, before MS bought his company. What would we be saying then?
The people who deal with it best I think are sort of the aloof types. They may not even read their own Twitter feed, delegating it to a social-media staffer. Notch has the problem that he uses it as a personal account and is on it regularly, so he reads comments @directed at him, tries to reply to them, etc. He also has a public email address that he reads, and it sounds like people send weird/angry emails to that, too, so it ends up going beyond just Twitter. I could see getting annoyed if people were constantly emailing me in that manner.
Yeah, but like I said earlier, a bit of rest and some time out of the spotlight and he'll get bored. Then he'll really appreciate it (even if he never wants that light shining on him all the time, again).
He should donate some of that money to some good causes if he's really a simple man like he says he is. Of course he doesn't have to do anything, and fully deserves to take the money and run, and build some giant evil castle or something.
Now you mention it, it's actually really similar isn't it? I've been following him since I originally bought my alpha version of minecraft and he's always seemed to be the way he portray's himself in this article. A nice genuine guy that just loves hacking away at things.
Sometimes I wish he would have just stuck with Minecraft as the only developer and stayed away from the spotlight. Plenty of very popular game creators have done so (Icefrog, Toady One).
I really enjoyed the times back when Minecraft was just getting popular and you could tell Notch was adding features that he genuinely enjoyed (Redstone update, for instance). Then he started up a giant company and started assuming responsibility for things like server admins charging money, when he should have sat back and let people do what they want.
This seems to be a theme. The guy who had the frontpage the other day, flappy bird, etc. Must be nice to have the cash entitlements to "keep it real." I can't blame him, I think money just becomes arbitrary numbers after a certain point. Minecraft has probably grown to a point where its just only going to get smaller in the future and in a few years be a fun little nostalgia piece for the tweens today who will be in college, the same way we dusted off the NES when I was in college.
Obviously, there's something about the nerdy personality that wants none of this, but it really makes me wonder about guys like Gates or Carmack or Zuckerberg or Jobs who thrive in these environments. Are they the rare ones or are guys like Notch the outliers?
I don't know that I'd lump Carmack in with the rest of your list. Yes, he is quite financially successful from id, but he never stopped being, first and foremost, a coder who will sometimes just disappear for a few weeks to separate himself from the world and get coding done.
I wouldn't list Jobs either for almost the opposite reason in that while he had a huge impact on the tech industry, he was always a "suit" (even if he didn't wear one).
Good point, but he always came off as a hard-ass to me who liked to get into arguments and thrive on stress. I kinda see him as his own Jobs-Woz combo. I may be misreading him.
Yeah there's a lot of nuance there to be certain. Carmack is at least pretty Randian/Objectivist from what I've seen of his public statements, which deviates quite a bit from the traditional hippie left-leaning coder-type (though of course there are great developers all across the political spectrum).
Icefrog may have stayed away from the spotlight (which is quite impressive), but DOTA has not evolved how you suggested. He is by no means the sole developer, given that Valve is hauling ass behind that as pretty much their flagship game of the decade.
Maybe it's because Valve is near and dear to the gamers, but I think they've been keeping their community happier than if Icefrog was still running this as a solo job on a WC3 mod. I daresay it has been better for the game too.
His fame had never much of anything to do with the success of Minecraft. It just came with it and it didn’t really work out. It doesn’t seem like he has a problem with many people playing his game (or making money doing what he loves to do), he has a problem with being famous.
Watch the video he references, it makes many of the same points.
I really like Notch and I really like how having all that money didn't seem to change him. The sale is interesting news, but seeing him go through it with integrity is even more interesting.
While I do see his point in saying Minecraft has become too big for him, he might also be backing out a bit from a responsibility that could bring a fascinating challenge. But then again, he doesn't see himself as a true developer. Hope he finds a way to fulfill himself apart from spending billions of dollars.
He'll probably just hire someone smarter than him to invest his billion dollars. Heck, even an index fund or super conservative portfolio of dividend stocks would earn him enough to never work again, and maintain a pretty awesome lifestyle...
> I don’t see myself as a real game developer. I make games because it’s fun, and because I love games and I love to program, but I don’t make games with the intention of them becoming huge hits, and I don’t try to change the world.
I think that's the essence of being a real game developer.
It's sad that Notch feels this way, I think the majority of old school games guys and girls were just like that.
Since it's become a big business with huge studios and ridiculous budgets the market has been spoiled. But Notch/Mojang and team have shown that there is still a place for great indie games and bootstrappers.
And I actually believe him that this deal is not about the money. Projects like these can become albatrosses.
As an indie developer with a normal lifestyle, it probably doesn't matter if you have 10 million in the bank or much, much more. So, it's unlikely to be about the money.
he is not an earthworm with one brain cell. Of course, on some level it's about the money to a degree, but I think it's also true that it's not just about the money. It's both about the money and not about the money
Just because money isn't a priority for you, it doesn't mean you'll refuse it. He got the best of both worlds by letting other people run the business to focus on what he really wanted (indie dev). Believe me, it's MUCH easier to be creative and work on indie projects when you don't have to worry about your bills and your future...
That is ridiculous. Most people are able to figure out that they are better off with money then without, even if the money are not primary motivation. There is no contradiction in it.
At any point he could have said "I have enough now" and lowered the price of Minecraft to a sustaining level, or made it open source, or just stopped developing it.
I'm glad that you're so up-to-date on the terms of Notch's contracts with Mojang that you can tell us with certainty that at any point he could have altered that relationship and had the public stop associating him with Minecraft's stewardship. It's good to have people in-the-know around.
If I was already super rich and selling my
company I'd still prefer making 10-100 if my peers rich, rather than explain to them why they have to keep their day jobs because I'm convinced it's for a good cause.
Is the market spoiled? I no gaming historian but I have been playing games since Atari. There's games along the way that have stuck with me,...pitfall, super mario bros., nhl hockey 93 (i know, super rando list). But I also add to that list Fallout 3. If you correct for better underlying hardware, I feel that games are just as good as ever. I don't have the same fascination with games I had as a child but I can still get sucked in. And aren't there still indie games coming out with some amount of fanfare, like Fez and Super Meat Boy?
There are loads of great games that come out all the time now, people just forget about bad games of the past.
And the "worst" games that we see now are at best mediocre if they were coming out 2 generations ago. The bar has gotten higher because so many high-quality games have been released
It's easy to forget about the bad games. I always think of the snes/n64 as some golden era where all games were great, but when I go to used game stores I remember that it's not true. There are a handful of great games from every era, and hundreds of forgettable ones.
>I don’t make games with the intention of them becoming huge hits, and I don’t try to change the world.
>I think that's the essence of being a real game developer.
Really? (to be read with the least amount of snark possible)
I think most game developers have the same sort of mindsets as other people in creative fields, and while the objective is to make great games, most developers seem to have that little twinkle in their eye, the 'what if my game suddenly becomes huge' thought stuck in their head, and ultimately to change the world at least a little.
If you look at people like Jonathan Blow or Phil Fish (who unfortunately needs to hide himself from the world after being constantly attacked), they all seem to have this objective of creating experiences to share with the world.
(There are examples of people who do develop games much like others write their diaries,in a very personal fashion, but I think the majority are out to create hits)
Phil Fish "needs" to hide because he's an asshole who, amongst many other things, successfully bullied a sexual assault victim into apologizing for talking about the fact that he'd been sexually assaulted.
Edit: and even then he doesn't have to hide from the internet except to avoid the flamefests he keeps actively starting, fueling, and turning into Twitter pileons against people he dislikes if he doesn't.
This comment is rude but the basic idea is right. Phil Fish and social media is a combination that does not work. He gets into massive nasty arguments. There's no connection to the game he made/makes.
And yeah I've seen the video about him becoming a symbol, which is terrible and all but still not a consequence of his creative output.
> I think that's the essence of being a real game developer.
I think that's the eseence of being a real X, X = insert whatever you claim to be in.
In my mind I divide companies (and professionals) by whether their occupation is an instrumental or terminal goal. As an example, advancing rocketry and electrifying transport to advance humanity is a terminal goal for Elon Musk. I.e he cares about that and works on Tesla and SpaceX to achieve that. Contrast with most of companies, that do what they do as an instrument to get money. Such company, for which i.e. making cars is an instrumental goal would gladly switch to producing toilet paper if it was a more profitable sector. I like to refer to such a company as "toilet-paper company".
For an example that would likely appeal to the audience here, toilet-paper companies are common in start-up world nowadays. That new SaaS business that tells you (i.e. lies) how it cares about users and solving their problems, while the founders are planning on getting acquired by Google/Amazon/etc. and dumping the product (aka. exit) - that is a paper-toilet startup. Whatever sells.
What's the value I find by dividing companies by whether their work is terminal or instrumental for them? For one, I tend to trust former much more than the latter, because I expect that they'll optimize their product primarily for solving the stated problems and not primarily for selling ability.
So basically, Notch doesn't want to be a paper-toilet game developer; he wants to make games.
> In my mind I divide companies (and professionals) by whether their occupation is an instrumental or terminal goal.
That's a super good observation, thank you. It instantly explains why I have such a loathing for some companies and people and others I feel only pride. Wow. Never ever thought about it that way.
I suspect this may also help you to pick out good founders from an investors point of view and good co-founders from a founders point of view.
> It instantly explains why I have such a loathing for some companies and people and others I feel only pride.
I completely agree with this. It's basically optimizing for getting rich instead of optimizing for happiness. Many entrepreneurs make decisions (i.e. run their businesses) with the main focus being amassing money and getting rich. These are the ones that we find ourselves loathing so much. Whereas other founders make decisions with the main focus being happiness and passion for their work. These are the ones we admire.
I'm reminded of the _Nicomachean Ethics_, which, if I recall accurately, begins with an analysis of what you're calling instrumental activities vs terminal, in order to show that the end goal of any activity is happiness, which is not instrumental for any other purpose.
I'm not trying to go too deep into philosophy with this concept. I guess one could present a convincing argument that there are no real terminal goals, or that the real terminal goal is happiness, or something like that.
From the practical perspective though, people seem to have a limited capability for introspection. Maybe for Musk solving the big problems/retiring on Mars is only instrumental to feeling righteous, which is only instrumental to being happy, etc. but humans don't usually introspect that deep. The recursion stops somewhere around the moment where you feel you care about something for the sake of that something. That's what I meant by terminal goals here.
It's a good insight, but the repeated typo "paper-toilet" (incorrect, but interesting image) instead of "toilet-paper" (correct) made it difficult for me to understand on the first read. It's both here and in the post that links to this.
Thanks for pointing this out. I'm past the edit window, so I can't fix that :(.
It must have come out from the fact that in my native tongue toilet paper is "papier toaletowy"; the same two things but in different order. Therefore my mind didn't spot it on re-reading. I'll be more careful in the future.
It's the ideal, maybe; most 'real' game developers would love to be able to do whatever they want like Notch can, but run into practical problems like making money. Notch / Mojang got lucky, being one of the first 'building' games of its kind and the first majorly successful crowdsourced games. Nowadays, there's dozens of game developers that want to follow in his footsteps, but the competition in the crowdsourced world is just huge, so a lot will never get to a level where they can make a living out of doing what they love to do.
You mention it being a big business and all, but like you say yourself, thanks to Notch / Mojang, the rise of crowdsourcing and self-publishing thanks to platforms like Steam, indie game developers have a lot more opportunities than Notch/Mojang did back when he started out with Minecraft.
"I’m not an entrepreneur. I’m not a CEO. I’m a nerdy computer programmer who likes to have opinions on Twitter...If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I’ll probably abandon it immediately."
I have the utmost respect for notch after reading that.
I think it's sad to write something like that (abandoning something as soon as it seems to gain traction). Isn't that what games are about? Writing great games that a lot of people love to play and talk about?
And in the case of Minecraft, hack and mod in unimaginable ways?
Perhaps the joy he derives comes not from the popularity or world-changingness, but rather from the process of creation, or the problems that he gets to solve in interesting ways.
I don't think he'll ever be at a loss for creativity. If he spends the rest of his days streaming (or not streaming!) him coding random small games, or tinkering on a renderer that is never used, I expect that he'll be happy and feel fulfilled.
He is saying "I made a mistake; I have learnt from that mistake and will try to avoid making the same mistake in future".
That's a fucking great attitude and is -to me at least- much better than "I made minecraft and I'm awesome and the success of Minecraft has nothing to do with luck but is totally all those decisions I made because I'm brilliant" which is the kind of thing we hear from a bunch of other devs.
Good point, agreed. I think abandoning is a little much though. I guess it would have rubbed me differently if he had said I'll make it open source or hand it off to other developers earlier, etc.
He did hand it off to other developers. He was still gettin hate for stuff those other people were doing.
I kind of wish that mental health support was better and that he'd had some kind of mentoring to help him deal with it.
Perhaps that's a startup idea: support with all the hate and bullshit that comes your way when you're a public figure. More expensive service would include rapid rebuttal service to quash lies and myth.
I can dig him wanting to do a Flappy Bird, but there's also something to be said for taking a concept to initial production, and turning it over to someone else to run & improve. Your work then gets into the hands of (hopefully) millions of people, and the change in focus can provide additional inspiration for future work.
It's possible to have a lot of money and be legitimately very unhappy, all at the same time.
The pressure of being as much of a public figure as he is, and the person blamed for anything wrong with the most popular computer game in the world, is probably Not Much Fun.
I think there are some interesting parallels with J K Rowling. If he releases anything now, it's big news (even Cliffhorse). He might have to start "writing" under a pseudonym just to get any sense of doing something fresh without intense public scrutiny.
I think it's pretty well known that JK Rowling is a woman. Also, she has recently written some books under the pen name "Robert Galbraith".
Edit: I see above that the poster was referring to Notch. Just a simple case of an unclear antecedent (and being unfamiliar with Notch's and Rowling's recently releases ;) )
Interesting note, if an author uses a pseudonym of a different gender, its appropriate to use that gender of the pseudonym. I find it weird that James Tiptree, Jr. is still a "he" when we've known for decades it was Alice Bradley Sheldon's pen name.
In fact, Tiptree, not Sheldon, has been inducted into the science fiction hall of fame, which is even weirder.
I don't think I've ever met anyone - in real life or in the UK educational system, anyway - who referred to George Eliot as being a "he" without instantly being corrected.
Are you saying Notch waited for this big news story to break so that he could quietly announce a gender change without anyone paying too much attention? He should become a politician.
There are a lot of parallels with people who got immensely rich while doing what they loved with no specific monetary goal in mind.
I think Notch represents quite well what a lot of us would be like if one of our software got incredibly popular overnight (We're talking worldwide sensation) and we got a massive amount of money out of it (Billions with a B).
Confused, dazed, surprised. "That's quite cool but I never actually meant for that to happen". Try to do good things with the money but end up with responsibilities we don't want regarding the product, the money and ourselves. Not be able to have a private life all of a sudden and wanting out of the drag.
Nah, he's been releasing little side-projects every so often, none of which were seen as the next big thing. Although that space game of his did get a lot of hype, he decided to pull the plug on that one a while ago because it just wasn't going to work (also due to all the pressure from the fans).
0x10c (that space game) would have been incredible if he had completed it. It would be the next step up from Minecraft for kids who liked Minecraft. Can you imagine?
Maybe that's really why he stopped the development.
This whole Minecraft thing has been very interesting to follow. I tried the game a few times and it's not really for me but everything around Notch's story is interesting (I bet their going to make a movie about this at some point). Not everyone can be an entrepreneur and I feel that in this case (on a different scale of course), we basically watched a plausible version of how Apple could have gotten started if there was only a Wozniak but no Jobs.
I'm sure there are many here that dream of having their idea be a huge success but aren't really interested in becoming the next Bill Gates or Zuckerberg. They just want to cash out so that they can have their financial freedom and then go out of the limelight and back to doing the same things they enjoy but without having to constantly worry about job security and putting food on the table. Notch achieved this in the most spectacular way possible and I think he handled it perfectly.
I think the analogy to Wozniak is great. I remember an article some months ago in which he basically said the same: He wants to tinker and hack.
I remember watching some parts of notch's livestreams. I loved the enthusiasm he had. He was a bit like a young boy, trying things, throwing some away, creating games. I'm happy for his decision.
I see the echos of that enthusiasm in my daughters when they build in their Minecraft worlds. Notch's sense of wonder and joy of creating has been spread to millions.
I think it's less the greed and crazy fandom and more a new generation of people that feel they are entitled to everything and anything they want and if they don't get it, start an online witch hunt.
There are numerous examples of this in the past 6 months and in Notch's case, it happened with EULA and 3rd party server support.
A community that supports this sort of behavior wouldn't have my support either. I don't blame him.
This is just what happens when you sell 54 million copies of your product. Granted, I'm not exactly entrenched in the Minecraft community, but I'm guessing it's just the usual case where the vocal minority start getting uppity. Whenever you have a group that large, there will be some bad apples.
Not that I'm disagreeing with you, however. There comes a point when the amount of vitriol you're receiving isn't worth the success.
> a new generation of people that feel they are entitled to everything and anything they want and if they don't get it, start an online witch hunt
Is it really fair to characterize this of a specific generation?
> “Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.” — Socrates
> …in Notch's case, it happened with EULA and 3rd party server support.
What, you don't think that people who have paid for a game client and server have the right to run that client and server? That's Freedom 0, and it's fundamental. Attempting to violate it with any sort of EULA is simply wrong.
Come on, it's the entertainment industry. You don't see greed and crazy fandom pushing away fundamentally important people like Vint Cerf, since their work isn't related to entertainment.
Wozniak was unusual in that his story wasn't entertainmnet-related, but most of these "I can't handle the public's demands for my attention" stories come from the entertainment industry.
I see what you are saying, there are many smart, if not brilliant people out there. Woz is able to "think different."
Unfortunately, Vint Cerf is not close to being a billionaire. Our economic system doesn't award brilliance, it doesn't award productivity, it awards the ability to convince other people to give them more money. I'm not saying that that's totally bad, just that the money chasers scare away some great minds.
Yeah, exactly. Dealing with social media as a divisive personality is exhaustive - either you completely shut it off and let some underpaid underdealing deal with it, or you will get horrendously burnt out by all the negativity.
I hope he will produce another master work, but either way, I wish him a very happy life with all the money he earned.
> If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I’ll probably abandon it immediately.
This is the part of the post that bothers me, especially in the context of 0x10c which seemed to follow that exact track. Its his life obviously, I just wonder what awesome stuff won't be made because Minecraft made him wealthy enough that he didn't need to worry about being productive anymore.
I don't think "so wealthy he doesn't need to be productive" is what happened. Rather the horrific experience of having indie game fans obsess over him made him determined never to do anything that would draw their attention again.
If this analogy is so good, and I'm not doubting it, then is MSFT like adding Jobs to Minecraft? Will we see a small successful company become a dominant global technology/gaming company?
> there are many here that dream of having their idea be a huge success but aren't really interested in becoming the next Bill Gates or Zuckerberg.
I think it's more than you think. I think Notch expressed clearly that he did not expect nor want his project to become a big hit. He may have been flattered for a while but he now sees it clearly: success is shit, big success is a shitstorm.
The exact opposite of the entrepreneur spirit. I think pg may have overlooked this side of the hackerhood.
I think what pg might have overlooked, looking back at his old essays, is that hackers of old, driven by their love for their work turned into paper-toiler entrepreneurs today. There is nothing precluding a hacker from leveraging the economy to scale up his favourite hack (which I believe pg's early essays were about) or, as Notch did, just to secure himself a peaceful and secure environment to continue his hacking without having to worry about things like food, health and shelter. But that is a different type of hacker than the ones that are attracted to the startup scene nowdays.
Of course, it being a big hit is what gives him enough money that he now can live comfortably while working on whatever the hell he wants without worrying about making money.
I'm not critisizing him, I'm glad he has that opportunity, and I'm glad he's recognized what opportunity he wants (which is apparently NOT the opportunity to try and make even more money).
But it's a bit more complicated than "success is shit", success is what's allowed him to ignore success from here on out, without having to worry about a roof over his head, health care, etc.
Yes. Other commentators here assume he was starving and is now rich, which should be an improvement. But maybe he was not starving, maybe he already had a roof and some food, either from some previous work, or from goverment, or from his family.
Maybe, probably, he was already able to hack things he liked without worrying too much about survival: he actually did I guess, when he started Minecraft.
The problem is that he got an offer he could not refuse (as in The Godfather)...
You only get unemployment benefits it you are enrolled in a job seeking plan. So while you may not need to worry about becoming homeless, getting unemployment benefits is an entirely different predicament than what Notch is in now.
There might be a different documentary/biopic/film, but there is currently Minecraft: The Story of Mojang[1]. It only really covers the first year, however.
Is it just me, or do you think that Nintendo acquiring a company like Mojang seems more appropriate? I shudder at the thought of Microsoft stripping Minecraft of its creative and inspiring qualities and turning it into a simple FPS.
Its such a lame end for "the story of Mojang". Let's see how long it takes for the word "mojang" to be forgotten. Lego is still called Lego, and Pixar still hasn't yielded its name to Disney (they sortof managed to coexist) to take just two examples.
The sad thing about Mojang is people are inspired by "vision". Money ? sure, we all want to earn as much as we can... But when did money give anybody any inspiration.
"I'm sure there are many here that dream of having their idea be a huge success [...]"
In the broader picture, I am struggling to understand some of the opinions of this story out there, particularly on HN. What I mean is, I suspect that a majority of us dream of this type of success. We dream of connecting our creative force with financial success, especially when that success would free us to work on practically anything that we wanted. I would say that a lot of us dream of being able to lead entirely self-directed lives that financial freedom can afford.
Therefore, why is it bemoaned when we see the very success that we dream of unfold for someone else? Why are there suddenly opinions of, "Well, I can't believe Notch would work on something that he would abandon?" Or, "Notch should spend his money this way or that way."
It just feels, well, extremely egotistical. Who is anyone to call out how someone else should spend their money, enjoy their time... live their life?
A similar situation happened with Dong Nguyen. He essentially tapped into the modern-day equivalent of Pac-Man Fever. In the 80s, it swept the world, to the tune of billions of dollars. It was the highest-grossing arcade game ever produced. People simply loved the game, and they couldn't get enough of clearing boards of dots, power-pellets and ghosts.
In a similar way, Flappy Bird took very simple game-play, and combined it with a simple challenge. This is, of course, not the first game to do this, but it took off. The power of the Internet has made Nguyen's name known, and quite sadly in some circles, despised for his financial success, when how much he was making on ad revenue was revealed. Or, with comments like those found in this piece [1], its intellectual lamenting with, "[...] I begrudge a society that would turn it into a phenomenon."
I suspect that the author would have said the same about Pac-Man.
I really feel for Notch, Dong Nguyen and those creatives of the world that worked to bring a dream to reality, only to have this happen to them. I'm reminded of a phrase from the song Limelight [2] ...
Open sourcing it would likely screw his co-founders, employees with stock options, etc. compared to the size of this deal.
Tbh, I'd be happier if he donated 10% of his earnings from this sale to Open Source projects and feeding people. Rather than, y'know, having gone the route you suggested. He also seems like the kind of guy that would.
Why would open sourcing it screw his co-founders? You can open source the code, interact with the community and improve Minecraft, while still selling the game. You don't have to open source the artwork and assets.
Piracy is not an argument in this, because pirating Minecraft for single player has always been and will always be piss easy, and multiplayer will still be impossible.
Right. He never thought he was going to make the current juggernaut. He thought it was going to be yet another moderately popular project with a limited duration and impact.
Sales will, at some point, start dying. He has, as far as I can tell, relinquished control of the source in a manner that will forbid him from open sourcing the game at that point.
You think it's reasonable that he should continue at the helm of Mojang and retain control of Minecraft IP until what exactly? 10 years pass and the brand (which Minecraft has become) finally fades in popularity?
So he can release it as open source, to make good on what? Some "About" page he wrote fucking 4 years ago when Minecraft was nothing but a PC indie sleeper hit?
I don't think he wants sympathy, that's not how I read this at all. I think he wants freedom, and he is not asking for it but simply stating for the record how he is going about this.
One of the thing's I admire about Notch's communication is that it always comes off as sincere and matter of fact. I think that is admirable in the face of the reality one faces in becoming internet-famous.
The internet has a big problem with mob-mentality entitlement. People jumping up to call Notch a hypocrite for going back on his word, or otherwise critiquing every little move he makes really don't have a leg to stand on. I mean sure everyone is entitled to their opinion, but the actual power that these people deserve to have over Notch is infinitesimal; it's just noise on the internet with no significance. Look at it this way, if suddenly 10 million people started scrutinizing what you were up to, I'm sure they'd have a lot of complaints, but what do you owe to them?
Included there is a dedication to (eventually) make the work open-source or public domain, and to contribute to it so long as people are paying. Those promises drove MindCraft praise, good will, and adoption. Do you think asking someone to keep these promises, the ones that drove adoption (and hence his current good fortune) is... entitlement?
I don't see that he, personally, has to contribute free expansions, it's enough if Mojang does. A lot of people seem to be assuming that purchase by MS means the end of mods and the start of paid expansion packs. Is there definite evidence for this claim, or is it just speculation?
As for releasing it as open source, I went to your link and it says 'Once sales start dying and a minimum time has passed, I will release the game source code as some kind of open source.' How do you know he has gone back on this promise, as I have not seen any statement to the contrary so far?
Your claims of entitlement seem to rest on unproven assumptions. Is there some evidence out there you could link to, for those of us who don't follow the company/product closely?
Yes, yes I do. The fact that you see his future plans as some kind of ironclad contract is precisely the problem. Minecraft did not explode because of these promises, it succeeded because of the reality on the ground as a fun game.
Notch gave the world a fun game, you gave him a small purchase price in order to enjoy it, end of transaction. The fact that he published thoughts and future plans does indenture him as your eternal entertainment provider. He should be free to leave daily development and do with his creation as he will, including deciding to do something differently than he originally envisioned. This is his prerogative as creator. To all the people who claim their participation "made" the success of Minecraft, I say bullshit, you are playing a fucking game.
You know what's a lot worse for humanity? When Twitter decided to be a media company instead of an infrastructure company. That also pissed off a lot of people who "made" the success of the company. But you know what? Same deal. It's their prerogative. You can cry and gnash your teeth, and of course you are entitled to your opinion, but the value of all those opinions? Farts in the wind.
The repeated use of the verb "will" definitely tricked me into believing it was a verbal contract, not just fuzzy plans (and I still believe he meant it as a contract).
I personally don't care, bought Minecraft, enjoyed it and moved along as I realized the modding system would never see the light... but I definitely understand why people feel disappointed.
"The term verbal contract is sometimes incorrectly used as a synonym for oral contract. However, a verbal contract is one that is agreed to using words, either written or spoken, as opposed to an implied contract."
It's funny how GP is heavily downvoted even though he's right. Downvoters (which I assume you're one of) didn't even check their facts.
Since you're the one claiming "verbal" equals "oral", you're the one who's supposed to do the research. Wikipedia has a citation on that specific paragraph and there are lots of results in Google. Do your homework before your claims.
But anyways, "verbum, verbi" means "word" in Latin while "os, oris" means "mouth". That should be a clue.
"Verbal contract" always refers to spoken contracts!
This is about usage, not definition. To interrupt a hrwad with a pointless aside in a snarky manner about a common (mis)use of "verbal" deserves a downvote.
Your inability to find an example of someone using "verbal contract" to mean "written contract" has been noted. :p
And again, they carefully use written to mean written and verbal to mean spoken.
The first two pages of my Google search failed to show anyone using "verbal contract" to mean "written contract" - and it's pretty obvious why. A written contract is just a contract, or if you really need to specify whether it's written or spoken you'd be obtuse to use the word "verbal" to describe a written contract.
Contrary to common wisdom, an informal exchange of promises can still be binding and legally as valid as a written contract. A spoken contract is often called an "oral contract", not a "verbal contract." A verbal contract is simply a contract that uses words. All oral contracts and written contracts are verbal contracts. Contracts that are created without the use of words are called "non-verbal, non-oral contracts" or "a contract implied by the acts of the parties."
So, that's clearly saying that people use "verbal contract" to mean "spoken contract" - it's not an example of someone using the term "verbal contract" to mean "written contract".
It can be, if you want it to - that's the whole point. Much like there are people who play WoW to accumulate gold, or PvP rankings, or raid success, or epic gear, or a working guild, or to craft all of the recipes, or something else I've not encountered.
The fascinating thing to me is that WoW's success was predicated on keeping people playing by paying content creators to come up with new goals for players to strive for, but minecraft demonstrates that people are more than capable of creating their own goals and successes within a sufficiently open ended game. For me, it was a lava moat. Then a pitched roof. Then a farm. Then a railway that took hours to build (and didn't go anywhere useful in retrospect). Then... etc
Quoting the page you just linked: "Once sales start dying and a minimum time has passed, I will release the game source code as some kind of open source. "
Sales are not dying and minimum time did not passed. It does not even look like the sales will die soon. He was thinking about releasing the game when the game is dead and abandoned by gamers. Even if you take the above as a promise, the initial condition is not met and there is no requirement on him to do anything.
Quiet in conscience, calm in their right; confident their ways are best. [1]
> I would say that a lot of us dream of being able to lead entirely self-directed lives that financial freedom can afford. Therefore, why is it bemoaned when we see the very success that we dream of unfold for someone else?
A lot of us do share that dream, but many feel most alive when they're part of a group movement. There's a little of each in everyone, but it's easy to understand how those who lean strongly to one side or the other might not be able to see through the eyes of folks across the gap. I think that, for the most part, any backlash against Notch isn't fueled by jealousy from those who aspire to the position he's reached; rather, it's from a sense of betrayal and abandonment from people whose core values are loyalty and unity.
I just hope he didn't make a mistake by posting what he did, when he did. Rest assured there are clauses in the purchase agreement that cover anything that might lower the value of the business... such as announcing that you're jumping ship before the ink is dry.
If nothing else, he's got to be leaving an astonishing amount of cash behind. These agreements always come with long vesting periods ("golden handcuffs").
Notch didn't make his blog post until well after the official Mojang post (which he obviously did not write, and which announced the founders were leaving) went up.
Also, Mojang as a whole went almost dead silent between the time the WSJ article hit and today. Even routine twitter interaction that had nothing to do with the deal was greatly curbed. Somebody was making sure nobody said a word until they were allowed to.
And I'm sure Notch has an expensive lawyer telling him what he's allowed to do and when. He could certainly afford it even before this deal, and there are signs that he's had skilled legal advice in the past (e.g. the licensing of Minecraft to Mojang rather than outright transfer).
Woz doesn't stir up drama on Twitter every time someone in his industry does something he doesn't like. Notch sorta does (cf. "I’m a nerdy computer programmer who likes to have opinions on Twitter.").
(For the record, I think most of his opinions are great opinions.)
I'm open to the idea that people can change their minds, or that the circumstances might be different, or that he felt he couldn't do the job anymore, or didn't fit in, or whatever else. But the fact remains that this sale runs in direct opposition to basically everything he's ever said in public. Now, maybe he doesn't want to live a life where what he says "in public" has some kind of significance apart from what he just says in general. That seems to be the case - it's his prerogative and if he thinks that's what best for him I'm sure he's right. But people are still going to call him a hypocrite, and that's the price he's going to have to pay.
And that's the part that makes me a little sad. I like Minecraft, but not so much that I'm going to be heartbroken when Microsoft inevitably ruins it. But I did find myself in agreement with Notch on a lot of things, and I was glad that he was able to do what he did and be outspoken about things he thought were important, etc etc. And with this sale, we also lose that. Oh well.
Is notch? I was under the impression that notch has not worked on any real production code in a long time. I was always under the impression that he is not "technically" that good and the original minecraft code was very inefficient but I could be wrong.
Every time game programmers get called out for writing bad game code i get a bit angry. Games are a very convoluted thing to have to express in a procedural fashion.
Have you ever looked at a hello world opengl program in java that includes textures and bump mapping and light source stuff? Its a mess.
Also being highly productive has bugger all to do with writing "good code". Almost no code gets the job done.
I've written plenty of stuff that is "bad code" that runs faster (in a world were speed is important) and makes more money than the elegantly designed frameworks i've built.
I would go so far as to say good code is contradictory to highly productive solutions that get the job done. Indeed i know one large firm that employs and spends millions trying to find the best c++ programmers they can.
All they do is sit all day arguing about the best way to do things. Chatting to them in the pub they guess they write about 1000 lines of code a year that gets into production.
can't you have a company by hiring someone to lead instead of you, only giving him directions ? I mean couldn't mojang become some sort of game development laboratory instead ?
for example google throws money they get from advertising at other experiments, I'm really dreaming of doing that for game development.
Such a reaction is borderline ridiculous and coward. Others like Wozniack are mature and strong enough and are definitely able to sustain a business well. Several levels apart!
I don't know much about Minecraft or whatever issue Notch is referring to in his post. But I'm always struck by how quickly people snap to emotional argument and response, without thinking about the other side of the question, without thinking about how their response will be read or felt by others.
The first step in any dialogue is trying to understand why the other side has said or done what they have, and how that might seem reasonable and right to them. Without that, how do we have any hope of learning anything, or moving to any actual agreement? And yet 98% of what I read presumes that any disagreement must be ignorant, stupid or evil.
I understand many of the reasons why people talk this way, and yes, it's hard to avoid it. But we now have more communication amongst ourselves than at any other time in human history. Maybe it's time to start thinking hard about how each of us can communicate better.
Wouldn't it be great if we could get to a community where some idiosyncratic dude could write a monster hit without feeling himself battered for reasons he can't understand?
I think it's just simpler than that. The impression I got was not that he left because of hate he was getting, but just because Minecraft got really popular and turned into something much bigger than he expected.
It sounds like he doesn't want to be a part of anything that big - he just wants to have fun hacking on games.
The hate weeks ago was about money, basically. Part of EULA that disallowed servers to earn money, but was often ignored. Mojang clarified that that part of EULA is indeed meant as written.
People do not tend to be understanding when it comes to loosing money they wanted/expected.
Moreover, I suspect that managing Minecraft is a lot about merchandize selling, cons organization, making deals with lego and everyone else who want to produce themed items and so on. Not necessary what you want to deal with if you consider yourself gamemaker or programmer.
Remember that the money was necessary in order to pay for the (really quite expensive) servers which people play on. And that Mojang were changing the culture as it has been, and as it has been successful.
It's sad to see the effect this has had on the servers I've played on. And it was all so pointless: at the end of the day, who really cares if players who chuck in $10/month get a free set of diamond armour or a house?
Little Johnny finds a server that is selling diamond tools for $100 a pop. He says something about how he doesn't know hoe to buy things online, and a nice server admin walks him through "borrowing" his parents credit card and making the purchase. His parents get the bill, hit the ceiling, google "Minecraft", get a number for Mojang, call up, and start screaming at people to refund the money.
It happens. Having a decentralized server system with unregulated "in app purchases" and a very young fan base in a recipe for bad publicity, angry parents, upset kids, and bad vibes all the way around.
Parents should control their children, right? When I was a kid, I wouldn't have dreamed of stealing my folks' credit card—and had I, that would have been their fault for raising me poorly, and my fault for doing it, and the criminals' fault for encouraging me to do it, not some random fourth party's fault for not saying, 'don't do that.'
People should be sane. The right response to a lunatic who blames Mojang for his child's actions is to hang up.
Those servers were going against EULA whole time. And this was not one hidden sentence among twenty pages of legalese in click through license. It business license that lined up pretty clearly how you can and how you can not earn money on Minecraft. Literally nothing changed that day, neither EULA nor the way it is enforced.
Mojang cared somewhat about pricing patterns. It is the same thing as lego consistently refusing adult themes. They have an idea on what the brand should be (e.g. kid friendly or not play to win) and this went against.
Mojang clarifies: EULA is meant as written, nothing changes. Not even enforcement, they were not starting campaign to kill those servers. And everybody looses mind.
Notch gets the resources and freedom to do what he actually wants to be doing: Exploring and experimenting with game ideas. And Minecraft gets to continue developing as a product people enjoy.
> I don't know much about Minecraft or whatever issue Notch is referring to in his post. But I'm always struck by how quickly people snap to emotional argument and response
I've been involved in the Minecraft community for a long while, but mostly from the sidelines as an observer. it's a nasty community full of more bitter and hateful people than any other community I've ever seen. It doesn't help that many of them are children. I don't blame Notch for wanting out.
That's silly. If someone said they hated their house, they wanted to move out and it wasn't about the money, would you demand that they give the house away for free?
this is so awesome that he can make things that he loves. Become super rich with it, but still staying who he is. This kind of achievement is incredibly hard.
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It has always amazed me how down to earth Notch is. Now, he's going to be a billionaire doing little game jams. It's hard to believe and quite awesome. It's like Bruce Wayne deciding to spend the rest of his life playing with legos.
There was a school of thought that the only reason that Steve Jobs liked being CEO of Apple was so that he could build the products he wanted, how he wanted, without anyone else telling him what he could and couldn't do. He basically created a role where he was a Product Manager with near unlimited resources who didn't have to answer to anyone else.
I like this image. Bruce Wayne's character in batman is always thinking big. He tries to push things in the direction he thinks is right. The idea that someone would have all the power and decide to play with toys makes me worry about the rest of us. I would like to see people like Notch (creative, thoughtful people) having a say in what the future holds. However, it seems inevitable that after a certain point, you have to choose between living the life you want or ceeding at least some of your time to the whims of the masses of the public.
Someone else mentioned Jobs and Wozniak - Notch feels like Wozniak and Mojang has no Jobs. How can we keep the Wozniaks and Notchs of the world involved in making decisions in a way that keeps them happy? We don't want to have to choose between scale and creativity.
I don't. I have absolutely nothing against Notch, in fact I have the deepest respect for the guy as a hacker and as a person with, clearly, a lot of personal integrity. However he says quite clearly himself he's just interested in tinkering. Minecraft wasn't a deeply though out, perfectly executed, planned exercise in mass market game publishing. It was an entirely accidental result of pretty much randomly hacking ideas together. He had absolutely no idea what the future held for Minecraft when he produced it. Expecting him to have any deep insights into 'what the future holds' is projecting attributes and expectations on to him that I don't think he'd welcome.
That the game became a financial success is indeed somewhat accidental. But that the game was fun was certainly not. Since Notch was "just tinkering", he optimized for a fun and interesting game, not for a profitable game.
I think this is the distinction aeturnum had in mind and I agree with him. We need Notches, Wozniaks and Musks to have more say in where the future goes, because they care primarily about the problems they're solving, and not about the money they're getting.
Yeah, it's amazing to me how many people who even play Minecraft and enjoy it don't understand this. The default state for games is not fun, and it's an incredibly deliberate (and usually difficult) process to get them there.
No, Bruce Wayne is incredibly myopic. If you have billions of dollars and you want to fight crime, the last thing you should be doing is developing fancy equipment so that you can personally go after criminals one by one. If Bruce Wayne truly wanted to use his money to reduce crime, he would be donating it to preschools and after-school sports programs.
Instead, he wants to take revenge on criminals, like the criminals who killed his parents. 'reduce crime' isn't the same as 'fight crime', he requires the FIGHT part, and the revenge part.
Yeah, that makes him somewhat less sympathetic, but isn't that what everyone likes about batman these days, the darkness?
To be fair, Bruce Wayne does, in most versions of the Batman stories, incredibly vast amounts of local charity of that type (and others), as well as personally going after criminals one by one, and there's probably limited capacity to productively absorb those funds (Wayne's pump-priming charity would probably also be increasing that capacity and enabling Wayne to shift more money into those approaches productively, were it not for the fact that it is somewhat counteracted by the rather extraordinary frequency of supervillian-initiated civic destruction in Gotham, which probably has a negative impact on capacity-development efforts.)
[0] - http://lesswrong.com/lw/6z/purchase_fuzzies_and_utilons_sepa...
He's taking the exploration path, instead of iterating on something which has already proved successful.
I can't wait to see what Notch does next.
>If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I’ll probably abandon it immediately.
He doesn't want you (or anyone) excited about what he's doing. He doesn't want people to like what he creates - he wants people to like the process of creation. The product is much less interesting to him.
Many people here are working towards the sort of success Notch achieved. Strangers everywhere enthusiastically adopted his creation. His considered reaction is to cut all ties to what he made. He's been to the top of the mountain and he thinks the mountain sucks.
Now, that's fine. It's his thing, he can do whatever he wants with it. I'm not of the school that thinks he "owes" anything to anyone. But I think we should all worry a little about this as a 'case study.' Notch did a good job keeping minecraft on track. Some people might quibble over its direction over the years, but ultimately it's continued to be updated be extremely popular. But, even with massive financial success, near universal acclaim, abundant funding and total creative freedom - he decided he would rather build toy games on his own. Maybe that's just how Notch is, and it doesn't say anything about how we've organized the industry most of us are a part of, but I think it probably says /a little/ about the industry.
Notch had (nearly) every advantage a creator could have if they wanted to take a small project and scale it up into something else. He decided to walk away - I just think we should examine the forces that led him to sell Mojang. We may find we're focusing on the wrong things in our own attempts to make ourselves happy.
I don't think that's what he's saying at all. He's simply saying the spotlight makes it difficult for him to stay sane (see first and last paragraph) and he doesn't want to be pushed into roles he's not (e.g. CEO, entrepreneur). He wants to be himself without all the issues that come with fame (see the video he linked).
> he wants people to like the process of creation. The product is much less interesting to him.
He likes the process of creation, but he doesn't necessarily want others to like it too.
> Many people here are working towards the sort of success Notch achieved.
That's the big difference. They are working towards this sort of success, Notch was not -- it just sort of happened (see first paragraph).
> Notch did a good job keeping minecraft on track
Yes, ultimately he's responsible for that, but there are others that deserve at least as much credit as Notch for keeping it on track.
> But, even with massive financial success, near universal acclaim, abundant funding and total creative freedom - he decided he would rather build toy games on his own
This isn't surprising. Many of us would only be able to do what we really wanted with the freedom that comes from (financial) success.
> Notch had (nearly) every advantage a creator could have if they wanted to take a small project and scale it up into something else.
And he still has those advantages should he wish to do that.
I think you come up with a publishing model. E.g., you front them money, provide staff, orchestrate delivery/maintenance, handle legal issues, but otherwise you leave the creative control in the hands of the author. This has worked in movies, music, literature, etc. The key is that creative control can never be challenged by business priorities (and if it is, the author needs to be able to take their IP and find another publisher).
Edit to add: at a certain point, a project ends and people like Notch need to move on to actually contribute (to society). No one complains when bands switch labels or directors stop making sequels.
I'll be honest, I'm bitter and jealous, :(
Sure, I envy his success and would like to make something great that will leave its mark on the world, too. I haven't, yet, but if anything, I'm inspired - and been so way before he sold his company.
Better than dressing up in a gimp suit, and liable to get fewer people killed.
------------------
I don’t see myself as a real game developer. I make games because it’s fun, and because I love games and I love to program, but I don’t make games with the intention of them becoming huge hits, and I don’t try to change the world. Minecraft certainly became a huge hit, and people are telling me it’s changed games. I never meant for it to do either. It’s certainly flattering, and to gradually get thrust into some kind of public spotlight is interesting.
A relatively long time ago, I decided to step down from Minecraft development. Jens was the perfect person to take over leading it, and I wanted to try to do new things. At first, I failed by trying to make something big again, but since I decided to just stick to small prototypes and interesting challenges, I’ve had so much fun with work. I wasn’t exactly sure how I fit into Mojang where people did actual work, but since people said I was important for the culture, I stayed.
I was at home with a bad cold a couple of weeks ago when the internet exploded with hate against me over some kind of EULA situation that I had nothing to do with. I was confused. I didn’t understand. I tweeted this in frustration. Later on, I watched the This is Phil Fish video on YouTube and started to realize I didn’t have the connection to my fans I thought I had. I’ve become a symbol. I don’t want to be a symbol, responsible for something huge that I don’t understand, that I don’t want to work on, that keeps coming back to me. I’m not an entrepreneur. I’m not a CEO. I’m a nerdy computer programmer who likes to have opinions on Twitter.
As soon as this deal is finalized, I will leave Mojang and go back to doing Ludum Dares and small web experiments. If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I’ll probably abandon it immediately.
Considering the public image of me already is a bit skewed, I don’t expect to get away from negative comments by doing this, but at least now I won’t feel a responsibility to read them.
I’m aware this goes against a lot of what I’ve said in public. I have no good response to that. I’m also aware a lot of you were using me as a symbol of some perceived struggle. I’m not. I’m a person, and I’m right there struggling with you.
I love you. All of you. Thank you for turning Minecraft into what it has become, but there are too many of you, and I can’t be responsible for something this big. In one sense, it belongs to Microsoft now. In a much bigger sense, it’s belonged to all of you for a long time, and that will never change.
It’s not about the money. It’s about my sanity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=PmT... for the tl;dr.
The timed link in the grandparent post goes to this point in the video (the video uses “I hate Nickelback” as something to compare and contrast "I hate Phil Fish" with):
------------------
On the internet, celebrities are famous only to the people who talk about them, and they’re only famous because we talk about them, and then we hate them for being too famous, and make them more famous by talking about how much we hate them. Could there ever be anything more self-defeating than this?
If Nickelback decided tomorrow that they didn’t want to be famous anymore, they would have to give up the tours, the roadies, the record deals, the billboards… things most of us don’t have. They would have to settle for normal life.
The only way out for Phil was to give up what most of us consider normal life – openly being ourselves on the internet. Because his normal life is what made him famous. Anything Phil says in public is newsworthy. He had to quit or privatize all social media. He had to stop speaking to his friends in public. If he goes to GDC or PAX or IndieCade, even as an attendee, there will be photos.
It makes an excellent example using Nickelback. When people say they hate Nickelback they aren't necessarily saying they hate the band, but the music industry system that they somehow represent. But it doesn't seem to suggest the possibility that when people say they hate Nickelback, that they mean they actually do hate the music the band produces.
It attempts to say that maybe Fish isn't as bad he's made out to be. But it goes about it in a strange way. First it says that people overreact to the things that Fish says or does because he's famous, but then it goes into how he isn't really famous in terms of traditional fame. Basically, if you didn't know who Fish was then you wouldn't care what he said.
Which is probably true.
But my feelings about Fish is based off of what I saw of him in the Indie Game doc before I even knew who he was or that I was supposed to think of him as famous. Then there's his behavior after the Fez release that didn't necessarily make me think more highly of him, whether he was antagonized by others or not. As the many versions of the saying goes; if you are the only reasonable person always surrounded by assholes, maybe you are the asshole.
In all of this, I really hope Notch doesn't think of himself in terms of what people think of Fish. They are most definitely not the same, nowhere near close. There's a difference between saying I've had enough of this path in my life to wish to go down a different one and rage-quitting like a child.
Multiple times.
I for one, hope that he finds what he's looking for and I hope to hear about the new things he creates. If I never hear of Notch ever again, that's okay too.
Famous people are turned into symbols, and are expected to act a certain way. People stop caring about the fact that they are people.
Famous people are held to a different standard, and their audience feels they are owed something by a famous person. In the case of Notch, for instance, people feel like he owes them his continual support on something like Minecraft, despite the fact that he likes to make little games, and one of his little games happened to explode.
Because people just being themselves on the Internet might result in them accidentally becoming famous, it's not trivial for them to stop being famous, unless they stop being themselves on the Internet.
I really hope he finds fun and joy. I am immensely grateful to him (and the rest of Mojang) for Minecraft.
I pity what people do to society in general with their self-destructive attitudes. We all suffer as a result when we drive people like Notch out of positions of leadership.
You see the same in politics where the truly good and earnest people are also the ones with a conscience and too much self-respect to submit themselves to the abuse of public office.
Notch just secured the best thing he could have. Now he has the money to do what he wants and not be at the forefront of what he created. Something I'm sure he's been wanting to do for a long time. Just like he said, he gets to step back into the shadows, where he's more comfortable, out of the limelight and content to do what he really wants to do.
I can only imagine what we'd be writing had he opted out say a year ago, before MS bought his company. What would we be saying then?
However, I think a saying I heard today summed it up quite well: "A few boos can drown out a lot of cheers."
With a sense of perspective as to what he has achieved, the people that complain must be a very small minority.
Sometimes I wish he would have just stuck with Minecraft as the only developer and stayed away from the spotlight. Plenty of very popular game creators have done so (Icefrog, Toady One).
I really enjoyed the times back when Minecraft was just getting popular and you could tell Notch was adding features that he genuinely enjoyed (Redstone update, for instance). Then he started up a giant company and started assuming responsibility for things like server admins charging money, when he should have sat back and let people do what they want.
This seems to be a theme. The guy who had the frontpage the other day, flappy bird, etc. Must be nice to have the cash entitlements to "keep it real." I can't blame him, I think money just becomes arbitrary numbers after a certain point. Minecraft has probably grown to a point where its just only going to get smaller in the future and in a few years be a fun little nostalgia piece for the tweens today who will be in college, the same way we dusted off the NES when I was in college.
Obviously, there's something about the nerdy personality that wants none of this, but it really makes me wonder about guys like Gates or Carmack or Zuckerberg or Jobs who thrive in these environments. Are they the rare ones or are guys like Notch the outliers?
I wouldn't list Jobs either for almost the opposite reason in that while he had a huge impact on the tech industry, he was always a "suit" (even if he didn't wear one).
Maybe it's because Valve is near and dear to the gamers, but I think they've been keeping their community happier than if Icefrog was still running this as a solo job on a WC3 mod. I daresay it has been better for the game too.
His fame had never much of anything to do with the success of Minecraft. It just came with it and it didn’t really work out. It doesn’t seem like he has a problem with many people playing his game (or making money doing what he loves to do), he has a problem with being famous.
Watch the video he references, it makes many of the same points.
I think that's the essence of being a real game developer.
It's sad that Notch feels this way, I think the majority of old school games guys and girls were just like that.
Since it's become a big business with huge studios and ridiculous budgets the market has been spoiled. But Notch/Mojang and team have shown that there is still a place for great indie games and bootstrappers.
And I actually believe him that this deal is not about the money. Projects like these can become albatrosses.
And the "worst" games that we see now are at best mediocre if they were coming out 2 generations ago. The bar has gotten higher because so many high-quality games have been released
I will never forget RISE OF THE ROBOTS.
>I think that's the essence of being a real game developer.
Really? (to be read with the least amount of snark possible)
I think most game developers have the same sort of mindsets as other people in creative fields, and while the objective is to make great games, most developers seem to have that little twinkle in their eye, the 'what if my game suddenly becomes huge' thought stuck in their head, and ultimately to change the world at least a little.
If you look at people like Jonathan Blow or Phil Fish (who unfortunately needs to hide himself from the world after being constantly attacked), they all seem to have this objective of creating experiences to share with the world.
(There are examples of people who do develop games much like others write their diaries,in a very personal fashion, but I think the majority are out to create hits)
Edit: and even then he doesn't have to hide from the internet except to avoid the flamefests he keeps actively starting, fueling, and turning into Twitter pileons against people he dislikes if he doesn't.
And yeah I've seen the video about him becoming a symbol, which is terrible and all but still not a consequence of his creative output.
I think that's the eseence of being a real X, X = insert whatever you claim to be in.
In my mind I divide companies (and professionals) by whether their occupation is an instrumental or terminal goal. As an example, advancing rocketry and electrifying transport to advance humanity is a terminal goal for Elon Musk. I.e he cares about that and works on Tesla and SpaceX to achieve that. Contrast with most of companies, that do what they do as an instrument to get money. Such company, for which i.e. making cars is an instrumental goal would gladly switch to producing toilet paper if it was a more profitable sector. I like to refer to such a company as "toilet-paper company".
For an example that would likely appeal to the audience here, toilet-paper companies are common in start-up world nowadays. That new SaaS business that tells you (i.e. lies) how it cares about users and solving their problems, while the founders are planning on getting acquired by Google/Amazon/etc. and dumping the product (aka. exit) - that is a paper-toilet startup. Whatever sells.
What's the value I find by dividing companies by whether their work is terminal or instrumental for them? For one, I tend to trust former much more than the latter, because I expect that they'll optimize their product primarily for solving the stated problems and not primarily for selling ability.
So basically, Notch doesn't want to be a paper-toilet game developer; he wants to make games.
That's a super good observation, thank you. It instantly explains why I have such a loathing for some companies and people and others I feel only pride. Wow. Never ever thought about it that way.
I suspect this may also help you to pick out good founders from an investors point of view and good co-founders from a founders point of view.
I completely agree with this. It's basically optimizing for getting rich instead of optimizing for happiness. Many entrepreneurs make decisions (i.e. run their businesses) with the main focus being amassing money and getting rich. These are the ones that we find ourselves loathing so much. Whereas other founders make decisions with the main focus being happiness and passion for their work. These are the ones we admire.
From the practical perspective though, people seem to have a limited capability for introspection. Maybe for Musk solving the big problems/retiring on Mars is only instrumental to feeling righteous, which is only instrumental to being happy, etc. but humans don't usually introspect that deep. The recursion stops somewhere around the moment where you feel you care about something for the sake of that something. That's what I meant by terminal goals here.
It must have come out from the fact that in my native tongue toilet paper is "papier toaletowy"; the same two things but in different order. Therefore my mind didn't spot it on re-reading. I'll be more careful in the future.
You mention it being a big business and all, but like you say yourself, thanks to Notch / Mojang, the rise of crowdsourcing and self-publishing thanks to platforms like Steam, indie game developers have a lot more opportunities than Notch/Mojang did back when he started out with Minecraft.
I have the utmost respect for notch after reading that.
I don't think he'll ever be at a loss for creativity. If he spends the rest of his days streaming (or not streaming!) him coding random small games, or tinkering on a renderer that is never used, I expect that he'll be happy and feel fulfilled.
He seems to have an awful attitude for a guy who just made a billion dollars and gets to spend the rest of his life doing exactly what he wants.
That's a fucking great attitude and is -to me at least- much better than "I made minecraft and I'm awesome and the success of Minecraft has nothing to do with luck but is totally all those decisions I made because I'm brilliant" which is the kind of thing we hear from a bunch of other devs.
I kind of wish that mental health support was better and that he'd had some kind of mentoring to help him deal with it.
Perhaps that's a startup idea: support with all the hate and bullshit that comes your way when you're a public figure. More expensive service would include rapid rebuttal service to quash lies and myth.
The pressure of being as much of a public figure as he is, and the person blamed for anything wrong with the most popular computer game in the world, is probably Not Much Fun.
Hopefully he will open source his next big thing so community might be able to keep it alive.
Edit: I see above that the poster was referring to Notch. Just a simple case of an unclear antecedent (and being unfamiliar with Notch's and Rowling's recently releases ;) )
In fact, Tiptree, not Sheldon, has been inducted into the science fiction hall of fame, which is even weirder.
I think Notch represents quite well what a lot of us would be like if one of our software got incredibly popular overnight (We're talking worldwide sensation) and we got a massive amount of money out of it (Billions with a B).
Confused, dazed, surprised. "That's quite cool but I never actually meant for that to happen". Try to do good things with the money but end up with responsibilities we don't want regarding the product, the money and ourselves. Not be able to have a private life all of a sudden and wanting out of the drag.
Maybe that's really why he stopped the development.
This does make the most sense, in looking at everything hes said in the past. Sounds like MS had the right offer at the right time.
I'm sure there are many here that dream of having their idea be a huge success but aren't really interested in becoming the next Bill Gates or Zuckerberg. They just want to cash out so that they can have their financial freedom and then go out of the limelight and back to doing the same things they enjoy but without having to constantly worry about job security and putting food on the table. Notch achieved this in the most spectacular way possible and I think he handled it perfectly.
I remember watching some parts of notch's livestreams. I loved the enthusiasm he had. He was a bit like a young boy, trying things, throwing some away, creating games. I'm happy for his decision.
There are numerous examples of this in the past 6 months and in Notch's case, it happened with EULA and 3rd party server support.
A community that supports this sort of behavior wouldn't have my support either. I don't blame him.
Not that I'm disagreeing with you, however. There comes a point when the amount of vitriol you're receiving isn't worth the success.
Is it really fair to characterize this of a specific generation?
> “Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.” — Socrates
What, you don't think that people who have paid for a game client and server have the right to run that client and server? That's Freedom 0, and it's fundamental. Attempting to violate it with any sort of EULA is simply wrong.
Wozniak was unusual in that his story wasn't entertainmnet-related, but most of these "I can't handle the public's demands for my attention" stories come from the entertainment industry.
Unfortunately, Vint Cerf is not close to being a billionaire. Our economic system doesn't award brilliance, it doesn't award productivity, it awards the ability to convince other people to give them more money. I'm not saying that that's totally bad, just that the money chasers scare away some great minds.
I hope he will produce another master work, but either way, I wish him a very happy life with all the money he earned.
This is the part of the post that bothers me, especially in the context of 0x10c which seemed to follow that exact track. Its his life obviously, I just wonder what awesome stuff won't be made because Minecraft made him wealthy enough that he didn't need to worry about being productive anymore.
http://www.gog.com/movie/minecraft_the_story_of_mojang_delux...
I think it's more than you think. I think Notch expressed clearly that he did not expect nor want his project to become a big hit. He may have been flattered for a while but he now sees it clearly: success is shit, big success is a shitstorm.
The exact opposite of the entrepreneur spirit. I think pg may have overlooked this side of the hackerhood.
I guess part of the reason I feel the word "hacker" lost its meaning today is the rise of paper-toilet hackers (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8319102).
I'm not critisizing him, I'm glad he has that opportunity, and I'm glad he's recognized what opportunity he wants (which is apparently NOT the opportunity to try and make even more money).
But it's a bit more complicated than "success is shit", success is what's allowed him to ignore success from here on out, without having to worry about a roof over his head, health care, etc.
Maybe, probably, he was already able to hack things he liked without worrying too much about survival: he actually did I guess, when he started Minecraft.
The problem is that he got an offer he could not refuse (as in The Godfather)...
1: http://www.2playerproductions.com/projects/minecraft
Nailed it.
For my kids sake, I hope they take a little while before they turn Minecraft into a FPS on Xboxlive.
Its such a lame end for "the story of Mojang". Let's see how long it takes for the word "mojang" to be forgotten. Lego is still called Lego, and Pixar still hasn't yielded its name to Disney (they sortof managed to coexist) to take just two examples.
The sad thing about Mojang is people are inspired by "vision". Money ? sure, we all want to earn as much as we can... But when did money give anybody any inspiration.
In the broader picture, I am struggling to understand some of the opinions of this story out there, particularly on HN. What I mean is, I suspect that a majority of us dream of this type of success. We dream of connecting our creative force with financial success, especially when that success would free us to work on practically anything that we wanted. I would say that a lot of us dream of being able to lead entirely self-directed lives that financial freedom can afford.
Therefore, why is it bemoaned when we see the very success that we dream of unfold for someone else? Why are there suddenly opinions of, "Well, I can't believe Notch would work on something that he would abandon?" Or, "Notch should spend his money this way or that way."
It just feels, well, extremely egotistical. Who is anyone to call out how someone else should spend their money, enjoy their time... live their life?
A similar situation happened with Dong Nguyen. He essentially tapped into the modern-day equivalent of Pac-Man Fever. In the 80s, it swept the world, to the tune of billions of dollars. It was the highest-grossing arcade game ever produced. People simply loved the game, and they couldn't get enough of clearing boards of dots, power-pellets and ghosts.
In a similar way, Flappy Bird took very simple game-play, and combined it with a simple challenge. This is, of course, not the first game to do this, but it took off. The power of the Internet has made Nguyen's name known, and quite sadly in some circles, despised for his financial success, when how much he was making on ad revenue was revealed. Or, with comments like those found in this piece [1], its intellectual lamenting with, "[...] I begrudge a society that would turn it into a phenomenon."
I suspect that the author would have said the same about Pac-Man.
I really feel for Notch, Dong Nguyen and those creatives of the world that worked to bring a dream to reality, only to have this happen to them. I'm reminded of a phrase from the song Limelight [2] ...
Cast in this unlikely role
Ill-equipped to act
With insufficient tact
One must put up barriers
To keep oneself intact
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/02/03/flappy-bir...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKpn0esJ73w
I don't. He cashed in and, well somehow wants the sympathy of free & open-source wish-keepers.
He's in the money; and that was his choice.
Notch wasn't the only owner. In fact, he owns less than 50% and they have 40+ employees.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojang
Open sourcing it would likely screw his co-founders, employees with stock options, etc. compared to the size of this deal.
Tbh, I'd be happier if he donated 10% of his earnings from this sale to Open Source projects and feeding people. Rather than, y'know, having gone the route you suggested. He also seems like the kind of guy that would.
Piracy is not an argument in this, because pirating Minecraft for single player has always been and will always be piss easy, and multiplayer will still be impossible.
http://web.archive.org/web/20100301103851/http://www.minecra...
"Once sales start dying...as some kind of open source".
"Once sales start dying and a minimum time has passed, I will release the game source code as some kind of open source."
So he can release it as open source, to make good on what? Some "About" page he wrote fucking 4 years ago when Minecraft was nothing but a PC indie sleeper hit?
Get real.
Especially a promise to a community that throws him under the bus whenever something happens they don't like (even if he isn't involved)?
I don't think that is reasonable.
I somehow suspect he might give money to something else in the end.
One of the thing's I admire about Notch's communication is that it always comes off as sincere and matter of fact. I think that is admirable in the face of the reality one faces in becoming internet-famous.
The internet has a big problem with mob-mentality entitlement. People jumping up to call Notch a hypocrite for going back on his word, or otherwise critiquing every little move he makes really don't have a leg to stand on. I mean sure everyone is entitled to their opinion, but the actual power that these people deserve to have over Notch is infinitesimal; it's just noise on the internet with no significance. Look at it this way, if suddenly 10 million people started scrutinizing what you were up to, I'm sure they'd have a lot of complaints, but what do you owe to them?
Included there is a dedication to (eventually) make the work open-source or public domain, and to contribute to it so long as people are paying. Those promises drove MindCraft praise, good will, and adoption. Do you think asking someone to keep these promises, the ones that drove adoption (and hence his current good fortune) is... entitlement?
As for releasing it as open source, I went to your link and it says 'Once sales start dying and a minimum time has passed, I will release the game source code as some kind of open source.' How do you know he has gone back on this promise, as I have not seen any statement to the contrary so far?
Your claims of entitlement seem to rest on unproven assumptions. Is there some evidence out there you could link to, for those of us who don't follow the company/product closely?
Notch gave the world a fun game, you gave him a small purchase price in order to enjoy it, end of transaction. The fact that he published thoughts and future plans does indenture him as your eternal entertainment provider. He should be free to leave daily development and do with his creation as he will, including deciding to do something differently than he originally envisioned. This is his prerogative as creator. To all the people who claim their participation "made" the success of Minecraft, I say bullshit, you are playing a fucking game.
You know what's a lot worse for humanity? When Twitter decided to be a media company instead of an infrastructure company. That also pissed off a lot of people who "made" the success of the company. But you know what? Same deal. It's their prerogative. You can cry and gnash your teeth, and of course you are entitled to your opinion, but the value of all those opinions? Farts in the wind.
I personally don't care, bought Minecraft, enjoyed it and moved along as I realized the modding system would never see the light... but I definitely understand why people feel disappointed.
A blog post is -- if, as most are, it is composed of words -- verbal. Its not "oral", but those two don't mean the same thing.
"The term verbal contract is sometimes incorrectly used as a synonym for oral contract. However, a verbal contract is one that is agreed to using words, either written or spoken, as opposed to an implied contract."
It's funny how GP is heavily downvoted even though he's right. Downvoters (which I assume you're one of) didn't even check their facts.
Sometimes HN sucks.
Can you find any example of usage of "verbal contract" to mean anything other than "spoken contract"?
Since you're the one claiming "verbal" equals "oral", you're the one who's supposed to do the research. Wikipedia has a citation on that specific paragraph and there are lots of results in Google. Do your homework before your claims.
But anyways, "verbum, verbi" means "word" in Latin while "os, oris" means "mouth". That should be a clue.
This is about usage, not definition. To interrupt a hrwad with a pointless aside in a snarky manner about a common (mis)use of "verbal" deserves a downvote.
Your inability to find an example of someone using "verbal contract" to mean "written contract" has been noted. :p
Did you even search Google? Do your homework!
here's one. Oh wait, they're using verbal to talk about oral contracts.
http://www.contractsandagreements.co.uk/law-and-verbal-agree...
here's another. oh wait! they're doing the same.
http://www.independent.co.uk/student/young-entrepreneurs/con...
Here's one from a national UK newspaper. They're using verbal to mean oral.
Here's another UK newspaper: http://careers.theguardian.com/careers-blog/contracts-employ...
And again, they carefully use written to mean written and verbal to mean spoken.
The first two pages of my Google search failed to show anyone using "verbal contract" to mean "written contract" - and it's pretty obvious why. A written contract is just a contract, or if you really need to specify whether it's written or spoken you'd be obtuse to use the word "verbal" to describe a written contract.
Perhaps it's a US / UK thing?
EDIT: put more smilies in.
http://www.californialaborlawattorney.com/implied-and-oral-c...
Contrary to common wisdom, an informal exchange of promises can still be binding and legally as valid as a written contract. A spoken contract is often called an "oral contract", not a "verbal contract." A verbal contract is simply a contract that uses words. All oral contracts and written contracts are verbal contracts. Contracts that are created without the use of words are called "non-verbal, non-oral contracts" or "a contract implied by the acts of the parties."
A verbal contract is simply a contract that uses words.
How is that not an example of a use of "verbal contract" to mean a category which includes both written and oral contracts?
Notch isn't your bitch.
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.htm...
Once sales start dying and a minimum time has passed, I will release the game source code as some kind of open source.
Given that sales are still growing, I don't think you can even hold that against him.
He also said:
I'm going to have to include some way of winning the game
That never happened, either. Intentions change, and you don't see people judging him on that.
Your sense of entitlement is why corporations now include "forward looking statement" disclaimers.
But it's not really the point of the game is it?
The fascinating thing to me is that WoW's success was predicated on keeping people playing by paying content creators to come up with new goals for players to strive for, but minecraft demonstrates that people are more than capable of creating their own goals and successes within a sufficiently open ended game. For me, it was a lava moat. Then a pitched roof. Then a farm. Then a railway that took hours to build (and didn't go anywhere useful in retrospect). Then... etc
Sales are not dying and minimum time did not passed. It does not even look like the sales will die soon. He was thinking about releasing the game when the game is dead and abandoned by gamers. Even if you take the above as a promise, the initial condition is not met and there is no requirement on him to do anything.
Quiet in conscience, calm in their right; confident their ways are best. [1]
> I would say that a lot of us dream of being able to lead entirely self-directed lives that financial freedom can afford. Therefore, why is it bemoaned when we see the very success that we dream of unfold for someone else?
A lot of us do share that dream, but many feel most alive when they're part of a group movement. There's a little of each in everyone, but it's easy to understand how those who lean strongly to one side or the other might not be able to see through the eyes of folks across the gap. I think that, for the most part, any backlash against Notch isn't fueled by jealousy from those who aspire to the position he's reached; rather, it's from a sense of betrayal and abandonment from people whose core values are loyalty and unity.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHH17-cMOu0
If nothing else, he's got to be leaving an astonishing amount of cash behind. These agreements always come with long vesting periods ("golden handcuffs").
Also, Mojang as a whole went almost dead silent between the time the WSJ article hit and today. Even routine twitter interaction that had nothing to do with the deal was greatly curbed. Somebody was making sure nobody said a word until they were allowed to.
And I'm sure Notch has an expensive lawyer telling him what he's allowed to do and when. He could certainly afford it even before this deal, and there are signs that he's had skilled legal advice in the past (e.g. the licensing of Minecraft to Mojang rather than outright transfer).
(For the record, I think most of his opinions are great opinions.)
I'm open to the idea that people can change their minds, or that the circumstances might be different, or that he felt he couldn't do the job anymore, or didn't fit in, or whatever else. But the fact remains that this sale runs in direct opposition to basically everything he's ever said in public. Now, maybe he doesn't want to live a life where what he says "in public" has some kind of significance apart from what he just says in general. That seems to be the case - it's his prerogative and if he thinks that's what best for him I'm sure he's right. But people are still going to call him a hypocrite, and that's the price he's going to have to pay.
And that's the part that makes me a little sad. I like Minecraft, but not so much that I'm going to be heartbroken when Microsoft inevitably ruins it. But I did find myself in agreement with Notch on a lot of things, and I was glad that he was able to do what he did and be outspoken about things he thought were important, etc etc. And with this sale, we also lose that. Oh well.
Have you ever looked at a hello world opengl program in java that includes textures and bump mapping and light source stuff? Its a mess.
Also being highly productive has bugger all to do with writing "good code". Almost no code gets the job done.
I've written plenty of stuff that is "bad code" that runs faster (in a world were speed is important) and makes more money than the elegantly designed frameworks i've built.
I would go so far as to say good code is contradictory to highly productive solutions that get the job done. Indeed i know one large firm that employs and spends millions trying to find the best c++ programmers they can.
All they do is sit all day arguing about the best way to do things. Chatting to them in the pub they guess they write about 1000 lines of code a year that gets into production.
can't you have a company by hiring someone to lead instead of you, only giving him directions ? I mean couldn't mojang become some sort of game development laboratory instead ?
for example google throws money they get from advertising at other experiments, I'm really dreaming of doing that for game development.
I don't know much about Minecraft or whatever issue Notch is referring to in his post. But I'm always struck by how quickly people snap to emotional argument and response, without thinking about the other side of the question, without thinking about how their response will be read or felt by others.
The first step in any dialogue is trying to understand why the other side has said or done what they have, and how that might seem reasonable and right to them. Without that, how do we have any hope of learning anything, or moving to any actual agreement? And yet 98% of what I read presumes that any disagreement must be ignorant, stupid or evil.
I understand many of the reasons why people talk this way, and yes, it's hard to avoid it. But we now have more communication amongst ourselves than at any other time in human history. Maybe it's time to start thinking hard about how each of us can communicate better.
Wouldn't it be great if we could get to a community where some idiosyncratic dude could write a monster hit without feeling himself battered for reasons he can't understand?
It sounds like he doesn't want to be a part of anything that big - he just wants to have fun hacking on games.
People do not tend to be understanding when it comes to loosing money they wanted/expected.
Moreover, I suspect that managing Minecraft is a lot about merchandize selling, cons organization, making deals with lego and everyone else who want to produce themed items and so on. Not necessary what you want to deal with if you consider yourself gamemaker or programmer.
It's sad to see the effect this has had on the servers I've played on. And it was all so pointless: at the end of the day, who really cares if players who chuck in $10/month get a free set of diamond armour or a house?
Little Johnny finds a server that is selling diamond tools for $100 a pop. He says something about how he doesn't know hoe to buy things online, and a nice server admin walks him through "borrowing" his parents credit card and making the purchase. His parents get the bill, hit the ceiling, google "Minecraft", get a number for Mojang, call up, and start screaming at people to refund the money.
It happens. Having a decentralized server system with unregulated "in app purchases" and a very young fan base in a recipe for bad publicity, angry parents, upset kids, and bad vibes all the way around.
People should be sane. The right response to a lunatic who blames Mojang for his child's actions is to hang up.
Mojang cared somewhat about pricing patterns. It is the same thing as lego consistently refusing adult themes. They have an idea on what the brand should be (e.g. kid friendly or not play to win) and this went against.
Mojang clarifies: EULA is meant as written, nothing changes. Not even enforcement, they were not starting campaign to kill those servers. And everybody looses mind.
This is a nice thing.
Notch gets the resources and freedom to do what he actually wants to be doing: Exploring and experimenting with game ideas. And Minecraft gets to continue developing as a product people enjoy.
Wow!
Markus is 100% free to do whatever the hell he wants with his money and you nor anybody else should place conditions on or make demands on him.
Are you seriously suggesting I'm a sockpuppet for Markus Persson?
Classy move by Notch. Respect.
Thanks for great work !