I'm Leaving Mojang
notch.net
notch.net
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)...
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...
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.
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.
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 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.
Notch says:
> If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I’ll probably abandon it immediately.
So sad. Imagine if Jobs/the PayPal guys/etc had taken this approach after their initial succcess.
Now I'm all for people being free to do what they want and only this guy owns his life and no one is entitled to have him work for them (hat tip Ayn Rand), and obviously this guy has had a bigger impact on the world than I have, but I tend to agree with Immanuel Kant (and Jesus) that we all have a duty to develop and use our talents in a way that benefits humanity and not just indulge ourselves in idle amusement once we're comfortable. And to be honest, this probably applies more to me than to Notch.
From "Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals":
> A third finds in himself a talent which with the help of some culture might make him a useful man in many respects. But he finds himself in comfortable circumstances and prefers to indulge in pleasure rather than to take pains in enlarging and improving his happy natural capacities. He asks, however, whether his maxim of neglect of his natural gifts, besides agreeing with his inclination to indulgence, agrees also with what is called duty. He sees then that a system of nature could indeed subsist with such a universal law although men ... should let their talents rest and resolve to devote their lives merely to idleness, amusement, and propagation of their species- in a word, to enjoyment; but he cannot possibly will that this should be a universal law of nature, or be implanted in us as such by a natural instinct. For, as a rational being, he necessarily wills that his faculties be developed, since they serve him and have been given him, for all sorts of possible purposes.
What you are suggesting is impossible. No one, not even Steve Jobs sits down and says "My life mission is to benefit humanity". This is because we really do not know which efforts will have the largest impact on humanity. You could waste a lifetime trying to make a better battery - but it might never happen.
Or you could hack around on a game and watch it explode and impact millions of lives around the world.
In my opinion the important part is that you are doing something meaningful to you as an individual. If it ends up exploding and benefiting humanity all the better. But the world would be so much better off if we just had everyone doing this.
But of course this is all just a personal opinion and highly subjective.
Notch however, clearly did not enjoy working on something with so much publicity whether it benefited humanity or not. I don't think we should belittle him for that.
Musk might be considered a counter-example here. In fact, part of his mission is literally to "make a better battery". Of course in depends on how much you buy into his mythology. Certainly he could have comfortably retired after Paypal though. (Rather than moving on to run two groundbreaking companies - something I'm not sure how one person manages to successfully do.)
Musk clearly finds what he does meaningful to himself and is not doing something he does not enjoy simply for the greater good of humanity.
Notch did not enjoy being part of something so large. I find it odd to belittle him for choosing the path of doing small things, since that is where something as impactful as Minecraft was created in the first place.
I'd say Minecraft was grown in spite of the way Notch works. The way he works has been the bane of a lot of modders, who are (arguably) the reason his game is so successful.
> In my opinion the important part is that you are doing something meaningful to you as an individual. [...] ...the world would be so much better off if we just had everyone doing this.
You can't separate yourself from humanity as a whole. That's like saying your liver should do something meaningful for itself as an organ, and if it ends up helping your body, all the better. We don't work individually. Humans require other humans, and all of our motivations and desires are influenced by this requirement.
Notch may not have begun Minecraft with the larger gaming community in mind, but he certainly continued development in some small part because of it.
Not knowing how to do something doesn't stop me from trying to do it. Why does it stop you?
But I could just be optimistic.
I wish I had a pithy explanation as to why this was but I haven't figured it out yet. "some people aren't cut out for fame" doesn't really do it justice, because the problem isn't entirely in the Notch's of the world, but also how we relate to them and how fame is characterized in our culture.
It seems like he got lucky, and was good enough to leverage his success into more success and was good enough of a businessman to profit handsomely from the whole thing, but that's about it. I understand that he hasn't done anything on Minecraft in quite a while. His attempts at something new don't seem to have gone anywhere. (That weird space programming game from a while back got a lot of attention but never resulted in anything.)
So, maybe that was it. Notch is a one-hit wonder. And there's nothing wrong with that. I'm sure he's already contributed more to the world than most of us ever will. But that doesn't necessarily mean that we're all losing out on anything significant if he doesn't keep trying to make more big things.
And from the other side of things, it seems like Minecraft came out of one of these ridiculous idle amusements. If you had described Minecraft to people before it was made, they would have thought it was ridiculous. Oh, a volumetric 3D world with a 1990s-era renderer. Great. Sounds about as useful as a Doom map viewer written in Dart. Yet it turned into something huge. So if Notch does have another hit in him, it will probably come about the same way, through more strange messing about.
People like notch and other indie developpers are looking for things beyond immediate technical prowess or easy instant fun. They are after something you may call poetry, and how to explore new opportunities created by technology.
In this regard and judging by the large interest of children for minecraft, this man is talented.
But merely looking at what Notch has done, it looks to me like he got lucky rather than having some vast talent for making fun games.
At the top is the idea that if you make a game fun enough it will take off like Minecraft, but virality is not simply a product of fun, there are so many intangibles that go into blockbuster successes, and the people who get really good at wrangling those elements and distilling out a formula are not renowned for their talent (eg. Hollywood blockbusters).
But unpacking further, talent is something that needs to be developed. Natural talent is nothing without practice upon practice. Talent in some area requires years of practice that laymen will never really understand or appreciate. We can all talk casually about various kinds of talent, in programming, in art, in game design, in music, etc, but any kind of serious discussion needs to touch on the nuances of the specific work they are doing. Claiming Nickelback is more talented than Arcade Fire because they've sold more albums is a sure way to kill a conversation about music.
My problem is simple: you define talent as being "successful" by your opening sentence. From the beginning you question his talent because you haven't seen more successes from him. That's what I'm taking issue with.
Of course I don't want you to define other things needed for success, that's precisely the problem. Success is not a barometer for success, more like a very very loose correlation.
I question his talent because I haven't seen anything interesting from him since Minecraft. If he had produced something great that nobody bought, I wouldn't be saying what I'm saying. But he hasn't made anything of interest.
You can't always catch lightning in a bottle again. And I don't envy having that hanging over the heads of oh who am I kidding I would totally love to be in the position of potentially disappointing thousands of fans when my next comic doesn't appeal to as many people as my most successful one did.
I'm sure Steve Jobs didn't care what people thought of him either. He just defaulted to "they will love what I do because I will create something great", whereas Notch seems to be more like "people are trouble, so go away." Which would probably be how I'd do it too.
If he ever does create another big game, I'd expect it would be many years down the road, after he's toyed with a lot of ideas and had more than a few false starts.
That is 6 years. Minecraft has been around for 5 years. If we take the premise that Notch comes up with really good ideas once every 6 years he works on games, he'll hit this timeframe next year.
Alternately, the clock might only start from the moment he stopped personally working on Minecraft, which was in November 2011. In that case we will have to wait another 3 years for him to collect ideas.
I think that Phil Fish video that he linked really hit the nail on the head.
That's not a very good proof. If anything, that would show that they are productive. "Noteworthy" is very subjective, and it's not a measure of talent, though there can be correlation. If I have a big marketing team, I can make something noteworthy by someone's standards.
> Sure, someone can be very talented but have only a single thing to their name, but it's just as likely they got lucky.
Notch is talented. He got lucky with Minecraft. That doesn't make him any less talented. And now that he's "famous", his odds for being lucky have increased since he now has a bigger audience, more connections, more money - basically more opportunities.
People confuse popularity with merit. Things become extremely popular because of chance network effects. Humans are herd animals. You get a big hit if you are lucky enough to start a stampede. (Or if you spend a lot of energy carefully engineering a stampede).
Not getting a stampede doesn't mean you didn't make something amazing.
He did build something new and successful with 0x10c. That demo is amazing. Its a 3d shooter with an awesome laser gun and a _full 80s computer emulated inside of it_. And an abstraction for virtual peripherals, a virtual monitor, and a virtual 3d vector display. Its fucking awesome.
Did he make $100 million selling that? No. Does that mean it isn't awesome? No it absolutely does not. For starters, it was never for sale.
Here is a song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBAtAM7vtgc that is an absolutely horrible parody of itself (intentionally, for comedic effect (we hope)) that was in the top five of the charts for its category. It sold quite a lot of downloads, purchases and products. Incredibly popular. Complete crap.
Judging the merit of something on the basis of how excited the herd gets is completely wrong.
I sure failed to deliver a follow-up to Minecraft, but that was never his goal. He just wants to tinker and have fun, which is also why most of his game projects just stay at the embryonic stage; it seems to burden him greatly to follow up on the ideas, when the initial glee of tinkering with a new idea has worn off.
He's very good at taking an idea and making it work, then building new stuff on that, but less so at actually making things robust in an architectural sense. Moving on to the next thing that interests him also doesn't help that.
A lot of the biggest hiccups in Minecraft's stability are more-or-less directly caused by having to work around stuff that was coded in a way that made sense at the time, but gradually fitted less and less well to the game as it now stood.
I'd say at this point a lot of Notch's original code is outright gone, and that's a good thing. His vision is still at the core of it, and that's what he really brought to the project.
Honestly I think his is more of an artistic than entrepreneurial mindset. How many artists set out to "change the world" with their art? Not many. But still many do.
Can you please post a link to his streams? I bet it'd be fascinating to watch.
He is getting away from Minecraft and Mojang precisely so that he can perfect his craft and continue to work.
He's not leaving Mojang so that he can go and kick puppies or club seals. I find the calls on him to do something noble to be deeply unpleasant.
With Notch's new found wealth, he could, say, start a charitable foundation or whatever he wants which could impact people a whole hell of a lot more people and in arguably better ways than Minecraft 2: Electric Bugaloo.
I for one would be happy if paypal didn't exist. However, I like Musk's other companies.
However, for all of his good qualities, like 99.9999% of humanity, Notch is not wired up to be a hugely public figure, who is constantly interacting with the public, and is under continuous scrutiny to make another Minecraft. That's right, for the rest of his career, everything he does will be held up to the yardstick of being "the guy who created Minecraft".
I know, boo hoo and all that, given that he is now possibly a billionaire (on paper at least, and maybe only before taxes, but still!). But that doesn't instantly change his psychology- it doesn't flip any of the axes of whatever his Meyers/Briggs personality type is. If he's not comfortable and not happy being a public figure that everyone stares at waiting for the next Minecraft to pop out, no one should be able to hold that against him. He's not obligated to continue being that guy if it's not who he is.
After a few years out of the limelight, if he wanted to he could be a Mark Shuttleworth kind of guy: someone who struck it big while still young, and decided to invest a chunk of that money (and most or all of his time) to a passion project. I've gotta think that after the Microsoft deal, Notch won't have to work, but maybe in a few years he might decide to reinvolve himself with the community in a role that is a better fit for him. Or not, it's up to him. I would personally like to see some kind of Act 2 from him, because he is clearly a very creative and occasionally inspired person, but I won't hold it against him if doesn't want to.
The question answers itself. There is no earthly reason why he should have. None whatever.
Of course, the price of being a cult figure is many who follow you do not really care who you are but care a great deal about who they think you are. If you are a vital symbol for the cause, then all that you do must conform to the symbol or you become a betrayer, a hypocrite, or both. And that is unforgivable.
And so we arrive at the world of caricature where symbols rule the day, even at the expense of facts. Buck and kick all you want, there is no winning in that world once you fail to conform.
That, I think, is the point of this piece. In effect, it says: "You have made me larger than life. Well, I'm not. I am who I am and I love what I do. If you have made me out to be something more, I can't help that. I am just like the rest of you. No more and no less. If you want me to shape my life by what you think, you will be disappointed. I will shape my own life regardless of your expectations."
Who knows if this really is betrayal or hypocrisy? Usually the reality is much more complex than the caricatures make it out to be but no one really knows except those directly connected with the events.
As for me, I have no ideological axe to grind and can simply stand back and say, as many people likely feel, "that is one helluva ride for one so young to make."
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.
He just wanted to make music and play in small clubs. And he went back to playing guitar by himself and making solo albums. (Also heroin use, but that's a different story).
And he rejoined in '98 or so, had 3 huge hit records, and then left again a few years ago. He made a few more solo albums and experimented with electronic music.
Some people are not cut out for fame. The intrinsic joy of what they do is even more powerful than fame.
It's a multiplayer html5 game, so drag a friend into it with you :-)
"Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing - it didn't have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with. When I was in high school, I'd see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do. I didn't have to do it; it wasn't important for the future of science; somebody else had already done it. That didn't make any difference. I'd invent things and play with things for my own entertainment."
I think we should take serious stock not only in what Notch is saying here but also his overall success: if you get off making ephemeral photo-sharing apps or a Salesforce clone then keep on trucking otherwise you should ask yourself why you're doing it in the first place.
Are your little projects a ton of fun to work on? Notch makes an all around good argument for pursuing your passion.
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!
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.
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 more and more people should stream like Notch does. It is incredibly entertaining and educating to watch how people write code similar to how people play games.
A great learning opportunity. Different format compared to prepared talks and tutorials. I wish there was a list of people with programming streams that I can just tune in.
With all the money he has, he could at least try to share or expand his passion in some way.
It's true that he's lucky, you sense the modesty, that he doesn't want to be perceived as talented.
But even if that's true, he could at least try a little bit more. I mean he seems content with his work, but if I had such fame, at least I'd try to use it and approach game companies to negotiate deals, and share his vision of gaming.
Hasn't he ever tried to lead some team and get in touch with programmers he likes to do something ? Can't individuals like him hire a manager to do the job and project his vision into something ? I mean aren't there decent people able to know when there's potential, and solve the relational stuff ?
I mean you can't be modest like that all the time. at some point it's grumpiness, not modesty.
I wish there were businessmen able to notice those modest, hard working loners and just get small companies working with them. Not even companies, just small teams and projects. Some coaching. I wonder what's Carmack's story. I'd love to hear about the work stories of those guys, or maybe hear them talk about work politics. Of course they don't want to, because they might be made fun of, but meh.
For indie game developers, this story is kinda sad, that's all. To see a lone dev exiting through the back door like that, it is kinda discouraging.
I think you may be ascribing meaning to a man with no such vision. He says he just wants to have fun and tinker, not change the world and I think that probably sums up his sentiments pretty well. I myself would love to change the world, I don't think you'd ever hear me speak those words. If you're a like-minded individual then I think it can be hard to put yourself in those shoes. Some people actually are just happy doing what they enjoy.
Then why no try to promote tinkering ? A game company dedicated to game development in a way he deems fit ?
> Some people actually are just happy doing what they enjoy.
There's always some small thing you wish you could be able to make, some quirky, imaginary idea you want to achieve. When you see what's on the market, you know and wish you could just do better. This kind of mindset enables you to feed your tinkering enjoyment. I mean you don't just spend time programming, your sense of creative smell makes you think about projects.
With the fame and money he has, he might be able to hire people and develop those projects, and if he can't, maybe he could try to make a game company or structure that helps other small developers work on their own ideas and concepts.
Something to counter the corporate, uncreative way AAA games are made.
But why? If he doesn't want to run Mojang, he probably doesn't want to start another game company at the moment.
Can he enjoy tinkering around himself without having to go on some divine mission to spread his ideas and passions around the world?
you're exaggerating. that's not what I'm saying. maybe he just doesn't really like video games after all, he just like writing lines of code without any interest in the result ?
Why does he keep having small projects though ? I don't understand what's the purpose of keeping it small. Why not hire people and tell them what sort of algorithms he wants ?
Some programmers have a fetish for the code itself, not for the result. Just being proud of "I did it myself". How about making a game that can be enjoyed, that's the only thing I think that really matters I think.
"Promoting tinkering" is not "tinkering". That is a distinct passion, which he very well may not have.
I hope when he says "abandon" he means upload it on github with an MIT license.
Seriously though, what a horrible thing to be fearful of creating something that people might like.
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.
This means that unless I win the lottery of life, I am condemned to doing what I'm doing and if I actually do succeed in what I'm doing, I'll never want to touch anything like it again.
Edit: Sorry that I inadvertently insulted one of your heroes.
I realize that I'm incredibly lucky already because I have food/water/shelter/etc. But "gaining perspective" seems like code to me for "I've given up, so you should too".
Keep in mind Minecraft started similarly.
He clearly states that he isn't comfortable with the responsibilities that come bundled with being part of the operations of a marvelously popular product. His love lies with creating, tinkering and exploring. And with the sale, he has finally extricated himself from the part of his life he disliked so that he can spend his time doing things he enjoys. If any of his side creations wind up blowing up again, he now knows to just leave them behind instead of going through the process of hurting himself, doing things he doesn't like to do.
I don't think it's exactly great that he feels the need to abandon his creations, but I'm happy that his experiences with Minecraft may lead him to make some different decisions in the future to keep himself sane, and enjoy life a bit more.
You've already won the lottery of life. If you are one of the lucky few who can afford to spend time on this forum, you can count yourself lucky. At the end of the day, it really comes down to perspective and that, unfortunately, takes quite a bit of time to acquire, if ever.
Use the incredible resources you gained from your first success to finance all the cool side-projects you ever dreamed of?
Notch could start any web experiment he wanted, and when he got bored, pass it along to an army of coders to refine and finish.
I will buy anything you have for sale.
Also, use the missile launcher. stay away from missle turret range, and fire one square away from missile tower. Enough missiles miss target, land on turret, that with enough missile launchers you can defeat missile turrets, or bleed enemy spice reserves at least.
Protect your missile launchers with a line of heavy tanks just behind, in case the enemy makes a sortie.
(Ohhh, I have to play it again now... See what you've done!)
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.
Text: http://pastebin.com/GLuR7T9t
archive.today: https://archive.today/KKNNA
If there's sadness I see in Notch's story, it's only that Notch appears to see and define his public persona in such a negative light. I wish he could see his contributions and influence on fellow hackers as a beautiful thing. But I totally understand and support his intent to find a new playground, free of expectations, regardless of his success on previous playgrounds. I hope that Notch finds the happiness that he seeks.
(I also hope his comment about abandoning his next project on the first sign of success was more tongue-in-cheek than it came off...)
Haha, and who can blame Notch, I wouldn't work a day in my life and become a full time carpenter for the rest of my life.
Hughes responds with "That's because you have it."
Anyway Notch, good luck to you and I love you too! You really gave us something great and no matter what you do going forward, you can't take back what you've given!
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 think we all believe we could handle the spotlight and the attention and fame that comes with it. But until we're faced with it, we'll never know.
All the best to Notch and thanks for a game that brought many people many hours of happiness and shared experiences.
And Antirez: please do continue ;).
See also: Henry Ford, horses and cars.
These words describe how I've been feeling since the beginning of this year, when I first became a self-described programmer. Before then, I loved playing around with little toy projects, but I never considered myself as a programmer. Instead, I was a regular kid who programmed sometimes.
After realizing that, over some time, I had gained some real skills, I felt obligated to make use of them. It was no longer a playful activity, I put a burden on my own shoulders that my programs had to be significant or important to others in some way.
This sense of importance ruined programming for me. Though self-imposed, the homework-effect took over and I lost interest right away.
I'm sure many of you code for a defined purpose, whether it be profit or world effect. But for me, my computer is a toy.
Classy move by Notch. Respect.
He's a part of owner. Throw in the 30% Sweden tax on the sale, he's more likely to land around $600m to $700m (including previous income realized from Mojang). He's close to being a billionaire.
That is a very nice option to have.
> If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I’ll probably abandon it immediately.
Frankly I can't think of anybody who would be glad to hear such a almost childish and impetus irresponsible statement. Not to mention from the mouth of somebody who created so many wonderful things altogether.
A lot of people have thoroughly enjoyed Minecraft, it's a true phenomenon. Hopefully Microsoft do a good job keeping it going (and more importantly, improving it, of which I suspect they'll do a pretty ace job).
Going straight up _why is about the only way he might create another important work. I'd lay even odds.
But since I don't know him, it's for what he represents; how he's handled success, knowing his values and acting on them.
Poor guy can't help being a symbol - a bit like Life of Brian
This reminds me of the unwanted flappy-bird fame.
What a strange idea for an entrepreneurial mind to read.
Thanks for great work !
There is a latin root word that means 'play', `have fun'. There is a philosophy and a religion whose names are coined off this word. Perhaps `ludens'? Hesse's Glasperlenspiel -Glass Bead Game?
Learning about notch here this morning, I see a master living this reality regardless of philosophy or religion nonsense or the noisy crowds.
He `got game'.
I watched my kids grow up on Minecraft, and how I led them to learning technology, enabling their future. Minecraft is more than just a game, and really the users own it, it's not Notch's anymore.
https://www.reddit.com/user/xnotch
Three comments since the announcement that have nothing to do with the money.
The businessman offered a suggestion to the fisherman. “I am a PhD in business management. I could help you to become a more successful person. From now on, you should spend more time at sea and try to catch as many fish as possible. When you have saved enough money, you could buy a bigger boat and catch even more fish. Soon you will be able to afford to buy more boats, set up your own company, your own production plant for canned food and distribution network. By then, you will have moved out of this village and to Sao Paulo, where you can set up HQ to manage your other branches.”
The fisherman continues, “And after that?” The businessman laughs heartily, “After that, you can live like a king in your own house, and when the time is right, you can go public and float your shares in the Stock Exchange, and you will be rich.” The fisherman asks, “And after that?” The businessman says, “After that, you can finally retire, you can move to a house by the fishing village, wake up early in the morning, catch a few fish, then return home to play with kids, have a nice afternoon nap with your wife, and when evening comes, you can join your buddies for a drink, play the guitar, sing and dance throughout the night!” The fisherman was puzzled, “Isn’t that what I am doing now?”
http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2010/09/08/the-fisherman-and-the-...
Meanwhile, the businessman was getting a massage at a ski resort in Switzerland.
We're entering the times when we can build machines to relieve us from our chains, but (apart from needing to restructure the capitalist economy) the transition is being slowed down by the deeply ingrained meme that Everyone Has To Work, Or Else Is A Lazy And Bad Person. It was a reasonable assumption in the times of high scarcity, but nowdays it's becoming hurtful.
What is striving to earn "FU money" if not trying to free oneself from the slavery?
What's funny (for some definitions of fun), we will actually need to do that - given how our current economy pushes automation to replace humans everywhere, we can either accept that people should be allowed to live and thrive without having to earn for the living, or we'll see a massive increase of poverty.
I don't think one needs to go and find hard studies to realize that we're living in times of prosperity, producing more food than needed, being able to construct a shelter for everyone and that more and more jobs are getting automated. But for citations and elaborations on that I direct you to any random HN discussion about automation and/or basic income; they seem to happen here every other month.
> The reality is that there is no "we", there is no "economy" that pushes something - there are specific people, governments and corporations.
The reality is, there are no specific people. The world at this level doesn't work like that. Human volition, randomness of individual values, all average out creating a predictable mass behaviour, following the incentive structures as surely and as predictably as water flows toward lowest points, going along the shape of underlying terrain.
This is econ 101, I don't think I need to support that with citations. There is The Economy, we can treat it as a complex system made of individual humans that still behaves in predictable ways, much in the same way we can talk about human beings and their behaviours without referencing all those cells human bodies are made of.
Almost every generation in history thought that they live in prosperity compared to generations before them. And I don't think one needs to go find hard studies to realize that.
> producing more food than needed, being able to construct a shelter for everyone
Are you personally producing food or constructing shelters? If not, then apparently you expect someone else to construct shelters for everyone because in your opinion they have the ability to do so? If someone has the ability to do something do they have to do it just because of the fact that they can?
In terms of poor now versus rich a couple of centuries ago, I think it comes down to creature comforts versus power. A poor person today can summon a symphony on command. They can view plays at will. They can travel to the next city in hours. If they're financially smart, they could even take a vacation on another continent every few years.
Yet, they probably don't have very good food. Quantity is fine, but quality lacks. If they do have good food, they almost certainly have to cook it themselves. Servants, in general, are lacking. They have to buy their own clothes. They have to wash them, too, and while machinery makes that way easier than it was, it's still more work than letting a servant handle it.
Furthermore, the lives of the modern poor are fundamentally uncertain by comparison. If they're working poor, they can be unemployed on a whim. Their landlord can raise rents beyond what they can pay. If they're on benefits (either employed, or supplementing income from work) then the political winds can easily change next election. By comparison, a rich person from 200 years ago almost certainly owns land (and, in many places, people) and can be fairly confident that they will remain there, if they choose to, for a long time. They almost certainly have political power as well, so barring a violent revolution they won't have too much trouble with the state.
Medicine is one place this breaks down, since we've decided (in the richer countries) that the poor should still have access to the services of doctors, and those far exceed anything anyone could get 200 years ago. That would probably be the deciding factor for me, at least, if I had to choose between the two situations.
It's also interesting to compare with a rich person today. If they're not ultra wealthy, they probably still have no servants, still wash their own clothes, may still cook their own food, still drive themselves around, etc. If they own substantial land, it's probably as a luxury rather than a productive asset. Many still work for someone else.
This has been predicted for at least the past 100 years it seems; I'm not holding my breath on it panning out in my lifetime, so I don't see how it should affect my short-term behavior.
Most likely, such a realization will occur, if at all, only after (1) we do see massive increase in poverty, and (2) the people subject to that massive increase in poverty violently demonstrate their displeasure with it, and even then the realization will be far from universal and a matter of lasting controversy.
See, for a historical parallel, how we got from the industrial revolution and how long it took before there was significant effort to provide even basic protection for workers from exploitation. (And how frequently people still argue that some of the basic protections adopted are unnecessary and counterproductive imposition by government on the rights of corporations.)
This software/robotics/automation transition (a second "industrial revolution" if you want to call it that) is going to be terribly painful, but it need not be. We just need to reflect on what our values are as people.
That's the hard part. Automation is coming whether we like it or not, because is being forced into our throats by the combined mechanisms of our economy (or by The System, or Moloch, call it what you like). But "reflecting on our values" requires coordination of the whole society. Which is hard. We might coordinate eventually, when the going by gets too hard, just like people eventually fixed the industrial revolution - but it took riots and revolutions and communism spreading over half of the planet to get there. If we want to do this before blood gets spilled, we need to find a way to coordinate sooner.
I'm still not sure how we can approach that.
Maybe, but this seems to assume that there aren't a sufficiently large quantity of the already well off whose "values as people" aren't centered around protecting their own short-term relative position in society. I think the history of humanity and what it takes to get change that distributes some of the benefits of progress rather than concentrating in the already-best-off suggest that this assumption may be unjustified.
You definitely won't make it happen by being a fisherman.
Just because we always had to do something, doesn't mean we should continue to do so. We always had to die from random stupid illnesses until one guy stumbled over penicillin and the other one figured out that it might be a good idea to wash hands before performing surgery.
The whole concept of progress of mankind is the idea that we should strive to get rid of stupid shit that caused harm, misery and death since the day one.
And while I'm definitely not the second Fleming or Pasteur and I don't expect myself to stumble upon a way to get us to post-scarcity utopia, I do want to work towards humans getting there. To work alongside other humans, so that our grandchildren don't have to.
But 98% of people on this planet at this time aren't in the same position and even in our industry if you think you are I suspect you'd be surprised how far you can really push your freedom from your bosses will it before you find you've got problems.
That last question. Really hit home. It reminds me of this quote my humanities teacher in high school taught us.
“The best slave is the one who thinks he is free.”If your model of the world suggests that fishing isn't a sustainable activity, I suspect you'll find that the rest of the economic system is going to fail not too long after that.
However primitive / simple line-fishing and small-net fishing have been practiced, sustainably, for thousands of years.
Mojang is being sold for 2.5 billion dollars. In reality, Minecraft is being sold for 2.5 billion dollars, because I'm sure Microsoft doesn't give a rat's ass about Scrolls or Cobalt. Notch founded Mojang, and wrote Minecraft.
Notch wants to do the things he wants to do. Of that 2.5 billion dollars, I'm sure he's going to be getting a reasonable portion. A person who goes to school, works hard, and finds a good job making $100,000/year for 40 years, might make 4 million dollars over the course of their life. A Persson who writes minecraft, and then sells his company for 2.5 billion dollars, only needs to to get 0.16% of the sale to be in the same situation as the person who worked for a six-figure salary for his entire life. Given that he was the entire power behind Minecraft, I'm sure he'll get more than a few million dollars out of the deal.
The parable is about striving for excess without considering your needs. Certainly there's an amount of saving for a rainy day that's prudent. But you need to know when to slow down. Sure, if you have a billion dollars you can go and get 2 billion. You can work your hands to the bone and make 4 billion. You can exploit people and make 6 billion. But if you can live a happy and carefree life off a few million dollars, or have a terrible exhausting hurtful life with a few billion, when do you stop?
If you write a game and someone wants to buy it from your 22 person company for 600 times as much money as a pretty-well-off person makes in an entire lifetime, you can pretty much afford to say yes and do whatever the hell you like.
It just happens to be the case that Notch prefers to write games that might never be popular more than spend it talking about getting a massage at a ski resort in Switzerland.
Only Hollywood seems to think we all work like rats without considering why. If I had all my student loans, car, house, retirement, recreational allowance provided for, I might never touch a keyboard again.
Point being "striving for excess without considering your needs" is more concise and accurate than any interpretation of this "parable".
It would be like the fisherman worked 2 years can captured a solid gold fish. It's really the CEO that wants something out of the fisherman in this case.
There once was a fisherman, much like the one you describe in the parent comment.
One day a businessman approached him with a proposal that would require more work, but would, in the end, result in much more financial freedom and stability.
The fisherman declined the advice and went about his life, happily fishing for the days food and spending the rest of the day playing with his kids and drinking with his buddies.
Then the kids grew up and his buddies started finding other things to do with their time, so the fisherman got restless. But he had no money saved up and no other skills, so he was stuck. Then there were a couple years during which the fishing turned bad and the fisherman and his poor wife nearly starved. Rather than spending all day fishing in frustration, it sure would've been nice to actually retire somewhere. But the fisherman was well past that point. It was either fish or go hungry. Or possibly both.
And then his kids were all hit by meteorites and his town was invaded by aliens and the entire ocean dried up and everyone had to move to Mars.
I experienced this attitude and culture first hand when I spent 2 years driving from Alaska to Argentina [1]. It's impressive how happy people are when they're not trying to " get ahead".
------------------
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.
It happens to small business owners. Then, people "tell them" that they "must" raise the wages of their employees, without ever having created a small business.
It happens to activists. Then, people "tell" them they "must" support this other cause, when those activists simply want to change a small part of the world that they care about.
It bothers me the most when it happens to presidents. (Pres. Bush, Pres. Obama, depending on your political inclinations). Just simple guys asked to carry the weight of a nation just because they were at the right time, the right place, did the right things, a few mistakes, wanted to change the world a little, and worked really hard.
Maybe all of us who instead of sweating are going for the ride should simply enjoy the game. Just put a few blocks on the game, build a small tiny house, put a glass window, a small bed in there with the tiny cool candle on the wall (my favorite block in Minecraft), and stare out the window. And watch for creepers.
But leave these folks alone to do what we did not do, and let them enjoy a reward for their hard work.
This may be the last time a post from Notch makes it to HN Frontpage...
We all know what's gonna happen next, microsft is gonna try to messup with the game, and, somehow, it'll end up dead...
RIP Minecraft
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.
There is nothing stopping him at all; that is exactly what he is doing.