
You won't believe how nice Notch's office is - loso
http://kotaku.com/5948142/you-wont-believe-how-nice-notchs-office-is
======
thingie
No, what I admire most isn't the office itself, though it's quite nice, it's
the location. I can imagine that you can, for example, get some nice
restaurants and few other option to get a real food within a walking distance.

From my window, I can see just three freeways tightly surrounding this place-
less office park from each side. And I am hungry, right now, there are just
two ugly canteens that close by 2 PM anyway. It makes me feel desperate.
Hunger is not nice.

~~~
nutjob123
Not to brag, but the midtown Manhattan food selection is outstanding.

<http://midtownlunch.com/lunch-by-food-type/>

~~~
TillE
I miss that about New York. If you avoid the tourist traps, you can get great
food for reasonable prices.

In Berlin pretty much all the food is cheap, but very little of it is good.
The standard of sushi is generally passable, though it's not my favorite
thing.

~~~
ido
Turkish food is really great in Berlin, better than I've had anywhere else in
Europe (I assume it's better in Turkey but I've never been).

------
lucasdailey
As a (steel & glass) architect I'm certain this is _not_ an expensive office
when compared to other tech companies. I think most people are being fooled by
the "high-class americana" style, but really this does not cost more than a
high-end minimalist office.

Question the style choices, sure, but the assumption that is in anyway more
expensive than average is completely false.

~~~
tomjen3
If the price is about the same, why does anyone go for glass & steel? This is
so much better.

~~~
lucasdailey
Personal preferences, design philosophies, lots of reasons. I find that office
to be pretty unappealing, personally.

~~~
mnicole
Same, I think it looks like they bought a bunch of expensive furniture for a
renovated-in-the-90s-rambler. The juxtaposition and lack of dominant style
isn't very appealing.

------
dkhenry
You know what the first thing I pick up on is? Everyone is dressed nice. I
don't know if that's just for the camera, but I see suits and vests all
around. They look classy in a classy office. I wonder how the office would
look if notch was wearing cut off shorts and a wife beater.

~~~
lrm242
They don't dress that way all the time. From what I've gathered they have
"Formal Fridays". At first when I saw Notch mention this on Twitter I was a
bit confused, but now I see it goes nicely with the theme of their office.

~~~
untog
I like the idea of it, especially for companies that have clients/customers
outside of tech. We're all comfortable in hoodies all day, but when you all
have to turn up to meet at a government office you'll suddenly find that the
suit you haven't tried on in over a year doesn't fit right, or has a stain
you'd forgotten about.

"Practising being formal" makes sense, I think.

------
constant_change
I appreciate seeing an office for a successful indie company that doesn't
consist of brick facades, exposed ventilation and a big open room filled with
people, computers, video game consoles and foosball tables. I just appreciate
the slightly more mature look than I'm used to seeing glorified in office
pictorials for tech companies.

That being said, I don't see ANY computers there, so maybe they just didn't
picture their brickwork in this photo shoot.

~~~
ido
isn't that more of an American/English thing? I've never seen that style
anywhere in continental Europe.

------
andyjohnson0
Slightly OT, but lots of pictures of other offices here:
<http://www.officesnapshots.com/>

------
taybin
It looks like a prohibition era speakeasy.

------
scotth
Reminds me of the holodeck. Are they working, or playing characters in a
gangster/detective story?

------
tibbon
An interesting observation, on Kotaku the comments are focusing on a weird
jealousy over Notch's success. Comments about people suddenly regretting
buying a license to Minecraft, saying how tasteless the offices are, or how
bad things are in Africa.

~~~
MartinCron
Pro tip: Never read the comments on Kotaku.

You're welcome.

------
hnriot
I can't imagine getting any work done there, but since there are no computers,
I'm assuming nobody does, and this is really just a set for some HBO drama. To
me, this is a huge waste of time and money. Good for the economy though I
suppose.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
There are computers in the room at the back of the third photo, and at the
right of it.

Also, I expect many of them use the rest of the space to dream up ideas, plan,
and work on laptops.

------
minimax
Where are the computers?

~~~
11031a
was thinking the same thing. maybe they pop out of the armrests of those
leather chairs?

~~~
ErrantX
Same thought occured to me.

You can see some to the far left of the second image (the one after the
collage). Then if you skip to the final image and note the shelf-unit (at the
end of the long table) it snaps into focus - and you can _just_ see the desks
behind :)

~~~
primitur
Laptops?

------
gilrain
Time will tell, but this is beginning to sound like echos of Ion Storm[1].
We've already got our Deus Ex out of Mojang, though -- my girlfriend and I
still regularly play Minecraft together -- so I can't really feel any enmity
for them.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Storm>

~~~
anonymouz
Seems to be quite a different story to me: Mojang has, with minimal expenses,
already created an extremely successful (and profitable) game. It seems that
they are now using some of that cash to get a really nice office.

Ion Storm on the other hand basically used their fame and some promises of a
future product to get a load of cash from investors, and spent that on a very
nice office.

~~~
TylerE
And now they have non-minimal expenses, and they are unlikely to have another
hit of even half Minecraft's success ever again - Minecraft was a HUGE
outlier.

~~~
_djo_
Erm, 0x10c?[0] That's shaping up to be potential Minecraft-level success, if
Notch can deliver what has been promised.

[0] <http://0x10c.com>

~~~
JustinJ70s
One can only wonder if this game is going to be too geeky to cross over to
significant adoption. I know a lot of people that got into Minecraft that
would probably struggle with 0x10c.

~~~
_djo_
While I initially assumed the same, I think 0x10c could possibly evolve into a
state that allows even casual players to be able to jump in without getting
involved in the geekier aspects.

For instance it be possible to have a Minecraft-esque gameplay mechanic on the
planets and, as a player, to acquire through some in-game currency a pre-
designed spacecraft created by others. So it could be played as an ordinary
space trading game to an extent. In this form it'd be an extension of
Minecraft.

For others, I can see guilds being set up around exploitation of the
programmable computers onboard spacecraft, with guilds developing their own
encrypted communications protocols and attempting to break those of their
competitors while still engaging in standard space game warfare with the added
extra of electronic warfare. This is far geekier, but it has scope for players
of varying skill levels occupying different roles without having to learn how
to program the DCPU-16. This would be a sort of EVE Online scenario.

There are other combinations that would be available, given a big enough
community, a way to exchange items and the right gameplay dynamic. If Mojang
gets that right and sells it right then 0x10c may potentially become a huge
hit.

Of course what I've described is ambitious in what's required from the game
and there are a million things that could go wrong and make it too hard to
make a game with this breadth and flexibility. The odds are against Notch and
his team, but if they do succeed I think it'll be epic.

Let's not forget that to an outside observer Minecraft is very geeky and quite
confusing. It's a game without any gaming like most are used to, yet over time
interest snowballed and non-gamers got into it based on recommendations. I
hope the same could happen with 0x10c.

------
logn
"many leather-bound books, and... smells of rich mahogany"

------
RivieraKid
Wow, I would really want to work in a place like that. I would probably feel
more relaxed and creative than in the typical whiteish plain-looking offices.

------
zerostar07
No light No light

This is some kind of ultimate mancave, I can't imagine a girl working in
there.

~~~
JackC
Hey, I don't know why you assume Mojang doesn't employ women. They totally
have ... uh ... two female employees out of 28?

[http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Mojang_AB#Current_employee...](http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Mojang_AB#Current_employees)

Oh, so that's why.

Incidentally, I don't mean to call you out in particular, but when you call
grownup female programmers "girls," lots of very cool women will decide to
hang out somewhere else -- sort of for the same reason black men in the US
aren't going to love it if someone calls them "boys." Not trying to police
your language, just something to think about.

~~~
king_jester
> Incidentally, I don't mean to call you out in particular, but when you call
> grownup female programmers "girls," lots of very cool women will decide to
> hang out somewhere else -- sort of for the same reason black men in the US
> aren't going to love it if someone calls them "boys."

I agree with you that calling female programmers and coworkers as girls is
demeaning, but it IS NOT the same as calling a black man a boy, which has a
long history of racist oppression.

~~~
seanalltogether
The easiest way to insult any male is to refer to him as a boy. For males it
carries the sting of naiveté and inadequacy. Females on the other have a very
positive attachment with youth and "girls" and clearly spend a lot of energy
continuing to identify themselves that way.

~~~
king_jester
I wasn't really getting at this. Calling a black man "boy" is extremely racist
and doesn't have to do with gender identity. It has to due with systematic
culture destruction and oppression as a result of slavery in the United States
and conditions in which black folks were placed post slavery.

------
mhomde
Apparently I live right next doors to their office. Explains why I keep
running in to Notch wherever I go, almost started to think he was stalking me
:)

Personally I wouldn't had gone in the "gentlemen's club"-direction, feels a
bit old and stuffy as well as having some bad connotations (if it isn't meant
to be ironic that is) but each to their own I guess :)

~~~
Shorel
Can you elaborate on the bad connotations?

Prohibition era gangsters?

~~~
mhomde
The theme they picked (this is from an article that ran in swedish media) is a
british "Gentlemen's club". I don't know about you but for me that is a male-
only upper-class establishment. I'm not so sure that's a vibe you want your
indie gaming company to project.

Then again, you can't politize everything and it's probably meant to just be
different and be in "good fun", shrug

Guess the good thing about having your own company is that you can do what you
want :)

~~~
buro9
The word "Gentlemen" implies the class bit, but clubs and societies exist all
over Britain from the humble workers clubs for the miners through to the
exclusive clubs in the West End. Very few (perhaps none) are now gender
exclusive.

What you're missing is the role of the members clubs in the industrial
revolution.

They were instrumental as a place where business leaders could get together,
relax, share ideas, views, experiences and do business. Debating the days'
news, and enjoying a drink.

From that light... I'd do it too. I'd build part of an office as a club and
would encourage other startups and developers to drop-in and share.

Gentleman's clubs were the environment for serendipity of their age. And even
with mass communication and global travel, it remains the case that if you can
get people together, relaxing, dreaming big ideas and laughing... magic can
happen.

Yeah, I'd build a club environment too. And it wouldn't be so I could pretend
to be of that class, it would be to construct an environment that was proven
to be good for serendipity.

I'd also stock the bar well and subsidise it... helps to grease the wheels.

------
Tyrannosaurs
Nice is clearly a matter of opinion.

The space is great, the facilities and the culture they're obviously trying to
create through them but let's just say it's not to my taste.

Which is a polite way of saying that to me at least the place looks foul.

~~~
k-mcgrady
Foul? What about it do you not like? It seems a bit over the top to me (it's
an office not a private club) but interested as to why you dislike it so much.

~~~
abrahamsen
The dark, heavy furniture looks like what (Danish) furniture shops make for
the US market, very different from the open, light, and minimalistic
Scandinavian (mostly Swedish) design school used for products made for the
home market. You know the design from IKEA, but there exists much more
expensive (and somewhat higher quality) products.

My first reaction was that this might be a deliberate provocation against what
would be considered good taste in Sweden.

~~~
adestefan
Or that different people have different tastes. Imagine that!

------
verroq
So is there still a reason to why Minecraft is so buggy?

~~~
MartinCron
How can you even tell if something like Minecraft is buggy or not?

------
quaunaut
Wait, isn't their team like, less than a dozen people right now? Christ that's
a lot of chairs. And space.

~~~
citricsquid
They have close to 30 employees, I think ~24 are in-office. Not sure if the
list on the Minecraft wiki is accurate but it's pretty close (they added one
maybe two in the recent weeks): <http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Mojang>

------
timdiggerm
I wonder if they got the space checked out by an architect, or some kind of
inspector. Probably not, as that would be destroying the open platform of
building whatever you want.

------
nilsimsa
I guess you can save a lot of money not hiring texture artists.

------
dromidas
Notch = John Ralphio?

Nice office but it's almost too try-hard :P There are better ways to make good
work environments than make it look like something out of a sitcom.

------
Tipzntrix
Eh, the place would be amazing to relax in, but I feel like it would be too
distracting to work. Notch might be different though.

~~~
zalzane
Yeah, I feel like this would be a huge issue. I can't that kind of office
wringing any kind of productivity out of his employees with how it's set up.

Not that providing some entertainment for employees isn't a good thing,
however this seems way overboard.

------
nhebb
Something about the lighting makes it look odd - like a showcase at a
furniture store.

------
Nux
Nice, but it looks more like a place for pleasure than for work.

------
caycep
I can't see how any work gets done in this office whatsoever!

------
chinmoy
Nice to see a Kickstarter of this kind alive and kicking after raiding only
$25,355. Keep it up!!

~~~
eslachance
I think you got the wrong news item, buddy :P

