
The Minecraft Creator Markus Persson Faces Life After Fame - mitmads
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/04/the-minecraft-creator-markus-persson-faces-life-after-fame.html
======
DanBC
> _Computer magazines of the day would print strings of code on their back
> pages, which could be transcribed by the reader to create a playable game,
> and this code-by-numbers task gave Persson his first experience of what
> would later become his profession. “My sister would read the lines out to me
> and I would tap them into the computer,” he says. “After a while, I figured
> out that if you didn’t type out exactly what they told you then something
> different would happen, where you finally ran the game. That sense of power
> was intoxicating.”_

It's kind of weird to think that no-one gets their start like this anymore.

~~~
spullara
This story is incredibly common amongst my age group (40) in tech. What is the
common story amongst those that are 30? 20?

~~~
archagon
24\. Even though we always had a computer at home, I never got into
programming and spent most of my time playing games. (The learning curve was
too steep, and besides, what could I possibly make that was better than the
games I was playing?) Then when I got to college I majored in CS. Now I'm
definitely interested in making games. :)

In my opinion, the abundance of dynamic and interpreted languages, powerful
tools, programmable hardware, and the internet make getting into programming
WAY easier than it was before.

~~~
DanBC
But even you - a smart capable person who likes computers - didn't do so
because you already had all the games you needed.

Those home computers? You load a game, or you start programming. Since loading
a game often meant fiddling around with a tape cassette and cable, and a few
minutes hoping it would load, it's easy to see why people decided to try to
code themselves.

I know abstraction is a good thing. I know it's powerful and etc etc.

But there's something nice about being able to squirt data to an address, and
know it's coming out the parallel port, and having a hokey resister-ladder
DtoA converter hooked up to turn that data into music. Or to have a single
instruction to draw a pixel.

~~~
dbaupp
As a counterpoint, I'm 20 and I started programming exactly because I was
playing around with extending a game (Neverwinter Nights was the game), which
involved using the built-in tools to make new levels/worlds but getting
elaborate behaviour required scripting in a C-like language.

I remember being utterly confused by what a statement beginning with "while"
did, but eventually I was reasonable enough to mostly implement a (very weak)
checkers-playing AI.

This then lead to programming Lego robots in C, which was pretty neat.
(Actually, thinking about that, the first programming I did was using the
graphical LabView thing that Lego provides for Mindstorms robots.)

------
astar
From the article: Since the game’s release, in 2009, Minecraft has sold in
excess of twenty million copies, earned armfuls of prestigious awards, and
secured merchandising deals with LEGO and other toymakers. Last year, Persson
earned over a hundred million dollars from the game and its merchandise.
Persson—better known to his global army of teen-age followers by his Internet
handle, Notch—has a raggedy, un-marketed charm. He is, by his own admission,
only a workmanlike coder, not a ruthless businessman. “I’ve never run a
company before and I don’t want to feel like a boss,” he said. “I just want to
turn up and do my work.”

\----

He sounds like a modern day Woz, except he was successful despite not wanting
to get involved in business. (by that I mean, Woz was successful, but we don't
know how he might have turned out if Steve Jobs didn't push him to cofound
Apple)

~~~
tobylane
He has something more easily translatable to a product, just add a login
system. Woz had blueprints and a few of his own, a physical product with
massive costs for each one.

------
pjungwir
What is the longevity of Minecraft? As a social sandbox game, people can play
for a long time. We have a habit of treating games like movies, good for one
time through, and perhaps most are. But what if some games are more like
Legos, playable for years? Instead of a franchise (King's Quest I, King's
Quest II, ...), what if there is some other extendable model, like buying a
new Lego kit? I have no idea, but Minecraft is one of a handful of long-
lasting games that suggest a different business model entirely. The MMPORGs
are like this, too. I'm curious to see what they do with Minecraft Realms.

~~~
recoil
> What is the longevity of Minecraft?

There's an unofficial modding API and thousands of mods [1], some of which are
extremely sophisticated. For instance, "Red Power" [2] includes an in-game
6502-based computer for which the author wrote a Forth interpreter that can be
used to control in-game objects, and somebody else has embedded a Lua
interpreter that can do similar things, IIRC.

There are also dozens of user-created game modes (some of which only have
informally-enforced rules) and special maps like "Feed the Beast" [3].

The only games I can think of with comparable amounts of content are MMOs and
possibly the Elder Scrolls series, though in both of those cases the content
is nothing like as varied, nor does it rely on its user's creativity to
anything like the same extent.

Minecraft is very much like Lego, only you can also program your own bricks.

[1] <http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Mods>

[2] [http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/365357-125-eloraams-
mods...](http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/365357-125-eloraams-mods-
redpower-2-prerelease-5b2/)

[3] <http://feed-the-beast.com/>

~~~
Houshalter
The cool thing about a lot of the mods is that they don't just add more
content to the game, but they add whole new ways that the game can be played.
In vanilla minecraft you can build all sorts of structures, and that's very
cool and has a lot of room for a creative mind to explore. But then there are
mods that add the ability to build automated factories. Or robots that you can
program to do almost anything the player can, like gather resources. Or
movable structures which allow you to build bases that can fly around the
world. Or bees that you can selectively breed or even genetically engineer,
which will produce useful resources for you.

------
gruseom
This struck me as extraordinary:

 _“My strongest early memory is of my dad dragging me through very deep snow
on a sled,” he said. “I looked up at him and he seemed annoyed at me. Perhaps
it was tough work, dragging me, or perhaps I had been crying. And I realized
that—hang on—he’s actually a real person, with his own perception of things.
It’s not just me looking at things; he is also looking at things.”_

I wonder if it's rare for someone so little to experience empathy so
powerfully. Certainly I don't recall realizing anything like that until much
later.

The whole story about Notch and his father is very moving.

------
StacyC
My wife and I have had so much fun playing Minecraft with our two sons and
their friends. It really is special.

We have a Minecraft server running on an older Mac mini in the house, and my
kids’ have friends — some local and some from other states — that log in and
play with them. Sometimes they are all on Skype, talking to each other while
they play. It is so cool, and fun to watch them all interacting in their
Minecraft world together.

------
applecore
_> “I have the ability to get code done, but I’m impatient and it’s scrappy as
a result. Maybe that helped me with Minecraft, as it came quickly. But, well,
at some point, I’d like to actually become a good programmer.”_

It's amazing that he doesn't consider himself to be a good programmer. In what
other profession would someone as accomplished as Persson say that?

~~~
kostya-kow
From programmer's perspective, Minecraft is nothing special (and it's written
in Java!). There is much better code out there.

Quality of programming and success are not necessarily related.

~~~
ilaksh
Have you actually seen him coding? From what I have heard/seen on video, he is
very fast, his code is readable and relatively concise (for Java). And
efficiently displaying this giant fully-modifiable voxel world on all types of
hardware is no small feat. Also the procedural landscape generation is fairly
brilliant. And the whole crafting system that allowed for world modification.
I think you should give him credit for doing a great execution of some really
cutting edge ideas.

~~~
BSousa
Not wanting to take anything from notch, but I do concur with the parent. I've
seen his live casts, and sure they are great, but let's not kid ourselves, his
code is not that great. He is fast cause he knows the libraries he uses very
well (which is admirable) but at the time, put me in front of DX9 and my speed
was the same. Now put me in front of iOS code and I can probably match it. I
think he just got to that status where people idolise him (heck, I remember
when his first livecast was out, 100s of blogs doing their own 'what I learn
from watching notch code' like he was some super coder, which weren't much
more than typical stuff you learn in the first 2-3 years working at a
company(at least in games).

And from other sources (can't verify) minecraft code is reported to be quite
bad, which is the main reason many of the bugs weren't fixed very fast.

Having said that, he had a vision, executed it well and made a lot of money.
My hat is off to him for that.

------
diminoten
I thought he was charged with murder or something.

~~~
detritus
no - it's abundantly not trying to be sensationalist.

Life typically means just that - it's not some shorthand for a term of
imprisonment.

~~~
gngeal
"Life typically means just that - it's not some shorthand for a term of
imprisonment."

Can you show me an _actual_ statistics on what percentage of "X faces life" in
English texts relates to severe criminal charges, and what percentage means
something "non-sensationalist"? Because as a non-native speaker, I've always
seen it in the former context.

~~~
trhtrsh
Where the heck would anyone find a corpus of text to study that phrase?

Oh, <https://www.google.com/search?q=faces+life+after>

(Incidentally, Google's de-duplication logic fails horribly on that query. 6
of the top 10 results are the same blogspam-copied story, and it's not even
fresh news.)

------
wfn
Another finely written newspaper article about indie game development /
mindsets involved, titled "Where Do Dwarf-Eating Carp Come From? / The
Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress", centering around the two brothers, mainly
focusing on Tarn Adams:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/magazine/the-brilliance-
of...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/magazine/the-brilliance-of-dwarf-
fortress.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

------
cygwin98
Compared to the other story of a $100M GOOG Exec, this is a story I really
like, as a programmer.

~~~
dopamean
Apples and oranges.

~~~
cygwin98
How so? The GOOG exec story is about how to get rich by climbing the
"Corporate Ladder", while Persson's way is to become successful by going indie
and producing games people want. The interesting fact is that their wealth are
comparable number-wise.

~~~
dopamean
I guess I wasn't really focusing on the wealth as it seems to me to be only
mentioned in an effort to get people's attention. I think both stories are
fascinating.

~~~
cygwin98
Agreed on the link-bait factor. Though the perfect timing of these two stories
got me think why so many great programmers go indie: if you are great at
building stuff, try to be next Persson, or if you have great vision, PG will
be your model. Otherwise, you're screwed.

------
jgoney
"Last year, Persson earned over a hundred million dollars from the game and
its merchandise."

If you made that kind of money, why would you even bother to do anything but
just retire and enjoy life?

~~~
Someone
In some sense, enjoying life is hard when you have lots of money. It gives you
lots of options, and you cannot do all you would ever want to do.

Say, you are a programmer, and you are enjoying your work. Would you enjoy
yourself more riding a Ferrari today? Sitting on some Caribbean beach?
Following your favourite NBA team by going to all their games? Study medicine?
Start a charity? How do you know you would stay happy doing that? Would you
feel guilty spending your life lying on a beach, where you might have written
some useful software instead?

Most people would shrug of those ideas or not even think about them because
"that's life". If you have a hundred million in the bank, though, all of these
are realistic options.

If money is no objection, some feel that they really are themselves to blame
if they aren't happy for a minute or don't accomplish anything they feel
valuable in the rest of their lives.

------
phil
He sounds pretty sad.

~~~
kragen
Most people are pretty sad when their family members commit suicide.

------
locofacetwice
[http://kotaku.com/minecraft-creator-we-did-not-pay-anyone-
to...](http://kotaku.com/minecraft-creator-we-did-not-pay-anyone-to-
party-462712664)

~~~
lutze
Wow, some real schadenfreude going on there.

I really don't understand some of the bile that follows Persson around.

Are people really that fucking bitter that a guy who by his own admission is a
complete klutz (programming and business-wise) can become so successful?

~~~
shardling
Hmm, I didn't really see any bitterness in the article (even in the tweets
they list). Are you talking about the comments?

~~~
lutze
Yeah sorry, should have made that clear.

~~~
chris_wot
Someone tagged the picture of the DJ with the comment "This just in : Mojang
might have paid a famous DJ to help people feel more inclined to party. This
is disgusting."

Apt.

~~~
shardling
And exactly why do you think that's apt?

To me, it seems like a superficial comment that misses any of what _actually
matters_ about the topic for the sake of a smug joke.

