What was the main take away? Why did minecraft hit it big and not his previous games? Could he do it again if he tried? I doubt it. At some level, the difference between 'profitable' and 'runaway success' is dumb luck. Why flappy bird?
He had just worked one week or so when he showed a crude demo/prototype on IRC/forums. And people thought it looked cool. So you do not have to, and should not wait until the game is finished before showing it to ppl and start writing about it on chat and forums.
When the game got into a playable state he already got some followers. And the word started to spread. It was still a free Java applet at the time. Then people started to play it on Youtube and it exploded. And that's when he started charging 10 bucks for the game.
