Notch sells Minecraft to M$ for $2.5 billion

[buzz]

You're really throwing Notch under a bus in here with the accusations.
Yeah, he was obviously inspired by infiniminer and Dwarf Fortress. But he was equally inspired (if maybe even more so) by a game he made with a guy named Rolf Jansson, an MMO called Wurm Online. Wurm Online is very similar to Minecraft in that "build/terraform the world" aspect, it obviously doesn't have the blocky graphics though.
He talks about wanting to do a DF thing in here: http://notch.tumblr.com/post/227922045/the-origins-of-minecraft
Also, Infiniminer was apparently discontinued by that point, that's what Wikipedia says.

 

[St. Toxic]

It should be fairly obvious that it's all about taking an already existing concept and "improving" it by making it more flexible and accessible; no denying Notch had a vision for what he was setting out to accomplish. The complexity of the code or language involved is fairly irrelevant, though naturally his work had to follow a formula to allow for gradual assembly much in the vein of the game itself, which in itself added to the game's success. The guy definitely deserves credit, but the 2,5 bil figure can hardly be said to be proportional to the work itself, which I'm sure is the cause for most of the resentment.

I'd love to see DF reach a state of production that could compete with "mainstream" strategy/sim/managment games, which seems like an impossible task if it is to retain its attention to detail, and certainly a task beyond Notch or Mojang, but even then the franchise would never earn as much as Minecraft or get bought up by a corporation for anywhere near that amount of money. Sure it's unfair, but Troika is dead and Bethesda makes Black Isle's sales records look like chump change. What's new, pussycats?

 

[Destroid]

It should be fairly obvious that it's all about taking an already existing concept and "improving" it by making it more flexible and accessible; no denying Notch had a vision for what he was setting out to accomplish. The complexity of the code or language involved is fairly irrelevant, though naturally his work had to follow a formula to allow for gradual assembly much in the vein of the game itself, which in itself added to the game's success. The guy definitely deserves credit, but the 2,5 bil figure can hardly be said to be proportional to the work itself, which I'm sure is the cause for most of the resentment.

The entire point of business is to earn profits in excess of labours (and indeed they must do so to survive).

 

[Gerrard]

Notch donated to Age of Wonders III, for that he has my respect.

If I sold a shitty game made in Java to 50 million of retards I would have money to donate to promising projects as well.

 

[Perkel]

He was investor, not donator

 

[Daemongar]

Accept it: Minecraft is a great game, whose presence only grew because of the selection of Java as the programming language. This made it platform independent, and made it easy to mod (hint: I made creepers blow up a 100 x 100 x 100 section of the map in 3 minutes) and run on tablets, phones, xboxes, pcs, linux, macs, and other future platforms. Lets see your shitty C++ program do that. Minecraft is everywhere you want to play it, and it still sells for $26 years after it's release.

It also took off in social media, YouTube, and was marketed properly. This all *may* have been an accident, or timing, but others would give their left nut for this kind of timing. Sure, someone could have programmed this in C++ to show cred, they could have done it all themselves, and they could have been the worlds bestest manager. However, I sense a staggering mound of sour grapes here. This may have all been an accident, but I don't think so.

 

[pakoito]

Accept it: Minecraft is a great game, whose presence only grew because of the selection of Java as the programming language. This made it platform independent, and made it easy to mod (hint: I made creepers blow up a 100 x 100 x 100 section of the map in 3 minutes) and run on tablets, phones, xboxes, pcs, linux, macs, and other future platforms. Lets see your shitty C++ program do that.

This is getting embarrassing. I can point you to 6-7 engines doing all those platforms with C++ or similar low level backends. Even Java relies on C++ backend for some stuff like OGL. Some JVMs are written in C++ and that's why Java runs on many platforms. Lua lives on top of C/C++, Python lives on top of C/C++.

But that is not the point. Nobody has a problem with a game made in Java this days because we've come a long way since 1999. The problem is not Java or Scala or Lua or any other language, it's that Notch's code sucked. Badly. As in amateurlishly badly, and he even acknowledges it. And we didn't realized because the game ran like crap but because someone actually opened it and facepalmed into infinity. That's the complaint that initiated this discussion, Notch is not a code guru, quite far from it, and the initial MC codebase suffered from it. His stuff is better now, that's another fact, but the day he decided to fork Infiniminer for shits and giggles he was as amateurish as any of us.

 

[Gerrard]

He was investor, not donator

So he did it for a profit? Yeah, that really makes him look better.

 

[Perkel]

To be frank no one will give someone mln or two for nothing.

He just became so called angel investor for that team.


If anything we need more of those people which will support various games.

Him investing in AoWIII was a good thing

 

[Gerrard]

To be frank no one will give someone mln or two for nothing.

If I had a hundred million I could give away one to help make a game that I like, maybe because I'm not a fucking Jew.

 

[St. Toxic]

The entire point of business is to earn profits in excess of labours (and indeed they must do so to survive).

Naturally, but with Godlike developer presumably stricken out of the record, can we declare Notch a shrewd businessman after the fact? The end result seems to suggest so. But did he calculatingly approach the development process with the aim and strategy of making billions? He himself seemingly refuses to acknowledge that as true.

I was talking about proportional gains, not charity work, though I admit my sense of judgment on the matter is skewered by personal opinion on games that I feel would be more deserving of this sort of economic support, especially as the money could be used to further develop and improve them rather than fatten pockets that are already bursting.

Again, I would never agree that the success of Minecraft is due to blind luck, but I won't be swayed that it is fully merited success nor attributable to Notch or Mojang alone. There are numerous independent projects that I would rather have seen in MC's place, even games from professional studios, but unfortunately the consumer base would never have allowed it to happen.

 

[Davaris]

Again, I would never agree that the success of Minecraft is due to blind luck, but I won't be swayed that it is fully merited success nor attributable to Notch or Mojang alone.

If he can repeat the success then its skill, if he can't its luck.

 

[St. Toxic]

If he can repeat the success then its skill, if he can't its luck.

I'm with you 50%, because I'm not sure we define skill in the same way in this context. What is the skill here, making money? He obviously made enough from Minecraft as it is, so perhaps this deal from Microsoft proves that he's skilled beyond belief. But is he a talented game developer?

 

[Davaris]

If he can repeat the success then its skill, if he can't its luck.

I'm with you 50%, because I'm not sure we define skill in the same way in this context. What is the skill here, making money? He obviously made enough from Minecraft as it is, so perhaps this deal from Microsoft proves that he's skilled beyond belief. But is he a talented game developer?

Skill is a matter of right time, right place and knowing a good opportunity when you see one.

His letter makes out his success was a surprise and if I understand correctly, he's been a figurehead at his company for some time.

http://notch.net/2014/09/im-leaving-mojang/

 

[St. Toxic]

Skill is a matter of right time, right place and knowing a good opportunity when you see one.

To me these sound like factors beyond your control. Basically, what you're saying is that it's a skill not to develop the game you want because the time, place and opportunity to profit isn't there. In essence it means that good and complex games that did poorly economically, not necessarily failing but perhaps eeking out a comparatively tiny profit, were made by talentless hacks.

Also, Cleve is obviously the most skilled developer there is, as he continues waiting for just the right moment to drop the one game to rule them all.

 

[Perkel]

Skill is a matter of right time, right place and knowing a good opportunity when you see one.

Being at right time and right place is definition of luck. Skill of knowing how to use it is entirely different thing and as you described Notch himself didn't know why game was selling so much.

Today we can safely say that his success was based on many factors.

First it was one of the first indie games that caught people interest
then rise of per game communities along with modding scene.
then youtube games category boom + streaming later

in that order.

If game wouldn't sell few hundred k it wouldn't be possible for modding in that scale to grow
If there wouldn't be any modding there wouldn't be shit ton of stuff people post on youtube nor private servers which is where 95% of kids are playing
Last point balooned game popularity into stratosphere
Then came actual marketing which involed lego, ads and so on (mainly done by third party companies trying to capitalize on minecraft)

At any point Mojang (and before they were even Mojang) didn't have ANY marketing. All was done via community + later third party deals.

 

[Davaris]

Skill is a matter of right time, right place and knowing a good opportunity when you see one.

To me these sound like factors beyond your control. Basically, what you're saying is that it's a skill not to develop the game you want because the time, place and opportunity to profit isn't there. In essence it means that good and complex games that did poorly economically, not necessarily failing but perhaps eeking out a comparatively tiny profit, were made by talentless hacks.

Also, Cleve is obviously the most skilled developer there is, as he continues waiting for just the right moment to drop the one game to rule them all.

Nah. There are opportunities all the time. You just have to know how to pick them. Its like buying shares on the stock market. If you understand how a business makes its money and keep up with the news, chances are you can pick a good one.

"skill not to develop the game you want because the time, place and opportunity to profit isn't there"

Pretty much. If you make a game just to please yourself, there's only one buyer you can count on.

 

[St. Toxic]

Nah. There are opportunities all the time. You just have to know how to pick them. Its like buying shares on the stock market. If you understand how a business makes its money and keep up with the news, chances are you can pick a good one.

But it's hardly a skill to possess this information. Gather it, maybe, but if you already know which horse is going to win the race you might as well be a retard. If someone calls you up tomorrow with a safe bet, it's no credit to your own ability if you win. This whole point is moot; we know from the man himself that he wasn't expecting to make a killing with his java game, he just knew what he wanted to make and how to use the tools at his disposal.

Pretty much. If you make a game just to please yourself, there's only one buyer you can count on.

Still doesn't mean that doing nothing takes skill. You're insulting truly talented people with this tripe.

 

[Psquit]

lol

 

[Davaris]

But it's hardly a skill to possess this information. Gather it, maybe, but if you already know which horse is going to win the race you might as well be a retard. If someone calls you up tomorrow with a safe bet, it's no credit to your own ability if you win. This whole point is moot; we know from the man himself that he wasn't expecting to make a killing with his java game, he just knew what he wanted to make and how to use the tools at his disposal.

Its a skill to interpret that information, its also an effort to get that information and it takes courage to gamble your life savings on it.

Pretty much. If you make a game just to please yourself, there's only one buyer you can count on.

Still doesn't mean that doing nothing takes skill. You're insulting truly talented people with this tripe.

And you're insulting common sense. lol

You can be talented and be a business failure. Happens all the time.

 

[St. Toxic]

Its a skill to interpret that information, its also an effort to get that information and it takes courage to gamble your life savings on it.

Depends on what the information is. Have you invested in anything lately? I made a killing backing a company in St. Petersburg that bought and sold apartments back in 2005. The information I was going on came from a friend on location who said real estate prices were rising. It took no skill on my part, and the effort was a conversation. Of course I only gambled 10% of my life's savings, which I didn't care about losing. In the end, this still in no way relates to Notch or Minecraft or making games.

And you're insulting common sense. lol

Hey, I'm not the one suggesting that saying "Now is not a good time" until you die of old age is a "skill".

You can be talented and be a business failure. Happens all the time.

Of course, but so what? You could have part of your "potential" sales eaten up by another game's unexpected release, like in the situation between Diablo & Fallout. Just the fact that Blizzard made a hack & slash at the same time as BI was making Fallout somehow suggests a lack of skill on the part of the developers? Or would you consider them more skillful had they scrapped production as soon as they found out? I mean, we are talking about developers here, not marketing depts right?

Post your response at your leisure, but unless you get on the ball I can't guarantee further participation on my part.

 

[Robert Jarzebina]

"Microsoft overpaid for Minecraft by $700 million"
http://cornerplay.com/2014/09/16/microsoft-acquires-minecraft/

 

[Daemongar]

This is getting embarrassing. I can point you to 6-7 engines doing all those platforms with C++ or similar low level backends. Even Java relies on C++ backend for some stuff like OGL. Some JVMs are written in C++ and that's why Java runs on many platforms. Lua lives on top of C/C++, Python lives on top of C/C++.

But that is not the point. Nobody has a problem with a game made in Java this days because we've come a long way since 1999. The problem is not Java or Scala or Lua or any other language, it's that Notch's code sucked. Badly. As in amateurlishly badly, and he even acknowledges it. And we didn't realized because the game ran like crap but because someone actually opened it and facepalmed into infinity. That's the complaint that initiated this discussion, Notch is not a code guru, quite far from it, and the initial MC codebase suffered from it. His stuff is better now, that's another fact, but the day he decided to fork Infiniminer for shits and giggles he was as amateurish as any of us.

Thanks for clarifying that, for a second I thought it might be someone saying "everything but C++ is shit, your code sucks" while trying to prop up their own mad programming skillz and pissing on someone successful.

"Microsoft overpaid for Minecraft by $700 million"
http://cornerplay.com/2014/09/16/microsoft-acquires-minecraft/

Companies are paying crazy money for stuff like this these days. Not surprising at all. Microsoft must have seen some urgency to do this, or saw some other competitor purchasing Mojang. Crazy.

 

[Farage]

>Notch is a shitty programmer
>Minecraft sucks
>Im suh much better than himz

He is sitting in a gigantic pile of money right now, why don't you make your own game and get rich too?

 

[Cadmus]

fuck minecraft, I played it for 20 minutes and it bored me, I dont understand why the fuck you people play it
notch is a fucking neckbeard retard, one would assume he'd be able to afford a shave and a treadmill by now