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Notch Shelves Space Game 0x10c, Cites Pressure, Desire To Work On Small Projects

Posted by samzenpus on from the not-gonna-do-it dept.

Sockatume writes "Marcus 'Notch' Persson of Minecraft fame has indefinitely postponed his planned space game, 0x10c. Taking time to chat during a streamed TF2 game, Notch explained that he didn't have the energy to keep up with the community's interest; fans had gone so far as to transcribe the source code from his development livestream. The game's development had been stalled since April this year, when Notch explained that it simply wasn't fun to play, but other staff at Mojang can resume the project if they wish. He intends to continue his pre-Minecraft habits and 'make small games and talk to other game developers about them'."

12 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. ever going to finish anything Notch? by X0563511 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    minecraft - hands off in alpha
    0x10c, hands-off in planning phase

    It would be nice to see you see something through.

    --
    For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
  2. Have you done more or better? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Be nice to see you accomplish a fraction of what he has ("big talker/armchair qb" that you are by comparison).

    1. Re:Have you done more or better? by localman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > I don't publicize what I can't finish.

      It's a really good thing the open source software movement did not abide by this thinking.

  3. Define "finished" by tepples · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's been labeled 1.0 and even released on disc for a closed platform. This makes it "finished" by at least some objective standards. Was Quake III Arena for Mac and Windows not finished while it was still getting patches? Are Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games "not finished" while they're still getting DLC? Was Doki Doki Panic for Famicom Disk System "not finished" because Nintendo revised it into Super Mario Bros. 2: Mario Madness for NES, Super Mario All-Stars for Super NES, and Super Mario Advance for Game Boy Advance, adding more than a straight port each time?

  4. Gaming. by Rod+Beauvex · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Taking time to chat during a streamed TF2 game...

    Well there's the problem right there.

    It kills me how people complain about how in a hurry they are and how they never have the time to do anything, and they never connect it with the fact that they're always gaming.

    Karma going down in 3...2...1...


    Fortune: System going down in 5 minutes. :D

  5. Strange Guy. by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · · Score: 5, Insightful

    He heavily promotes a new project, even live streams his coding of it, then quits because people are paying too much attention to it. WTF. If you don't want anyone paying any attention to your projects, don't live stream the coding of it. Just don't talk about it, and release it when its done.

    --
    Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
    1. Re:Strange Guy. by spiffydudex · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Seriously, Notch brought this upon himself. He asked for the attention and got it. Complaining about it isn't going to fix anything and this stunt will make the masses unhappy because he is a quitter.

  6. Market research by tepples · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Except that when your own company develops video games, gaming is more like researching a competitor's product or service.

    1. Re:Market research by discord5 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Except that when your own company develops video games, gaming is more like researching a competitor's product or service.

      Nah, in Notches case it's just a lack of attention span. Don't get me wrong, he's an okay guy, but just follow his twitter account for a month or two. He hops from idea to idea, would rather be working on something else once he starts, drops everything for a 7-day FPS competition, etc. The old joke used to be that notch codes a few lines in between his vacations.

      I think his attention span problem comes from a lack of incentive to work on something from start to finish. With minecraft his incentive was that it was making him a millionaire, but then at some point (when it went from "ludicrously popular" to "proposterously popular") he delegated that to someone else.

      Having said that, he got lucky and he seems a guy with a right mindset at times. So he failed this time, as do many. They just don't have a billion followers wolfing down every word they utter.

  7. Notch beaten to the punch by StupidKatz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There are quite a few games already well on their way to completion that are generally similar to the publicized ideas for 0x10c:

    Blockade Runner will feature "fully destructible, operational, crewable 'living' starships in a procedurally generated galaxy".
    https://blockaderunnergame.com/home.aspx

    Shores of Hazeron is a first-person 4X-style game featuring fully-customizable spacecraft, city building and management, exploration, trade, combat, and more. It's playable right now, though it's under heavy development.
    http://hazeron.com/

    ... and then there's Star Citizen, of course; a cross between Freelancer and Wing Commander - but you'll need to wait a while.
    http://robertsspaceindustries.com/

  8. Bring in a closer by tepples · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If there's one thing I learned from the film Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, it's "delegate, delegate, delegate." If you know you're not the right kind of person to finish a project, then bring in someone else who is. Baseball likewise has a concept of a closing pitcher who specializes in finishing games.

  9. Re:the problem of finishing software projects by Reapy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't think people praise notch for being a great game designer, do they? He kinda just kept doing stuff and hit it at the right time with the right game. We hadn't been subjected to the alpha funding model before, and that sale of 'promise' was still new and squeaky, and indie games hadn't quite exploded yet, right time, right place.

    All games are copies and iterations on existing ones, EQ -> DAOC -> WOW for example, each added their own twist to the previous and improved upon it. I played infiniminer before getting minecraft and it just lacked something that minecraft has, that flavor and personality of the world.

    Anyway I agree strongly with your sentiment but the fact is that the world doesn't reward hard work and knowledge and creativity. I have a friend working on a game with this pretty bad ass hand built 2d engine, he made it back before Unity/UDK existed and all that in c++ / dirextx. It is really kickass honestly, and the game play of several of his games is pretty damn good, a one man creation of a functioning RTS.

    Though the art was off, he lost money/time to add the polish layer once the engine and gameplay was good, and the game sold basically nothing. That polish push is where the $'s are at, and always has been. The world always walks on the back of great engineers, and unfortunately I don't see this trend ending any time soon.