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Book Review: Minecraft
He certainly has the money to make many of his empire dreams come true, as Minecraft remains a strong seller more than four years after its Alpha debut. The game features a "survival" mode, in which the blocky hero attempts to survive against hordes of enemies, as well as a "creative" mode where players can mine blocks and use them to build pretty much any structure. The latter mode has unleashed some spectacular displays of creativity, including enormous replicas of the Egyptian Pyramids and the Empire State Building.
While the authors clearly had some access to Persson, they didn’t use that face-to-face time to plunge deeply into his character: there’s precious little insight into how his occasionally messy childhood informed his worldview, for example, or the duality that clearly exists between his more insular self and his ambition to build a massive company that, at its heart, rests on interactions between millions of people. On the other hand, by avoiding the plunge into that psychological thicket, they also prevent their work from falling into the tedious armchair-psychiatry that’s doomed many a biography.
The book is at its best when describing the Swedish gaming industry (from its giants down to the indie studios), and how Minecraft went from bedroom-developer project to worldwide phenomenon. That’s almost enough to overlook how much of a cipher Persson remains, even in the final pages.
You can purchase Minecraft from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews (sci-fi included) — to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
very interesting.
n/t
...of the entire book. Would that still be pirating? This can be made easier with qCraft.
The G
That's awesome! It's a phenomenon, but I don't see how it's different from the experience of so many failed entrepreneurs. Especially when it doesn't shed light on the PERSON, and only talks about the experience.
Oh, and except, you know, that he didn't fail.
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
10. Diamonds are a girl's best friend
9. Don't Lava me Alone.
8. Baby, it's Dark Outside.
7. Here I am, with Open Doors.
6. He's a Creep, oh yea. Sssssssss!
5. Hmmrrmm. Hurt you.
4. White Feather Spies
3. Do the Chunk.
2. Build me a pillar to the Sky.
And the current number one hit.
1. Hmarrrr. Hmarrr. Brains.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Minecraft: The Unlikely Tale of Markus ‘Notch’ Persson and the Game that Changed Everything. That's a lot of scrubbing. "Soap stains, Mark. How do you remove soap stains?! They're the end game!"
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Give me a break.. Notch is never going to build a gaming behemoth.
In the years since minecraft has been released - a modding community has transformed the game a thousand times over, whilst his own "gaming behemoth in waiting" Mojang, trundle along with fairly small and unimpressive additions to the game.
To illustrate this - next up, they are introducing a "stained glass update".
Now, that's fine - I didn't necessarily pay for updates - but what was promised to me was a way to modify the game without having it broken every new build. This, they have massively failed on.
We're still waiting for the mod API, notch.
Notch made a good game, seems like a good guy and all, but he's fucking lazy (I don't blame him, effectively the greatest challenge of his life - to put food on the table is over) and/or unsure of his direction.
From the outside, it seems to have low standards for his employees and what they do for the game (I've no idea if that is true - it's just what it seems).
(Still, nothing can hold a candle to the develop of Cubeworld - who essentially released an alpha for money and thinks going completely silent and ignoring your community for months and months at a time constitutes a constructive way to engage the community).
"...To a frustrated game developer who feels the software conglomerates are stifling his creativity..."
Are we talking about the same person here? Notch takes Infiniminer, adds some new features and extensibility to the basic gameplay, which becomes his one and only claim to creative success. And it's the software conglomerates' fault that he doesn't have an original idea out yet?
Lucking into the Angry Birds /FarmVille style sweepstakes does not a gamer genius / tycoon make. He wants to build a Valve? Good luck.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Seriously though, Tarn and Zach seem much more interesting than Notch, especially if you look into the journey that led to Tarn working on it full-time.
And unlike Notch he/they're doing it out of passion for the specific game, not just 't3h m0n13z'.
Still prefer if it was open source though :D
... Notch was in the right place at the right time. The success of fortress craft (clone) shows that there was an audience untapped for basically what amounts to a basic 3d modelling tool with some minor game elements.
Yes, it did!
A guy does something he thinks is fun. He manages to convince other people to pay for using the thing. He works on it until he doesn't think it's fun anymore. Then he goes to try his hand at more fun things. Isn't this normal? What's all these calls about him having a "bad work ethic"?
Also, people will only write books about successful people, because they're fun and it's fun writing it. Again, not strange.
"he confesses that he wants to build a gaming behemoth on the scale of Valve."...
And yet he couldn't even finish 0x10c.
Yeah, yeah, I know some game ideas are doomed to fail and being able to see that before you spend time and resources on them can be a blessing. But the way 0x10c was handled makes me think that Notch didn't even bother trying. He announced it, realized he had no clue what he was actually going to do with it, then cancelled the entire thing. He should have either kept his mouth shut (and all his fans waiting for his next big creation that might actually come to fruition), or worked the idea into something that would have worked before announcing it.
VALVe has had their fair share of setbacks and leaks before, but they've at least been consistent in delivering... Eventually. They are one of the few companies I know of who can delay a project for as long as Half Life 2 took, and still release something that exceeds all expectations. If Notch can't even do that, what hope does he have of ever becoming as successful as them?
Did the reviewer play the game at all? "Surviving against a horde of enemies" is a pretty poor description of Minecraft survival mode, and in creative mode, you don't mine blocks to use them since you can get any block for free.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Minecraft was helped by a few converging factors that the previous ones (openly admitted by Persson) lacked.
One: Youtube. Especially the affiliate links algorithm. This meant that people who had a lot of follow-on watches and had people watch a long stream got more money. And minecraft was something that they could record playing and get people watching.
Two: Minecraft is shit. Really. Without going to a wiki, try to play the game. How are you suposed to even know you're meant to PUCH A TREE to break a block? How do you know you're meant to press "E" to open your inventory and then put that block of wood into the four-square bit to turn it into wood and THEN put those four bits of wood on those four spots to make a crafting bench with then you can build an axe. After putting it down. And how do you know how to make an axe? What sensible person would think that a wooden axe would chop wood? Then we get into all the other recipies. So minecraft is shit. So you need to watch someone else play to find out how the hell you're supposed to play (or read a wiki. But that's reading, so natch). This means point #1 is important to even play the game.
Three: Derivatives are allowed. You can see a lot of companies threatening LPers who are "making money off our game" by recording them playing it and getting ad revenue. Minecraft were 100% clear that you can make an LP from the start. Making #2 a safe decision.
Four: Freely sharing, multiple platform play. Especially in alpha/beta, that meant that word-of-mouth meant people could *try* the game. Find out about point #2, see others making good with point #1 and know they too can do it because of point #3.
Five: Modding. Of course other games had this. E.g. Half Life, Doom, et al. But this helped a lot because of point #2, Minecraft being shit. So people modded things in like Industrial Craft or MineFactory or Forestry or Buildcraft to make a more interesting and deeper game, including mods like TMI or NEI that at least allowed you to find the recipies, and boy did these mods add a shitload of frankly illogical recipies. The use of these new items and why you'd install them of course required more LP and mod spotlights to demonstrate and inform people of these new things and how to use them. Meaning more LP content and more players.
1.6 has damaged Minecraft Vanilla because they're trying to make the game deeper by making people have to move and explore the procedurally generated world, but their "solution" is all stick and a removal of all carrots to make the stick bigger. Food now more important, this is actually a good idea, but you're likely going to spend a long time farming and creepers blow shit up, including your farm. Nice. And then you'll be eating bread, more bread, even more bread. Brill. They also ramp up the mob spawning to force you to move to reduce the spawn rate back to something you're not having to go out and spam hit a million mobs to be able to farm yet more wheat for bread so you can afford to mine or craft. Problem is, there's not a lot above ground to see, and moving "house" is hard because
a) the day is 5 minutes long and you HAVE to get to bed or monsters spawn still, during which time you can walk directly 600 blocks. But this isn't exploring.
b) all that stuff you had has to be ferried and your inventory isn't big enough for more than a chest's worth of stuff.
c) you have to camp between the old and new place every night.
1.7 isn't addressing this and is likely only going to make it worse.
Modders are falling behind and 90% of good gameplay is from the mods. Add that you're gaining little or nothing (and potentially losing more) and why are you upgrading? Maybe 1.7 will allow a framework that allows modders to more easily move from 1.5+ to 1.7 and thereafter have an easier time going to later versions. Maybe. But at the moment, it's losing momentum and that momentum was why Minecraft made money.
Beause making a mod isn't their job, so they need a real full time job so they can put some free time into the mod. Have a look what happened to RedPower mod. IC2 and CCSensors (et al). These people have to have another job. Notch has a job that pays a hell of a lot and a larger team than any one modder. Look at what was in IC2 with only three part time developers. RP2 had one part time developer. Mojang has, what, 8 full time?
Remember when Minecraft was relatively unheard of? People were thrilled with it. I only heard or read good things about it during the Alpha and early Beta stages. And let's be honest, in those earlier stages, it was way buggier and way more crappy than it at release or even late Beta. Then everybody and their dog started playing it, and it suddenly became cool to rip on Minecraft. People started (and still are) bashing Notch for using Java, not having enough threads, eating food to stay alive when he could be coding, and failing to implement features that would induce real-life orgasms in its gamers.
You know what I think it is? I think everybody's got their own little inner hipster. Minecraft was unknown, and it was cool. Then it went 'mainstream' and it was cooler to point out its flaws. My inner hipster is screaming for me to be different, to be unique! I say Minecraft is a pretty damn fun game. If you don't think it's a fun game, fine. No need to hate on Notch for being 'lazy' or 'fat', which are both criticisms in this thread already.
Let the pendulum swing back the other way! It's now cool to say that Minecraft is a-ok.
Minecraft came heavily from the game "Wurm Online", where he was co-owner/creator
Unofficial Wurm Online Trailer:
It's basically an a wayyyy more realistic Minecraft. (Yes, I played for a couple months years ago, it was awesome!)
I feel bad that the other creator, Rolf, didn't become wildly successful.
I saw the two writers of the book at the annual book convention in Gothenburg last year, talking about this specific book. I was overall very underwhelmed. They talked about how playing with lego when he was a kid had inspired him - everyone plays with lego when they are kids over here, and he took the idea from infiminer, but apparently they didn't even know this. The writers (this was their second book I believe) seemed to be more interested in cashing in on the minecraft hype than understand what was actually going on.
Minecraft is not Notch's only game, maybe his largest, bu one of many many. I remember thinking about mailing him to motivate him to do something grander out of miners 4k, but my friends didnt see the potential that I saw and I dropped it. He seems like a guy who had great insigt and interest in the indie scene, and developed an ability to make; not excellent pieces of programming art, but interesting games that where playable in very short time. I don't know how many of those 4k competitions he won. Eventually infiminer showed up, he had great awareness of the indie scene so he saw it (and its potential) early, and had the ability to make something similar quickly. Having all those traits is actually quite impressive in my book, and he is probably quite interesting as a person. But my impression of the writers was that they had totally missed this angle. (Then again I havent actually read the book, so maybe I'm way off here.)
Minecraft is at its core a software toy. The addition of an ultimate goal didn't really change that. Creative mode makes it much more so. I find that while playing in survival mode is fun, I quickly lose interest and return to building in creative mode. Hexxit makes it into a dungeon-crawling game by making it practical to obtain top -tier items without gathering more than basic materials.
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