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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.
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Much like the actual game!
Nor merited. The guy made a single video game, that's his life's accomplishment. What else really needs to be said?
Now a book on John Carmack, Warren Spector, Will Wright, Sid Meyer, Peter Molyneux, Cliff Bleszinski or even John Romero might actually be interesting and warranted.
I'd want to read an autobiography by Richard Garriott. I imagine it would read something like Fear and Loathing.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
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.
... 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.
What the game was. How he made it. How he sold it. How he continued developing it. How this method brought about a worldwide phenomenon.
To the niche audience of geeks and gamers who likes that type of game. Persson on the other hand made a game which is played by millions of eight to eighty year olds, and is still a big seller almost four years after its initial release. With Minecraft, we are clearly dealing with a significantly different gaming beast.
May the Maths Be with you!