Last week it was announced that Microsoft was nearing a deal to buy Mojang AB for 2.5B dollars. This morning Notch (Markus Persson, pictured above) publicly posted a heartfelt and brutally honest resignation letter to his fans.
I don’t see myself as a real game developer. I make games because it’s fun, and because I love games and I love to program, but I don’t make games with the intention of them becoming huge hits, and I don’t try to change the world.
Minecraft was Notch’s opus, it is arguably the most quintessential sandbox game ever created, if not the most popular. Games like minecraft give the perception that anything is possible, and by looking at what has been realized, it’s hard not to believe it.
The psychodynamics of gameplay in Minecraft allow for the audience to project their ideas and intentions onto the game, it’s become a movement in and of itself. Notch had become a god in the eyes of millions for his creation, I think that fact alone subjects him to equal amounts of love and criticism.
I had the fortune of meeting Notch at PAX Prime in 2011. It was actually a strange encounter, but only because I hadn’t really dove into minecraft yet and had no idea who Notch was or what he looked like. Mojaang had a booth up stairs filled with minecraft fan art on display, otherwise the booth was fairly empty because they had no consoles or computers for demos. A very nice guy with a slight accent, and only mildly resembles Oaken above, came up to me while I was browsing the artwork and introduced himself as Markus. He was very nice and asked me a bunch of questions about my experience with Minecraft to which I fumbled with basic answers and pleasantries. It wasn’t until much later one of my friends explained who he was. At the time I didn’t think much of it, but today I feel a little different.
I’ve always considered software development an art form, regardless of what you’re writing the software for.
The true artists and game changers are those who do it purely to satisfy their love of experimentation and creation. We are the tinkerers, the hackers, and the makers. We don’t plan on changing the world, the world just happens while we’re busy making other plans.
Notch’s post has a strikingly similar sentiment to a quote from another great creator of our time.
If you love what you do and are willing to do what it takes, it’s within your reach. And it’ll be worth every minute you spend alone at night, thinking and thinking about what it is you want to design or build. It’ll be worth it, I promise. -Steve Wozniak (2006). IWoz (p. 300)