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My biggest problem with the post is the massive ego the author seems to have about the impact and importance of their writing. To be frank, the author made lit

My biggest problem with the post is the massive ego the author seems to have about the impact and importance of their writing. To be frank, the author made little to no meaningful contributions to Minecraft's success. The author is so self-centered they belittle the contributions of other Mojang employees and seem to genuinely believe their contribution is on the same level as people like Jeb and C418. They literally describe the End Poem as a quote "Priceless Gift".

robertlagrant 4y ago
Indeed. The game would've made $0 less had the ending just said "The End".
- orlp 4y ago
  I've never even looked at the poem and have beaten Minecraft many times. I'm probably not the target audience though, I generally skip quest text in games.
  - pbhjpbhj 4y ago
    You should read it. IMO it transforms Minecraft from being just an ordinary game experience into being art, it makes the context of what you've been doing, in playing Minecraft, into something like folklore. Late at night, having defeated the Ender dragon, having spent months in the game, it turns that moment into an almost spiritual experience.
    - tokai 4y ago
      I thought it is way too much, and not at all in line with the feeling of mc. Cringe is the word the youngsters use AFAIR.
      - mrguyorama 4y ago
        I was 14 and it brought the silly little block building game where I farmed trees and made dirt houses and turned it into a meaningful story, something that made me think, something that moved me.
        Firmwarrior 4y ago
        Haha, it's interesting to see that perspective I think most HN readers reacted to that weird poem the same way the aliens in Blindsight reacted to attempts at communication
- shmageggy 4y ago
  You really think that a poem that people have tattooed on themselves, put onto tee shirts and mugs, inspired emotional emails to the author, and so on has inspired exactly zero excess recommendations to friends, zero dinnertime discussions or social media posts that have led to purchases?
  - OOPMan 4y ago
    Tattooed on themselves? Wow...uh....that's kinda daft
  - kilbuz 4y ago
    Possibly less than 0.
  - feet 4y ago
    Did you read the ending text? It's incredibly long. Are you claiming that people have the entire thing tattooed on themselves? I definitely can't see it fitting on a coffee mug in any readable fashion
    - sipjca 4y ago
      Yeah he is claiming people have it tattooed. Reading the story shows you one such image. A Google search also validates the claim.
      - dsabanin 4y ago
        To be fair, some people make tattoos with all kinds of silly things, the bar is pretty low. One can argue that whatever the ending text was, someone would make a tattoo with it eventually.
        robertlagrant 4y ago
        We need a gofundme for the previous comment to be tattooed on someone.
        4y ago
- snowwrestler 4y ago
  The whole point of the post is that there are ways to express value other than dollars. That’s why the author lets go of the dollars and gives the story away for free at the end. Maybe the game would have made the same money. But it’s also true that Markus asked for an ending story, selected this one and put it in, and kept it there.
  - ineedasername 4y ago
    >The whole point of the post is that there are ways to express value other than dollars That may be the author's point, but their egotism also then seems to believe that a significant portion of the non-monetary value of Minecraft is a result of their own brief work on an unskippable wall of text that has a nice sentiment but is quickly forgotten by, I'd guess, nearly everyone that plays the game.
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      There'll be a vast number of people who never completed it or only played the non-story mode.
- lukas099 4y ago
  No it wouldn't have. The poem brought minecraft into the realm of the spiritual. It might not have had that effect directly on you, but it did for many players which is enough to elevate the game in the zeitgeist of humanity.
nigamanth 4y ago
Sure, Minecraft would have still sold as much if the ending screen said "You won" or much simply "The end". But, he did still put in the effort in creating the poem. Every part of the game matters, and I think it's fair if he gets paid or at-least gets credit for his contributions to the game. I understand the author being hurt as he's one of the 5 people that contributed to the game, he just needed the credit or any little token of appreciation from Minecraft. The author asked Markus to mention something he refused, which is kind of the author's fault for not signing a contract, but it's still sad.
- cmeacham98 4y ago
  > I think it's fair if he gets paid or at-least gets credit for his contributions to the game. He did get paid, $20000. How was Mojang supposed to know he wanted more when he accepted that payment?
  - wslack 4y ago
    I don't think he wanted "more," exactly - he felt excluded. It felt like something out of the character of friendship he wanted.
    - cmeacham98 4y ago
      But he did want more, that's the whole point of the first half of this article. > I admired the fact that he was, again, giving money to back-office staff who had just arrived in the last year, and had zero creative input into the game > I couldn’t understand why I was again being treated worse than them. I had helped him create the actual game, I had given him the ending he wanted but could not write He acts as if he's some creative designer that played a huge role in the creation of the game. To be frank, an intern at Mojang that was with the company for a few months and added 2 blocks to the game would have made a bigger contribution than he made. This is, in my opinion, the core disconnect the author has with reality, and is driven by the fact that to him his work is the center of the universe and he struggles to understand why that isn't the case for everyone else. The author genuinely believes they made contributions to the game on the same level as Jeb, and that's why it feels unfair when he sees Mojang employees getting a $300k bonus and him getting nothing. But the reality is he made a very minor contribution to the game and got paid $20k, which is a pretty nice sum for a few days of work.
wickedsight 4y ago
> the author made little to no meaningful contributions to Minecraft's success Any success exists because of the sum of its parts. I have never played Minecraft, but I've played Portal. The ending to Portal was emotional, it was the cherry on top of a great game. That song and the emotion that came with it is still ingrained in me and is part of why I still recommend Portal to people who haven't played it. Would I have played the game without the song? Probably. Would it have made the same impact without it? I don't think so. Emotion is a large part of why people play games, so that poem might actually have an impact. Does that mean he deserved more? I don't know, €20k seems reasonable. But I think you underestimate the impact something like a poem can have.
- rcxdude 4y ago
  Eh, the ending to Minecraft was very much an afterthought. A huge number of players have never even attempted it. And the poem at the end is... frequently skipped, even on the first go-around. It's nowhere near the level of the ending to Portal.
- cmeacham98 4y ago
  I'm not saying that all poems in video games or all endings to video games are as little impact as Minecraft's. Portal would be a great example of an ending that was a significantly greater part of the whole. I'm specifically referring to Minecraft, where the poem is largely disconnected from the rest of the game and doesn't pertain to any narrative or story (Minecraft doesn't have a story, it's a sandbox game). It's a cool poem, but it isn't part of the important bits that made Minecraft the colossal success that it is.
- wink 4y ago
  I'm not taking any side here but I don't think your comparison holds. Portal is as much a story-driven game as it is about the mechanics. I know very few people who played Portal after they finished it, except maybe replaying it. Contrast to Minecraft, where at least my peer group (adults already as of 2011), just spent hours, days, months building stuff on a map, completely ignoring the "story". I actually heard about this poem for the first time when I read this piece. I've never finished Minecraft, but I guess I spent a few hundred hours building stuff and in my opinion, "played" it more than other games. But that doesn't mean I'm in any way stating an opinion about compensation or who did something wrong or how important anything is.
somrand0 4y ago
well, that person is an artist, artistry is all about SELF expression... people who make it along that path have a strong trait of wanting their EGO (their selves) to be seen and attended to. that's why they are artists. the end poem is a priceless gift because they made it so: they refused to sell it, they consistently refused to put a price on it.
erikstarck 4y ago
Right. My initial reaction was “what!? Minecraft has an ending?”. Finishing the game is not at all part of the appeal of the game. It’s like having an ending to your LEGO pieces.
dwild 4y ago
> The author is so self-centered they belittle the contributions of other Mojang employees C418 made the music... plenty love it, I don't. Doesn't means it has no value, it has none to me, just like the End Poem has none to you, but yet still some people got a tattoo of it. You are the only one belittling anyone though, you are belittling what Julian did, saying he deserve less recognition than C418, while Julian just said they got recognition while he didn't (without saying if he deserved it more than them).

robertlagrant 4y ago

Indeed. The game would've made $0 less had the ending just said "The End".

orlp 4y ago
I've never even looked at the poem and have beaten Minecraft many times. I'm probably not the target audience though, I generally skip quest text in games.
- pbhjpbhj 4y ago
  You should read it. IMO it transforms Minecraft from being just an ordinary game experience into being art, it makes the context of what you've been doing, in playing Minecraft, into something like folklore. Late at night, having defeated the Ender dragon, having spent months in the game, it turns that moment into an almost spiritual experience.
  - tokai 4y ago
    I thought it is way too much, and not at all in line with the feeling of mc. Cringe is the word the youngsters use AFAIR.
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      I was 14 and it brought the silly little block building game where I farmed trees and made dirt houses and turned it into a meaningful story, something that made me think, something that moved me.
      - Firmwarrior 4y ago
        Haha, it's interesting to see that perspective I think most HN readers reacted to that weird poem the same way the aliens in Blindsight reacted to attempts at communication
shmageggy 4y ago
You really think that a poem that people have tattooed on themselves, put onto tee shirts and mugs, inspired emotional emails to the author, and so on has inspired exactly zero excess recommendations to friends, zero dinnertime discussions or social media posts that have led to purchases?
- OOPMan 4y ago
  Tattooed on themselves? Wow...uh....that's kinda daft
- kilbuz 4y ago
  Possibly less than 0.
- feet 4y ago
  Did you read the ending text? It's incredibly long. Are you claiming that people have the entire thing tattooed on themselves? I definitely can't see it fitting on a coffee mug in any readable fashion
  - sipjca 4y ago
    Yeah he is claiming people have it tattooed. Reading the story shows you one such image. A Google search also validates the claim.
    - dsabanin 4y ago
      To be fair, some people make tattoos with all kinds of silly things, the bar is pretty low. One can argue that whatever the ending text was, someone would make a tattoo with it eventually.
      - robertlagrant 4y ago
        We need a gofundme for the previous comment to be tattooed on someone.
      - 4y ago
snowwrestler 4y ago
The whole point of the post is that there are ways to express value other than dollars. That’s why the author lets go of the dollars and gives the story away for free at the end. Maybe the game would have made the same money. But it’s also true that Markus asked for an ending story, selected this one and put it in, and kept it there.
- ineedasername 4y ago
  >The whole point of the post is that there are ways to express value other than dollars That may be the author's point, but their egotism also then seems to believe that a significant portion of the non-monetary value of Minecraft is a result of their own brief work on an unskippable wall of text that has a nice sentiment but is quickly forgotten by, I'd guess, nearly everyone that plays the game.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    There'll be a vast number of people who never completed it or only played the non-story mode.
lukas099 4y ago
No it wouldn't have. The poem brought minecraft into the realm of the spiritual. It might not have had that effect directly on you, but it did for many players which is enough to elevate the game in the zeitgeist of humanity.

nigamanth 4y ago

Sure, Minecraft would have still sold as much if the ending screen said "You won" or much simply "The end". But, he did still put in the effort in creating the poem. Every part of the game matters, and I think it's fair if he gets paid or at-least gets credit for his contributions to the game. I understand the author being hurt as he's one of the 5 people that contributed to the game, he just needed the credit or any little token of appreciation from Minecraft. The author asked Markus to mention something he refused, which is kind of the author's fault for not signing a contract, but it's still sad.

cmeacham98 4y ago
> I think it's fair if he gets paid or at-least gets credit for his contributions to the game. He did get paid, $20000. How was Mojang supposed to know he wanted more when he accepted that payment?
- wslack 4y ago
  I don't think he wanted "more," exactly - he felt excluded. It felt like something out of the character of friendship he wanted.
  - cmeacham98 4y ago
    But he did want more, that's the whole point of the first half of this article. > I admired the fact that he was, again, giving money to back-office staff who had just arrived in the last year, and had zero creative input into the game > I couldn’t understand why I was again being treated worse than them. I had helped him create the actual game, I had given him the ending he wanted but could not write He acts as if he's some creative designer that played a huge role in the creation of the game. To be frank, an intern at Mojang that was with the company for a few months and added 2 blocks to the game would have made a bigger contribution than he made. This is, in my opinion, the core disconnect the author has with reality, and is driven by the fact that to him his work is the center of the universe and he struggles to understand why that isn't the case for everyone else. The author genuinely believes they made contributions to the game on the same level as Jeb, and that's why it feels unfair when he sees Mojang employees getting a $300k bonus and him getting nothing. But the reality is he made a very minor contribution to the game and got paid $20k, which is a pretty nice sum for a few days of work.

wickedsight 4y ago

> the author made little to no meaningful contributions to Minecraft's success Any success exists because of the sum of its parts. I have never played Minecraft, but I've played Portal. The ending to Portal was emotional, it was the cherry on top of a great game. That song and the emotion that came with it is still ingrained in me and is part of why I still recommend Portal to people who haven't played it. Would I have played the game without the song? Probably. Would it have made the same impact without it? I don't think so. Emotion is a large part of why people play games, so that poem might actually have an impact. Does that mean he deserved more? I don't know, €20k seems reasonable. But I think you underestimate the impact something like a poem can have.

rcxdude 4y ago
Eh, the ending to Minecraft was very much an afterthought. A huge number of players have never even attempted it. And the poem at the end is... frequently skipped, even on the first go-around. It's nowhere near the level of the ending to Portal.
cmeacham98 4y ago
I'm not saying that all poems in video games or all endings to video games are as little impact as Minecraft's. Portal would be a great example of an ending that was a significantly greater part of the whole. I'm specifically referring to Minecraft, where the poem is largely disconnected from the rest of the game and doesn't pertain to any narrative or story (Minecraft doesn't have a story, it's a sandbox game). It's a cool poem, but it isn't part of the important bits that made Minecraft the colossal success that it is.
wink 4y ago
I'm not taking any side here but I don't think your comparison holds. Portal is as much a story-driven game as it is about the mechanics. I know very few people who played Portal after they finished it, except maybe replaying it. Contrast to Minecraft, where at least my peer group (adults already as of 2011), just spent hours, days, months building stuff on a map, completely ignoring the "story". I actually heard about this poem for the first time when I read this piece. I've never finished Minecraft, but I guess I spent a few hundred hours building stuff and in my opinion, "played" it more than other games. But that doesn't mean I'm in any way stating an opinion about compensation or who did something wrong or how important anything is.

somrand0 4y ago

well, that person is an artist, artistry is all about SELF expression... people who make it along that path have a strong trait of wanting their EGO (their selves) to be seen and attended to. that's why they are artists. the end poem is a priceless gift because they made it so: they refused to sell it, they consistently refused to put a price on it.

erikstarck 4y ago

Right. My initial reaction was “what!? Minecraft has an ending?”. Finishing the game is not at all part of the appeal of the game. It’s like having an ending to your LEGO pieces.

dwild 4y ago

> The author is so self-centered they belittle the contributions of other Mojang employees C418 made the music... plenty love it, I don't. Doesn't means it has no value, it has none to me, just like the End Poem has none to you, but yet still some people got a tattoo of it. You are the only one belittling anyone though, you are belittling what Julian did, saying he deserve less recognition than C418, while Julian just said they got recognition while he didn't (without saying if he deserved it more than them).