6 ms·

So that’s what I’m going to do

205 points by munchor 13y ago

cmsimike 13y ago
I've had tons of projects that I've started working on, really prototyping, only to move on to something else once I figured out it wasn't something I want to invest time in, so I know where Notch is coming from. I couldn't imagine developing prototypes in a way that had tons of users watching me. Notch knowing himself - knowing that he isn't the right person for the game, is great. I hope the community does pick up the game. This was a game that I was looking forward to playing (as I am sure most others were).
jdmitch 13y ago
smaller is better :) Thanks for doing what you do! maybe game haiku?
ChuckMcM 13y ago
Nice bit of introspection. When I first started working I found I could make as much money as I could ever want by consulting and working. If you don't sleep much and you live in a consulting friendly place, its quite viable. But I too noticed that it made "home" also the "office" and you couldn't really get away from it, and that made it less fun. So I ended up limiting my consulting considerably, and instead working on "fun" code (mostly robotics based) which as it turned out sometimes people wanted to pay for, but for the most part has been just for fun. Notch has a wonderful gift, and while I mourn the fact that 0x10c is unlikely to ever see the light of day, I think having him make cool stuff is better than having him burn out trying to live up to the expectation momentum that 0x10c had developed.
- jberryman 13y ago
  OT but do you have any advice or have you written about your experience managing that kind of consulting? I've been trying to figure out a style of freelancing that works for my personality (fewer hours, more "asynchronous"), but it seems like most companies are looking for folks to fill an employee role.
breckinloggins 13y ago
I can only imagine the kind of pressure someone like notch is put in from their players and fans, but there's a little more to this story than "the little side project that ended up owning me". 0x10c was a thing. It was announced, had a domain and website with documentation and updates [1], had preview videos, etc. The point is that it looked and was sold like a product, so it's perhaps understandable that lots of people were waiting excitedly for it. That said, there'd be nothing worse than notch feeling like he had to finish the game no matter what. That would be a sure-fire recipe for a bad experience all around. I think it's great that he's given his blessing to the independent effort, because 0x10c is just the kind of project that benefits the most from a team of people who hardcore geek out on it. [1] http://0x10c.com/ http://0x10c.com/
joshdance 13y ago
I like the honesty. And the humility. Nice to see a public figure say, not for me.
nathas 13y ago
I think people forget that Minecraft was literally just a side project for Notch while he had a "real" job. It was his fun thing to do when he was bored. As a programmer, he's clearly capable, but I think he serves better as a director than someone who is trying to tackle an entire game by themselves.
- Macha 13y ago
  However, what he enjoys doing is developing games, not directing them or any sort of management. In that respect, he wouldn't do very good in a purely decision making role, and would probably burn out.
Nekorosu 13y ago
It's really refreshing to get such fair retrospection on himself from such a pillar of indie game dev.
danso 13y ago
> Some people in the 0x10c community decided to work together to make their own version of their game, called Project Trillek. I find this absolutely amazing. I want to play this game so much, but I am not the right person to make it. Not any more. I’m convinced a new team with less public interest can make a vastly superior game than what I would make. I've only read a few of the feature length articles on Notch (such as this one in the NEw Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/04/the-minecraft-creator-markus-persson-faces-life-after-fame.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/04/the-m...) but he sounds like a real stand-up guy. I love the statement above, because it's a graceful concession as well as a statement that (hopefully) encourages creativity and innovation, even if it's among other people. What a morale booster it must be to have Notch believe that you (the team behind Trillek) can make a better game than he can. Also, I think it's cool to be reminded that notch is also a gamer, after all, and that even he enjoys being a wide-eyed-consumer, something which he can't be when he's creating the game.
agumonkey 13y ago
I guess that's why book writers used pseudonyms. Suggestion : blueharvester
- runevault 13y ago
  Eh. There are lots of reasons writers use pseudonyms. Separation of their day to day life from their writing life (one author I can't think of ATM did that because her academic coworkers would look down on the stuff she writes). Keeping writing that would appeal to different audiences easy to differentiate (Seanan McGuire does this, her zombie books are under the name Mira Grant). Searchability (whenever I am ready to publish something this will be my reason because my real name is far too common, winning the SEO war is almost impossible). Obviously this is the reason Rowling did it with her recently uncovered book, but plenty of other reasons exist to use pseudonyms, both for existing and new writers.
runevault 13y ago
I find it interesting from the point of view that, to me, I assumed he would have at least somewhat internalized how closely he and his work is watched now. The fact that isn't the case is interesting. I wonder if this will be the lesson that gets him to shift into that last bit of understanding as to what it means to be so watched by the wider world, awaiting your next bit of output.
mittermayr 13y ago
It's refreshing that someone like him basically speaks out on an issue many if not most of us face. If we had the freedom to work on anything we wanted, I couldn't make my mind up. I'd start working on this side project, probably shortly after switch to that other little idea, then maybe try out this gadget and hook it up to that service and that would keep me going endlessly. I love trying new stuff, figuring things out, hacking them. But turning these things into products is a whole different game. I deeply feel that very moment he describes, when a fun side project becomes a real duty and you have to work on it because people demand it. If you're without funds or income, it might be your only option, so even if it's not fun, it doesn't matter as long as it might generate income eventually. But once you're past that requirement, these things often stay little side projects that rarely end up being finished. But these little side projects are basically how I taught myself most of what I know in programming.
rckrd 13y ago
>"Back before anyone knew who I was, I used to wanted to make huge games" Glad he didn't want to be an english teacher.
- wahnfrieden 13y ago
  He is ESL.
- drivers99 13y ago
  > Glad he didn't want to be an english teacher. "English" should be capitalized. People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
  - sejje 13y ago
    The sentence could also use a subject and verb (implied "I am"). Notch's native language isn't English, is it?
- lnanek2 13y ago
  He certainly writes better English than I write any of my second languages...
gboudrias 13y ago
" I really really don’t want to turn into another under delivering visionary game designer." That's what I like about Notch: He's got a conscience and great self-awareness. I can find issues with his games but I've always liked the guy and continue to do so. Great success, Notch!
nickstinemates 13y ago
Just played Shambles for about 5 minutes. Loved it. This type of stuff is generic, but fun. I'm not sure I'll ever play it again.
yaddayadda 13y ago
A generalized version of one sentiment really, really resonated with me ... "Turns out, what I love doing is personal passion. Not hyping personal passion or trying to sell a lot of copies. I just want to experiment and develop and think and tinker and tweak." What working adult among us hasn't felt this at some point?
graeme 13y ago
Slightly OT: How addictive is minecraft? It sounds great. But I quit video games a few years back, and don't have good willpower with them. I work from home as well, so there's no natural limits on my time. But I'd love to try the game in a limited way.
- thomaslangston 13y ago
  http://minecraft.net/classic/play http://minecraft.net/classic/play This is a free Java applet early version of the game. Perhaps not addictive or polished enough to represent a major distraction.
  - scott_karana 13y ago
    I wouldn't even try the "Classic" mode. It would be enough to sour me off the real game, and it's barely representative. :-)
    - Houshalter 13y ago
      Classic mode is awesome. I haven't played in quite awhile, but there were some good servers with ridiculous amounts of awesome mods. It runs much faster than normal Minecraft, and some of the features like cuboid, permissions, multiple maps running on the same server, etc, still haven't been added back to the main version of the game.
      - Macha 13y ago
        Because they aren't part of the game - they're server plugins, and are all available for Bukkit by now (and have been since at least Beta). Cuboid is part of WorldEdit, there's tons of permissions plugin (PermissionsEX seems to be the most mentioned, though in both positive and negative terms) and there are quite a few MultiWorld plugins for Bukkit nowadays.
- OafTobark 13y ago
  You can download a free version to try. I would say it varies a lot. For me Minecraft was fun the first two weeks and it died off a lot after that.
groundCode 13y ago
Nicely done - good luck to you sir!
petercooper 13y ago
This is what I want to do. I want to do smaller games that can fail. I want to experiment and develop and think and tinker and tweak. Sounds promising for him being back in Ludum Dare this weekend! :-)
- willvarfar 13y ago
  Exactly my first thought too!!!!
tootie 13y ago
This is like when Dave Chappelle walked on his show because he couldn't deal with being so successful. I honestly don't understand, but then again I've never been within 100 miles of that kind of problem.
AMcQuarrie 13y ago
This is one of several reasons why most developers don't announce a game until they have a reasonable chunk of it done.
jberryman 13y ago
Good for him. Just watched a monumentally depressing (IMHO) documentary called "Indie Game" about indie game devs with various flavors of mental and physical illness, putting themselves through hell to get their game out. All of them seemed to find the buzz and pre-launch expectation/pressure, as well as the public response after (both good and bad) to be extremely distressing.

205 points by munchor 13y ago

I've had tons of projects that I've started working on, really prototyping, only to move on to something else once I figured out it wasn't something I want to invest time in, so I know where Notch is coming from. I couldn't imagine developing prototypes in a way that had tons of users watching me. Notch knowing himself - knowing that he isn't the right person for the game, is great. I hope the community does pick up the game. This was a game that I was looking forward to playing (as I am sure most others were).

jdmitch 13y ago

smaller is better :) Thanks for doing what you do! maybe game haiku?

ChuckMcM 13y ago

Nice bit of introspection. When I first started working I found I could make as much money as I could ever want by consulting and working. If you don't sleep much and you live in a consulting friendly place, its quite viable. But I too noticed that it made "home" also the "office" and you couldn't really get away from it, and that made it less fun. So I ended up limiting my consulting considerably, and instead working on "fun" code (mostly robotics based) which as it turned out sometimes people wanted to pay for, but for the most part has been just for fun. Notch has a wonderful gift, and while I mourn the fact that 0x10c is unlikely to ever see the light of day, I think having him make cool stuff is better than having him burn out trying to live up to the expectation momentum that 0x10c had developed.

jberryman 13y ago
OT but do you have any advice or have you written about your experience managing that kind of consulting? I've been trying to figure out a style of freelancing that works for my personality (fewer hours, more "asynchronous"), but it seems like most companies are looking for folks to fill an employee role.

breckinloggins 13y ago

I can only imagine the kind of pressure someone like notch is put in from their players and fans, but there's a little more to this story than "the little side project that ended up owning me". 0x10c was a thing. It was announced, had a domain and website with documentation and updates [1], had preview videos, etc. The point is that it looked and was sold like a product, so it's perhaps understandable that lots of people were waiting excitedly for it. That said, there'd be nothing worse than notch feeling like he had to finish the game no matter what. That would be a sure-fire recipe for a bad experience all around. I think it's great that he's given his blessing to the independent effort, because 0x10c is just the kind of project that benefits the most from a team of people who hardcore geek out on it. [1] http://0x10c.com/ http://0x10c.com/

joshdance 13y ago

I like the honesty. And the humility. Nice to see a public figure say, not for me.

nathas 13y ago

I think people forget that Minecraft was literally just a side project for Notch while he had a "real" job. It was his fun thing to do when he was bored. As a programmer, he's clearly capable, but I think he serves better as a director than someone who is trying to tackle an entire game by themselves.

Macha 13y ago
However, what he enjoys doing is developing games, not directing them or any sort of management. In that respect, he wouldn't do very good in a purely decision making role, and would probably burn out.

Nekorosu 13y ago

It's really refreshing to get such fair retrospection on himself from such a pillar of indie game dev.

danso 13y ago

> Some people in the 0x10c community decided to work together to make their own version of their game, called Project Trillek. I find this absolutely amazing. I want to play this game so much, but I am not the right person to make it. Not any more. I’m convinced a new team with less public interest can make a vastly superior game than what I would make. I've only read a few of the feature length articles on Notch (such as this one in the NEw Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/04/the-minecraft-creator-markus-persson-faces-life-after-fame.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/04/the-m...) but he sounds like a real stand-up guy. I love the statement above, because it's a graceful concession as well as a statement that (hopefully) encourages creativity and innovation, even if it's among other people. What a morale booster it must be to have Notch believe that you (the team behind Trillek) can make a better game than he can. Also, I think it's cool to be reminded that notch is also a gamer, after all, and that even he enjoys being a wide-eyed-consumer, something which he can't be when he's creating the game.

agumonkey 13y ago

I guess that's why book writers used pseudonyms. Suggestion : blueharvester

runevault 13y ago
Eh. There are lots of reasons writers use pseudonyms. Separation of their day to day life from their writing life (one author I can't think of ATM did that because her academic coworkers would look down on the stuff she writes). Keeping writing that would appeal to different audiences easy to differentiate (Seanan McGuire does this, her zombie books are under the name Mira Grant). Searchability (whenever I am ready to publish something this will be my reason because my real name is far too common, winning the SEO war is almost impossible). Obviously this is the reason Rowling did it with her recently uncovered book, but plenty of other reasons exist to use pseudonyms, both for existing and new writers.

runevault 13y ago

I find it interesting from the point of view that, to me, I assumed he would have at least somewhat internalized how closely he and his work is watched now. The fact that isn't the case is interesting. I wonder if this will be the lesson that gets him to shift into that last bit of understanding as to what it means to be so watched by the wider world, awaiting your next bit of output.

mittermayr 13y ago

It's refreshing that someone like him basically speaks out on an issue many if not most of us face. If we had the freedom to work on anything we wanted, I couldn't make my mind up. I'd start working on this side project, probably shortly after switch to that other little idea, then maybe try out this gadget and hook it up to that service and that would keep me going endlessly. I love trying new stuff, figuring things out, hacking them. But turning these things into products is a whole different game. I deeply feel that very moment he describes, when a fun side project becomes a real duty and you have to work on it because people demand it. If you're without funds or income, it might be your only option, so even if it's not fun, it doesn't matter as long as it might generate income eventually. But once you're past that requirement, these things often stay little side projects that rarely end up being finished. But these little side projects are basically how I taught myself most of what I know in programming.

rckrd 13y ago

>"Back before anyone knew who I was, I used to wanted to make huge games" Glad he didn't want to be an english teacher.

wahnfrieden 13y ago
He is ESL.
drivers99 13y ago
> Glad he didn't want to be an english teacher. "English" should be capitalized. People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
- sejje 13y ago
  The sentence could also use a subject and verb (implied "I am"). Notch's native language isn't English, is it?
lnanek2 13y ago
He certainly writes better English than I write any of my second languages...

gboudrias 13y ago

" I really really don’t want to turn into another under delivering visionary game designer." That's what I like about Notch: He's got a conscience and great self-awareness. I can find issues with his games but I've always liked the guy and continue to do so. Great success, Notch!

nickstinemates 13y ago

Just played Shambles for about 5 minutes. Loved it. This type of stuff is generic, but fun. I'm not sure I'll ever play it again.

yaddayadda 13y ago

A generalized version of one sentiment really, really resonated with me ... "Turns out, what I love doing is personal passion. Not hyping personal passion or trying to sell a lot of copies. I just want to experiment and develop and think and tinker and tweak." What working adult among us hasn't felt this at some point?

graeme 13y ago

Slightly OT: How addictive is minecraft? It sounds great. But I quit video games a few years back, and don't have good willpower with them. I work from home as well, so there's no natural limits on my time. But I'd love to try the game in a limited way.

thomaslangston 13y ago
http://minecraft.net/classic/play http://minecraft.net/classic/play This is a free Java applet early version of the game. Perhaps not addictive or polished enough to represent a major distraction.
- scott_karana 13y ago
  I wouldn't even try the "Classic" mode. It would be enough to sour me off the real game, and it's barely representative. :-)
  - Houshalter 13y ago
    Classic mode is awesome. I haven't played in quite awhile, but there were some good servers with ridiculous amounts of awesome mods. It runs much faster than normal Minecraft, and some of the features like cuboid, permissions, multiple maps running on the same server, etc, still haven't been added back to the main version of the game.
    - Macha 13y ago
      Because they aren't part of the game - they're server plugins, and are all available for Bukkit by now (and have been since at least Beta). Cuboid is part of WorldEdit, there's tons of permissions plugin (PermissionsEX seems to be the most mentioned, though in both positive and negative terms) and there are quite a few MultiWorld plugins for Bukkit nowadays.
OafTobark 13y ago
You can download a free version to try. I would say it varies a lot. For me Minecraft was fun the first two weeks and it died off a lot after that.

groundCode 13y ago

Nicely done - good luck to you sir!

petercooper 13y ago

This is what I want to do. I want to do smaller games that can fail. I want to experiment and develop and think and tinker and tweak. Sounds promising for him being back in Ludum Dare this weekend! :-)

willvarfar 13y ago
Exactly my first thought too!!!!

tootie 13y ago

This is like when Dave Chappelle walked on his show because he couldn't deal with being so successful. I honestly don't understand, but then again I've never been within 100 miles of that kind of problem.

AMcQuarrie 13y ago

This is one of several reasons why most developers don't announce a game until they have a reasonable chunk of it done.

jberryman 13y ago

Good for him. Just watched a monumentally depressing (IMHO) documentary called "Indie Game" about indie game devs with various flavors of mental and physical illness, putting themselves through hell to get their game out. All of them seemed to find the buzz and pre-launch expectation/pressure, as well as the public response after (both good and bad) to be extremely distressing.