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>As soon as this deal is finalized, I will leave Mojang and go back to doing Ludum Dares and small web experiments. It has always amazed me how down to earth N

by jere 12y ago

>As soon as this deal is finalized, I will leave Mojang and go back to doing Ludum Dares and small web experiments. It has always amazed me how down to earth Notch is. Now, he's going to be a billionaire doing little game jams. It's hard to believe and quite awesome. It's like Bruce Wayne deciding to spend the rest of his life playing with legos.

jo_ 12y ago
I never considered Bruce Wayne much of a tinkerer. More like Tony Stark playing with Legos.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Or just more like Tony Stark from IM1/IM2 movies, period. He has a lot of money, but he basically outsourced every day-to-day company decision making somewhere else (up to making his secretary a CEO) just so that he could do what he really loves, i.e. high-tech tinkering and saving the day (and drunk parties).
- rubenv 12y ago
  Tony Stark? You mean Elon Musk, right?
  - Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
    Or Steve Jobs. There was a school of thought that the only reason that Steve Jobs liked being CEO of Apple was so that he could build the products he wanted, how he wanted, without anyone else telling him what he could and couldn't do. He basically created a role where he was a Product Manager with near unlimited resources who didn't have to answer to anyone else.
aeturnum 12y ago
>It's like Bruce Wayne deciding to spend the rest of his life playing with legos. I like this image. Bruce Wayne's character in batman is always thinking big. He tries to push things in the direction he thinks is right. The idea that someone would have all the power and decide to play with toys makes me worry about the rest of us. I would like to see people like Notch (creative, thoughtful people) having a say in what the future holds. However, it seems inevitable that after a certain point, you have to choose between living the life you want or ceeding at least some of your time to the whims of the masses of the public. Someone else mentioned Jobs and Wozniak - Notch feels like Wozniak and Mojang has no Jobs. How can we keep the Wozniaks and Notchs of the world involved in making decisions in a way that keeps them happy? We don't want to have to choose between scale and creativity.
- simonh 12y ago
  > I would like to see people like Notch (creative, thoughtful people) having a say in what the future holds. I don't. I have absolutely nothing against Notch, in fact I have the deepest respect for the guy as a hacker and as a person with, clearly, a lot of personal integrity. However he says quite clearly himself he's just interested in tinkering. Minecraft wasn't a deeply though out, perfectly executed, planned exercise in mass market game publishing. It was an entirely accidental result of pretty much randomly hacking ideas together. He had absolutely no idea what the future held for Minecraft when he produced it. Expecting him to have any deep insights into 'what the future holds' is projecting attributes and expectations on to him that I don't think he'd welcome.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    > It was an entirely accidental result of pretty much randomly hacking ideas together. He had absolutely no idea what the future held for Minecraft when he produced it. That the game became a financial success is indeed somewhat accidental. But that the game was fun was certainly not. Since Notch was "just tinkering", he optimized for a fun and interesting game, not for a profitable game. I think this is the distinction aeturnum had in mind and I agree with him. We need Notches, Wozniaks and Musks to have more say in where the future goes, because they care primarily about the problems they're solving, and not about the money they're getting.
    - magicalist 12y ago
      > That the game became a financial success is indeed somewhat accidental. But that the game was fun was certainly not Yeah, it's amazing to me how many people who even play Minecraft and enjoy it don't understand this. The default state for games is not fun, and it's an incredibly deliberate (and usually difficult) process to get them there.
- rjurney 12y ago
  He's 35 and totally burnt out. Give him time, hopefully he'll do something ambitious.
Cthulhu_ 12y ago
It's like a guy that got lucky and rich and never has to work a day in his life anymore retiring early and doing what he likes to do. I'll be honest, I'm bitter and jealous, :(
- angersock 12y ago
  Well, at least you're honest.
- dvirsky 12y ago
  He comes across as a great guy, that made something great - so it seems that he deserves this, so why be bitter about it? Sure, I envy his success and would like to make something great that will leave its mark on the world, too. I haven't, yet, but if anything, I'm inspired - and been so way before he sold his company.
GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
"It's like Bruce Wayne deciding to spend the rest of his life playing with legos." Better than dressing up in a gimp suit, and liable to get fewer people killed.
CatMtKing 12y ago
I think that's exactly why he's not going to get what he wants. He's not going to have a normal life with the comforting blanket of anonymity again.

by jere 12y ago

jo_ 12y ago

I never considered Bruce Wayne much of a tinkerer. More like Tony Stark playing with Legos.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
Or just more like Tony Stark from IM1/IM2 movies, period. He has a lot of money, but he basically outsourced every day-to-day company decision making somewhere else (up to making his secretary a CEO) just so that he could do what he really loves, i.e. high-tech tinkering and saving the day (and drunk parties).
rubenv 12y ago
Tony Stark? You mean Elon Musk, right?
- Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
  Or Steve Jobs. There was a school of thought that the only reason that Steve Jobs liked being CEO of Apple was so that he could build the products he wanted, how he wanted, without anyone else telling him what he could and couldn't do. He basically created a role where he was a Product Manager with near unlimited resources who didn't have to answer to anyone else.

aeturnum 12y ago

>It's like Bruce Wayne deciding to spend the rest of his life playing with legos. I like this image. Bruce Wayne's character in batman is always thinking big. He tries to push things in the direction he thinks is right. The idea that someone would have all the power and decide to play with toys makes me worry about the rest of us. I would like to see people like Notch (creative, thoughtful people) having a say in what the future holds. However, it seems inevitable that after a certain point, you have to choose between living the life you want or ceeding at least some of your time to the whims of the masses of the public. Someone else mentioned Jobs and Wozniak - Notch feels like Wozniak and Mojang has no Jobs. How can we keep the Wozniaks and Notchs of the world involved in making decisions in a way that keeps them happy? We don't want to have to choose between scale and creativity.

simonh 12y ago
> I would like to see people like Notch (creative, thoughtful people) having a say in what the future holds. I don't. I have absolutely nothing against Notch, in fact I have the deepest respect for the guy as a hacker and as a person with, clearly, a lot of personal integrity. However he says quite clearly himself he's just interested in tinkering. Minecraft wasn't a deeply though out, perfectly executed, planned exercise in mass market game publishing. It was an entirely accidental result of pretty much randomly hacking ideas together. He had absolutely no idea what the future held for Minecraft when he produced it. Expecting him to have any deep insights into 'what the future holds' is projecting attributes and expectations on to him that I don't think he'd welcome.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  > It was an entirely accidental result of pretty much randomly hacking ideas together. He had absolutely no idea what the future held for Minecraft when he produced it. That the game became a financial success is indeed somewhat accidental. But that the game was fun was certainly not. Since Notch was "just tinkering", he optimized for a fun and interesting game, not for a profitable game. I think this is the distinction aeturnum had in mind and I agree with him. We need Notches, Wozniaks and Musks to have more say in where the future goes, because they care primarily about the problems they're solving, and not about the money they're getting.
  - magicalist 12y ago
    > That the game became a financial success is indeed somewhat accidental. But that the game was fun was certainly not Yeah, it's amazing to me how many people who even play Minecraft and enjoy it don't understand this. The default state for games is not fun, and it's an incredibly deliberate (and usually difficult) process to get them there.
rjurney 12y ago
He's 35 and totally burnt out. Give him time, hopefully he'll do something ambitious.

Cthulhu_ 12y ago

It's like a guy that got lucky and rich and never has to work a day in his life anymore retiring early and doing what he likes to do. I'll be honest, I'm bitter and jealous, :(

angersock 12y ago
Well, at least you're honest.
dvirsky 12y ago
He comes across as a great guy, that made something great - so it seems that he deserves this, so why be bitter about it? Sure, I envy his success and would like to make something great that will leave its mark on the world, too. I haven't, yet, but if anything, I'm inspired - and been so way before he sold his company.

GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago

"It's like Bruce Wayne deciding to spend the rest of his life playing with legos." Better than dressing up in a gimp suit, and liable to get fewer people killed.

CatMtKing 12y ago

I think that's exactly why he's not going to get what he wants. He's not going to have a normal life with the comforting blanket of anonymity again.