Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Minecraft creator banks $350k a day, turns down job offers from Valve and Bungie

develop-online.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 245 posts

Re: Minecraft creator banks $350k a day, turns down job offers from Valve and Bungie

#41

Post by JeanPierre »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #19
vaksel wrote: post #13

their math is a little bit off, a copy sold every 3 seconds = 28,800 sales a day. Or 10.5 million copies a year. To tell the truth its pretty shocking how minecraft has taken off...the guy will probably end up making 100 million off the game. And if he sticks to iterating it, it might end up making over a billion over it's lifetime(say 40-50 years). Which may seem like a huge number, until you remember that World of…

Speaking as a someone who has never played either, it's also shocking because World of Warcraft looks like this: http://www.sopheon.com/Portals/1/WoW%20Screenshot.jpg While Minecraft looks like this: http://www.indiegames.com/blog/images/timw/minecraft.jpg

You have two distinct directions here, though: World of Warcraft's gameplay is rather complex (compare the image of WoW with this image from Minecraft: http://imgur.com/lQdye.png), is about killing monsters and obtaining the best equipment, showing off how much time you're able to spend in-game. I think showing your personality to others is really hard in WoW, at least without talking to them.

Minecraft, on the other side, is about you, your personality and creativity. You're able to modify the game as you like: First off all, you're making your own world! Second, texture packs are available, in order to change both the world and your own character. By making the game less complex, it is also very easy to get into, compared to WoW.

(I'm sure there are other reasons as well, but I'm no professional game developer.)

Re: Minecraft creator banks $350k a day, turns down job offers from Valve and Bungie

#42

Post by henrikschroder »

kevingadd wrote: post #21
twymer wrote: post #8

Valve: "We heard you were making $350k/day, how would you like a job making $50k/year?"

1) Health care, taxes, payment processing fees, development tools... There are a lot of expenses covered by an employer, especially when you're a game developer. 2) It's not $350k/day versus $50k/year, unless he can somehow sustain his current income indefinitely (he can't). 3) The value of games publishers and platform developers being willing to talk to you (and having access to development kits, etc) is hard to pu…

What do you mean health care? Look again where he's living.

Re: Minecraft creator banks $350k a day, turns down job offers from Valve and Bungie

#43

Post by zacharycohn »

efsavage wrote: post #32
kevingadd wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Health care, taxes, payment processing fees, development tools... There are a lot of expenses covered by an employer, especially when you're a game developer. 2) It's not $350k/day versus $50k/year, unless he can somehow sustain his current income indefinitely (he can't). 3) The value of games publishers and platform developers being willing to talk to you (and having access to development kits, etc) is hard to pu…

"unless he can somehow sustain his current income indefinitely" If he sustains it for 2 weeks he's pretty much set for life.

He's already sustained at least $250k/d for two weeks. These numbers are 100k bigger than the last ones I saw a few weeks ago.

Pretty sure he could BUY Valve at this point. :p

Re: Minecraft creator banks $350k a day, turns down job offers from Valve and Bungie

#44

Post by clistctrl »

kevingadd wrote: post #21
twymer wrote: post #8

Valve: "We heard you were making $350k/day, how would you like a job making $50k/year?"

1) Health care, taxes, payment processing fees, development tools... There are a lot of expenses covered by an employer, especially when you're a game developer. 2) It's not $350k/day versus $50k/year, unless he can somehow sustain his current income indefinitely (he can't). 3) The value of games publishers and platform developers being willing to talk to you (and having access to development kits, etc) is hard to pu…

There is more value in having a large quantity of money at once then that same quantity over time. If he is smart with the money, I would say he (and his children) are set for life.

Re: Minecraft creator banks $350k a day, turns down job offers from Valve and Bungie

#45

Post by vaksel »

zeteo wrote: post #15

The sales graphs are public: http://m00d.net/minecraft/sales/ The best day (9/23) had 25663 sales, or about $255k. This came on top of the server being down (0 sales) for 3 previous days. The recent average is around 10k sales ($100k / day). EDIT: As pointed out by bananaandapple below, the price is in euro not USD, which brings the best day to $347k. The recent average works out to about $136k / day.

according to that he sold 230,441 copies which comes out to €2,292,887.95 euros.

1 euro = $1.36 USD

so that comes out to

$3,118,327.612

After all the fees and costs, that's 3 mil before taxes,

Re: Minecraft creator banks $350k a day, turns down job offers from Valve and Bungie

#46

Post by zacharycohn »

vaksel wrote: post #23
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as a someone who has never played either, it's also shocking because World of Warcraft looks like this: http://www.sopheon.com/Portals/1/WoW%20Screenshot.jpg While Minecraft looks like this: http://www.indiegames.com/blog/images/timw/minecraft.jpg

looks can be changed, my guess is that the first thing he'll do is update the graphics to give the game mainstream appeal. right now people are playing for the gameplay...just like they do with WoW

The graphics are simple on purpose - because the game is essentially infinitely scalable (theoretical max map size is 3x surface of the Earth), simple graphics are super important for not lagging servers and clients to hell.

He's said in interviews that the improvements he wants to make are improvements that make the game more fun. He's not going to add features that won't somehow add fun, and if he finds that something isn't fun, it's out.

Because the graphics are purposely so simplistic, people are okay with that. As soon as you upgrade them and start to make them more modern, you start getting compared to other modern games like WoW, etc.

Keep it simple, people won't worry about the graphics.

Re: Minecraft creator banks $350k a day, turns down job offers from Valve and Bungie

#47

Post by pirko »

Considering that he'd quit his job as a game developer to be able to develop indie games (http://www.minecraft.net/about.jsp) it's not so surprising that he turns down the job offers. And it also seems that he's in the beginning of starting his own company and hiring developers (http://notch.tumblr.com/post/1205447916/im-sorry-about-the-l...)

Re: Minecraft creator banks $350k a day, turns down job offers from Valve and Bungie

#48

Post by kqr2 »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #19
vaksel wrote: post #13

their math is a little bit off, a copy sold every 3 seconds = 28,800 sales a day. Or 10.5 million copies a year. To tell the truth its pretty shocking how minecraft has taken off...the guy will probably end up making 100 million off the game. And if he sticks to iterating it, it might end up making over a billion over it's lifetime(say 40-50 years). Which may seem like a huge number, until you remember that World of…

Speaking as a someone who has never played either, it's also shocking because World of Warcraft looks like this: http://www.sopheon.com/Portals/1/WoW%20Screenshot.jpg While Minecraft looks like this: http://www.indiegames.com/blog/images/timw/minecraft.jpg

Minecraft is more like a lego world.

Recently, someone built a 16-bit ALU in minecraft:

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/09/28/working-computer-mad.ht...

And a 1:1 scale model of the Enterprise D:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/09/the-true-story-be...

Re: Minecraft creator banks $350k a day, turns down job offers from Valve and Bungie

#49

Post by zacharycohn »

gonehome wrote: post #9
klbarry wrote: post #4

It's kinda sad that the Dwarf Fortress creator only earns about 2k a day. It shows what some business savvy will do for you. Then ago, the DF creator is passionatr about his vision, so who knows.

Not sure if it's business savvy. While Dwarf Fortress is a great indie game I don't think it has the wide spread appeal of a game like mine craft. Mine craft's 3D world and game play is more intuitive to your average person. Not to mention Notch's luck with going viral certainly helps as well.

Agree. I played a bit of Dwarf Fortress, and there was definitely a learning curve. Minecraft has, essentially, no initial "how to play" learning curve.
Post reply on HN