141–150 of 245 posts
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Valve couldn't even offer him anything near 100k/day
Which is entirely unsustainable, so not much of an argument against working for another company. If they can offer, say, a million per year, what will the ultimate amount he gets be at 20 years from now? 40 years? Reliability has its uses.
I bought it a few weeks ago but only played twice (no time). My first time playing the demo I immediately was struck by several opportunities 1) converting 2D images into 3D minecraft world for artists and lazy people 2) Connecting 26 adjacent worlds to have a fluid adaptive minecraft universe. As users move from one world to the next it pulls in the data from the next set of adjacent worlds (no crossing lag). Folks…
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a: he doesn't make $350k every day b: valve pays well north of $50k/year c: valve likely has profit sharing of some variety, which could be quite substantial d: likely valve wouldn't just hire him but would purchase his company, giving him a several million dollar lump sum payment Factor that in with the temptation to use valve's resources in developing your game, it's not such a bad deal. Nevertheless, if one is mak…
You still don't need many of those $350k days before you can comfortably "retire" (or whatever we're calling it when you have enough money to live off it forever)
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On a similar note, Minecraft is written in... get this ... Java Which seems to be the dorkiest and most uncool language on the planet if you were to ask HN.
Forget Valve or Bungie, pretty soon Oracle will come knockin' on his door. ;-)
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
The current demand is for games that are fun, not games that are pretty or push your gfx card to the limit. It doesn't have to look polished, but the look has to fit the gameplay.
Minecraft's blocky graphics allow the player to use their imagination a bit. Don't underestimate that.
I don't know where this website pulled their numbers from, but I think they're incorrect. According to Minecraft's stats[1], in the last 24 hours 12,025 people bought the game, times 9.95 Euro = 119,499.50 Euro, which is a bit less than $163k/day in American dollars. [1] http://www.minecraft.net/stats.jsp
A week ago, he was selling up to 36000 copies a day.
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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 someth…
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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
Considering he's made about 4mm, and Valve turned down a multi-billion dollar offer not too long ago, I think you might be a bit off-base. :)
Good news: Indie developers can still get rich doing what they love. Bad news: You will probably not be one of them. ;-)
There it is my hopes dashing on the rocky shore a few thousand feet off this cliff. I wonder how much time Mark Persson spends on HN?
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Best news: You probably can make a pretty good living, even if you don't get rich.
That's a great sentiment. I'm not interested in getting super rich, I'd just like to do interesting work and have some freedom in my life. Hopefully that's not too much to ask.
I'm not the most amazing software developer in the world, nor am I the most astute businessman, but after a little more than decade of work and persistence, I'm in a position where I can do pretty much everything I've always wanted to do. Part of that time was spent figuring out what I actually always wanted to do (age brings clarity of focus, I think). I travel full-time (I'm in Bozeman, MT right now, on my way to Yellowstone), I run a company that builds stuff I'm really proud of and millions of people use, I work with two guys that I really enjoy working with, I occasionally get to meet up with our users and customers and they're awesome, and I make enough money to live on without having to think too much about money, and the revenues continue to grow at a modest but steady rate. I'm definitely not rich, and the subject of this story has made more in a couple months than I've made in four years of running Virtualmin, but I've got nothing to complain about.
Most importantly, I have as much freedom as anyone I know, including several millionaires and a few billionaires.