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

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

#181

Post by JabavuAdams »

nihilocrat wrote: post #149
messel wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Probably almost none. It's very rare to find a gaming-related story on HN that gets any popularity, because the HN community overwhelmingly focuses on web development and getting/being filthy rich, which are both uncommon things in indie gamedev.

It's kind of frustrating sometimes, because a lot of these web apps are so trivial technically, compared to games.

OTOH one clear business lesson that experience has taught me is that it doesn't really matter how hard something is to do. What matters is how many people will pay for what you've done, and how much they'll pay.

Difficulty can be a moat to deter competitors, but that's about it.

Still, sometimes the "I wrote web app, I'm teh hot programmer!" can be annoying to us systems types.

returns to putting money where mouth is...

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

#182

Post by boucher »

runjake wrote: post #72
aresant wrote: post #6

The most refreshing part of this story is that it's not about the Apple / Google / etc App stores. Shows that exceptional indie products can get huge traction on a traditional platform, sort of like Braid on XBOX / PC / etc. That said, also excites me for the future when MSFT's & Apple's standard OS come with a servicable app store baked in.

iOS basically is Apple's standard OS at this point. I wouldn't be surprised if Mac OS X was renamed to "iOS Development Environment" at the next WWDC. It seems pretty clear that at some point iOS (and a desktop version of its touch paradigm) will be the future on Mac desktops.

I think we're going to see Xcode for Windows before we see iOS running on Macs. In other words, I wouldn't be surprised if there was no more Mac in five years.

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

#183

Post by [deleted] »

recoil wrote: post #175
nihilocrat wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think there is another language out there that could have given Minecraft the kind of success that it's had (The same applies to Runescape). Many Windows users have a JVM + the Java plugin installed already, and the only other widely-known plugin that gives the kind of 3D performance that you can extract out of Java is Unity3D. While Unity is easy enough to install, it's been around for a lot less long and it…

[deleted]

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

#185

Post by Groxx »

kranner wrote: post #151
Groxx wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if it might be a requirement (or nearly) for run-away successes though, while obviously not sufficient for it.

Careful, you never know if Malcolm Gladwell is lurking here.

I'm not aware of that reference... care to enlighten me? The wikipedia entry didn't really answer it for me.

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

#186

Post by jamesgeck0 »

zacharycohn wrote: post #49
gonehome wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Crafting is the biggest part of the learning curve right now, although Notch has some ideas about how to address it. One way might be by having the player unlock "recipes" as they gather resources and experiment.

Redstone is the other part of the game with an epic learning curve. It can be used to craft functional logic gates. Some guy on YouTube made a massive ALU using it...

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

#187

Post by scrame »

Groxx wrote: post #185
kranner wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Careful, you never know if Malcolm Gladwell is lurking here.

I'm not aware of that reference... care to enlighten me? The wikipedia entry didn't really answer it for me.

Malcolm Gladwell writes books about "success" where he uses many anecdotal (albeit fascinating) stories to come to a very vague conclusion of how people can be "successful". GP was referring to "qualities of success" (passion, writing something for yourself), which don't necessarily cause success.

It was tongue-in-cheek.

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

#188

Post by jsolson »

boucher wrote: post #182
runjake wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS basically is Apple's standard OS at this point. I wouldn't be surprised if Mac OS X was renamed to "iOS Development Environment" at the next WWDC. It seems pretty clear that at some point iOS (and a desktop version of its touch paradigm) will be the future on Mac desktops.

I think we're going to see Xcode for Windows before we see iOS running on Macs. In other words, I wouldn't be surprised if there was no more Mac in five years.

So, I know Apple is making a lot of money off of iPods, iPads, and iPhones, but they still had 33% year-over-year growth in Mac sales last quarter.

I don't think the Mac is going anywhere soon. I do think we'll see substantially changes to Cocoa with a lot of things (coughbindingscough) being effectively deprecated in 10.7. I expect the next revision of AppKit to look a lot more like UIKit.

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

#190

Post by lelele »

nihilocrat wrote: post #39
aresant wrote: post #6

The most refreshing part of this story is that it's not about the Apple / Google / etc App stores. Shows that exceptional indie products can get huge traction on a traditional platform, sort of like Braid on XBOX / PC / etc. That said, also excites me for the future when MSFT's & Apple's standard OS come with a servicable app store baked in.

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.

Uncool when it comes to up-voting, but quite cool when it comes about hiring, it seems.
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