The Minecraft Creator Markus Persson Faces Life After Fame • Hacker News Board

Re: The Minecraft Creator Markus Persson Faces Life After Fame

#41

Post by moultano » Sat, Apr 06, 2013, 9:38 PM UTC

spullara wrote: post #34

DanBC wrote: post #6

> Computer magazines of the day would print strings of code on their back pages, which could be transcribed by the reader to create a playable game, and this code-by-numbers task gave Persson his first experience of what would later become his profession. “My sister would read the lines out to me and I would tap them into the computer,” he says. “After a while, I figured out that if you didn’t type out exactly what t…

This story is incredibly common amongst my age group (40) in tech. What is the common story amongst those that are 30? 20?

I was bored in class and programmed my graphing calculator.

Re: The Minecraft Creator Markus Persson Faces Life After Fame

#42

Post by recoil » Sat, Apr 06, 2013, 9:39 PM UTC

pjungwir wrote: post #22

What is the longevity of Minecraft? As a social sandbox game, people can play for a long time. We have a habit of treating games like movies, good for one time through, and perhaps most are. But what if some games are more like Legos, playable for years? Instead of a franchise (King's Quest I, King's Quest II, ...), what if there is some other extendable model, like buying a new Lego kit? I have no idea, but Minecraf…

> What is the longevity of Minecraft?

There's an unofficial modding API and thousands of mods [1], some of which are extremely sophisticated. For instance, "Red Power" [2] includes an in-game 6502-based computer for which the author wrote a Forth interpreter that can be used to control in-game objects, and somebody else has embedded a Lua interpreter that can do similar things, IIRC.

There are also dozens of user-created game modes (some of which only have informally-enforced rules) and special maps like "Feed the Beast" [3].

The only games I can think of with comparable amounts of content are MMOs and possibly the Elder Scrolls series, though in both of those cases the content is nothing like as varied, nor does it rely on its user's creativity to anything like the same extent.

Minecraft is very much like Lego, only you can also program your own bricks.

[1] http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Mods

[2] http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/365357-125-eloraams-mods...

[3] http://feed-the-beast.com/

Re: The Minecraft Creator Markus Persson Faces Life After Fame

#43

Post by tufyjggbfhry » Sat, Apr 06, 2013, 9:52 PM UTC

spullara wrote: post #34

DanBC wrote: post #6

> Computer magazines of the day would print strings of code on their back pages, which could be transcribed by the reader to create a playable game, and this code-by-numbers task gave Persson his first experience of what would later become his profession. “My sister would read the lines out to me and I would tap them into the computer,” he says. “After a while, I figured out that if you didn’t type out exactly what t…

This story is incredibly common amongst my age group (40) in tech. What is the common story amongst those that are 30? 20?

I started when I was 18 in college. 35 now

Re: The Minecraft Creator Markus Persson Faces Life After Fame

#44

Post by jgoney » Sat, Apr 06, 2013, 9:55 PM UTC

"Last year, Persson earned over a hundred million dollars from the game and its merchandise."

If you made that kind of money, why would you even bother to do anything but just retire and enjoy life?

Re: The Minecraft Creator Markus Persson Faces Life After Fame

#45

Post by DanBC » Sat, Apr 06, 2013, 9:56 PM UTC

jgoney wrote: post #44

"Last year, Persson earned over a hundred million dollars from the game and its merchandise." If you made that kind of money, why would you even bother to do anything but just retire and enjoy life?

I guess he enjoys programming and making games.

Re: The Minecraft Creator Markus Persson Faces Life After Fame

#46

Post by ChikkaChiChi » Sat, Apr 06, 2013, 10:01 PM UTC

jgoney wrote: post #44

"Last year, Persson earned over a hundred million dollars from the game and its merchandise." If you made that kind of money, why would you even bother to do anything but just retire and enjoy life?

Boredom?

Re: The Minecraft Creator Markus Persson Faces Life After Fame

#47

Post by gruseom » Sat, Apr 06, 2013, 10:03 PM UTC

This struck me as extraordinary:

“My strongest early memory is of my dad dragging me through very deep snow on a sled,” he said. “I looked up at him and he seemed annoyed at me. Perhaps it was tough work, dragging me, or perhaps I had been crying. And I realized that—hang on—he’s actually a real person, with his own perception of things. It’s not just me looking at things; he is also looking at things.”

I wonder if it's rare for someone so little to experience empathy so powerfully. Certainly I don't recall realizing anything like that until much later.

The whole story about Notch and his father is very moving.

Re: The Minecraft Creator Markus Persson Faces Life After Fame

#48

Post by steveklabnik » Sat, Apr 06, 2013, 10:03 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #6

> Computer magazines of the day would print strings of code on their back pages, which could be transcribed by the reader to create a playable game, and this code-by-numbers task gave Persson his first experience of what would later become his profession. “My sister would read the lines out to me and I would tap them into the computer,” he says. “After a while, I figured out that if you didn’t type out exactly what t…

> It's kind of weird to think that no-one gets their start like this anymore.

I've gotten bug reports for Hackety Hack where people say "I can't copy and paste from the lessons. Can you fix that?" I reply (obviously at more length and warmth) "Working as intended."

Re: The Minecraft Creator Markus Persson Faces Life After Fame

#49

Post by ilaksh » Sat, Apr 06, 2013, 10:04 PM UTC

kostya-kow wrote: post #33

applecore wrote: post #30

> “I have the ability to get code done, but I’m impatient and it’s scrappy as a result. Maybe that helped me with Minecraft, as it came quickly. But, well, at some point, I’d like to actually become a good programmer.” It's amazing that he doesn't consider himself to be a good programmer. In what other profession would someone as accomplished as Persson say that?

From programmer's perspective, Minecraft is nothing special (and it's written in Java!). There is much better code out there. Quality of programming and success are not necessarily related.

Have you actually seen him coding? From what I have heard/seen on video, he is very fast, his code is readable and relatively concise (for Java). And efficiently displaying this giant fully-modifiable voxel world on all types of hardware is no small feat. Also the procedural landscape generation is fairly brilliant. And the whole crafting system that allowed for world modification. I think you should give him credit for doing a great execution of some really cutting edge ideas.

Re: The Minecraft Creator Markus Persson Faces Life After Fame

#50

Post by trhtrsh » Sat, Apr 06, 2013, 10:05 PM UTC

applecore wrote: post #30

> “I have the ability to get code done, but I’m impatient and it’s scrappy as a result. Maybe that helped me with Minecraft, as it came quickly. But, well, at some point, I’d like to actually become a good programmer.” It's amazing that he doesn't consider himself to be a good programmer. In what other profession would someone as accomplished as Persson say that?

A musician might.

There aren't that many professions were a decent piece of work that makes one person happy can scale up to make a million people happy with minimal marginal effort.