I'm Leaving Mojang

> This is why we can't have nice things.

This is a nice thing.

Notch gets the resources and freedom to do what he actually wants to be doing: Exploring and experimenting with game ideas. And Minecraft gets to continue developing as a product people enjoy.

This is really a sad statement about the evil "consumers." It does not happen only to simple nerdy game developers. It happens to everybody who does something huge.

It happens to small business owners. Then, people "tell them" that they "must" raise the wages of their employees, without ever having created a small business.

It happens to activists. Then, people "tell" them they "must" support this other cause, when those activists simply want to change a small part of the world that they care about.

It bothers me the most when it happens to presidents. (Pres. Bush, Pres. Obama, depending on your political inclinations). Just simple guys asked to carry the weight of a nation just because they were at the right time, the right place, did the right things, a few mistakes, wanted to change the world a little, and worked really hard.

Maybe all of us who instead of sweating are going for the ride should simply enjoy the game. Just put a few blocks on the game, build a small tiny house, put a glass window, a small bed in there with the tiny cool candle on the wall (my favorite block in Minecraft), and stare out the window. And watch for creepers.

But leave these folks alone to do what we did not do, and let them enjoy a reward for their hard work.

The other day there was a post about some Doom map viewer Notch had written in Dart. One of the top comments said something along the lines of "This is why we all need to be rich, so we can work on stuff like this." I thought the comment was so sad because honestly, almost no one is going to benefit from a mostly broken Doom map viewer in Dart that's abandoned after a few days. Same with the numerous games he's started (often with no idea where he's going) and abandoned after a few hours/days. Don't get me wrong, I like watching his coding stream as much as the next person, but compare that to the millions of people who benefitted from the sustained and focused effort on Minecraft.

Notch says:

> If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I’ll probably abandon it immediately.

So sad. Imagine if Jobs/the PayPal guys/etc had taken this approach after their initial succcess.

Now I'm all for people being free to do what they want and only this guy owns his life and no one is entitled to have him work for them (hat tip Ayn Rand), and obviously this guy has had a bigger impact on the world than I have, but I tend to agree with Immanuel Kant (and Jesus) that we all have a duty to develop and use our talents in a way that benefits humanity and not just indulge ourselves in idle amusement once we're comfortable. And to be honest, this probably applies more to me than to Notch.

From "Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals":

> A third finds in himself a talent which with the help of some culture might make him a useful man in many respects. But he finds himself in comfortable circumstances and prefers to indulge in pleasure rather than to take pains in enlarging and improving his happy natural capacities. He asks, however, whether his maxim of neglect of his natural gifts, besides agreeing with his inclination to indulgence, agrees also with what is called duty. He sees then that a system of nature could indeed subsist with such a universal law although men ... should let their talents rest and resolve to devote their lives merely to idleness, amusement, and propagation of their species- in a word, to enjoyment; but he cannot possibly will that this should be a universal law of nature, or be implanted in us as such by a natural instinct. For, as a rational being, he necessarily wills that his faculties be developed, since they serve him and have been given him, for all sorts of possible purposes.

> I think that's the essence of being a real game developer.

I think that's the eseence of being a real X, X = insert whatever you claim to be in.

In my mind I divide companies (and professionals) by whether their occupation is an instrumental or terminal goal. As an example, advancing rocketry and electrifying transport to advance humanity is a terminal goal for Elon Musk. I.e he cares about that and works on Tesla and SpaceX to achieve that. Contrast with most of companies, that do what they do as an instrument to get money. Such company, for which i.e. making cars is an instrumental goal would gladly switch to producing toilet paper if it was a more profitable sector. I like to refer to such a company as "toilet-paper company".

For an example that would likely appeal to the audience here, toilet-paper companies are common in start-up world nowadays. That new SaaS business that tells you (i.e. lies) how it cares about users and solving their problems, while the founders are planning on getting acquired by Google/Amazon/etc. and dumping the product (aka. exit) - that is a paper-toilet startup. Whatever sells.

What's the value I find by dividing companies by whether their work is terminal or instrumental for them? For one, I tend to trust former much more than the latter, because I expect that they'll optimize their product primarily for solving the stated problems and not primarily for selling ability.

So basically, Notch doesn't want to be a paper-toilet game developer; he wants to make games.

I would love to see him consider investing in other video game projects. There is a game 10x better than Minecraft out there somewhere and he has the money to find it.