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I'm Leaving Mojang

notch.net

111–120 of 436 posts

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#111
There was once a businessman who was sitting by the beach in a small Brazilian village. As he sat, he saw a Brazilian fisherman rowing a small boat towards the shore having caught quite few big fish. The businessman was impressed and asked the fisherman, “How long does it take you to catch so many fish?” The fisherman replied, “Oh, just a short while.” “Then why don’t you stay longer at sea and catch even more?” The businessman was astonished. “This is enough to feed my whole family,” the fisherman said. The businessman then asked, “So, what do you do for the rest of the day?” The fisherman replied, “Well, I usually wake up early in the morning, go out to sea and catch a few fish, then go back and play with my kids. In the afternoon, I take a nap with my wife, and evening comes, I join my buddies in the village for a drink — we play guitar, sing and dance throughout the night.”

The businessman offered a suggestion to the fisherman. “I am a PhD in business management. I could help you to become a more successful person. From now on, you should spend more time at sea and try to catch as many fish as possible. When you have saved enough money, you could buy a bigger boat and catch even more fish. Soon you will be able to afford to buy more boats, set up your own company, your own production plant for canned food and distribution network. By then, you will have moved out of this village and to Sao Paulo, where you can set up HQ to manage your other branches.”

The fisherman continues, “And after that?” The businessman laughs heartily, “After that, you can live like a king in your own house, and when the time is right, you can go public and float your shares in the Stock Exchange, and you will be rich.” The fisherman asks, “And after that?” The businessman says, “After that, you can finally retire, you can move to a house by the fishing village, wake up early in the morning, catch a few fish, then return home to play with kids, have a nice afternoon nap with your wife, and when evening comes, you can join your buddies for a drink, play the guitar, sing and dance throughout the night!” The fisherman was puzzled, “Isn’t that what I am doing now?”

http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2010/09/08/the-fisherman-and-the-...

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#112

Basically "I was successful once, it was awful". Sometimes I wish he would have just stuck with Minecraft as the only developer and stayed away from the spotlight. Plenty of very popular game creators have done so (Icefrog, Toady One). I really enjoyed the times back when Minecraft was just getting popular and you could tell Notch was adding features that he genuinely enjoyed (Redstone update, for instance). Then he…

More like “I was famous once, it was awful.”

His fame had never much of anything to do with the success of Minecraft. It just came with it and it didn’t really work out. It doesn’t seem like he has a problem with many people playing his game (or making money doing what he loves to do), he has a problem with being famous.

Watch the video he references, it makes many of the same points.

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#113

> I don’t see myself as a real game developer. I make games because it’s fun, and because I love games and I love to program, but I don’t make games with the intention of them becoming huge hits, and I don’t try to change the world. I think that's the essence of being a real game developer. It's sad that Notch feels this way, I think the majority of old school games guys and girls were just like that. Since it's beco…

Preposterous. If it wasn't about the money, could have gone open-source at any time with the same effect/relief. Of course its about the $2B

That is ridiculous. Most people are able to figure out that they are better off with money then without, even if the money are not primary motivation. There is no contradiction in it.

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#114

> I don’t see myself as a real game developer. I make games because it’s fun, and because I love games and I love to program, but I don’t make games with the intention of them becoming huge hits, and I don’t try to change the world. I think that's the essence of being a real game developer. It's sad that Notch feels this way, I think the majority of old school games guys and girls were just like that. Since it's beco…

Preposterous. If it wasn't about the money, could have gone open-source at any time with the same effect/relief. Of course its about the $2B

At any point he could have said "I have enough now" and lowered the price of Minecraft to a sustaining level, or made it open source, or just stopped developing it.

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#115

There was once a businessman who was sitting by the beach in a small Brazilian village. As he sat, he saw a Brazilian fisherman rowing a small boat towards the shore having caught quite few big fish. The businessman was impressed and asked the fisherman, “How long does it take you to catch so many fish?” The fisherman replied, “Oh, just a short while.” “Then why don’t you stay longer at sea and catch even more?” The…

And then the fisherman got a horrible toothache and there was nothing he could do about it. A few years later, overfishing led to near-depletion of the local supply, and new restrictions were implemented on fishing licenses. The fisherman was unable to afford one, and yet he had no other means of supporting his family. By the end of the decade his wife and children were begging on the street.

Meanwhile, the businessman was getting a massage at a ski resort in Switzerland.

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#116
post #94
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually quite inspiring. He's essentially saying that he's chasing curiosity instead of profits. A lot of us would love to be able to do that. For many of us, it's why we got into programming or engineering in the first place...

How is that inspiring? To me, it's incredibly depressing. It's basically saying that he will aim to make mediocre (or terrible) things now that he has more money than he needs. This means that unless I win the lottery of life, I am condemned to doing what I'm doing and if I actually do succeed in what I'm doing, I'll never want to touch anything like it again. Edit: Sorry that I inadvertently insulted one of your her…

Terrible or mediocre for whom? The audience? He clearly states he is doing this for himself, so let him be the judge of that.

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#117
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pretty well known that JK Rowling is a woman. Also, she has recently written some books under the pen name "Robert Galbraith". Edit: I see above that the poster was referring to Notch. Just a simple case of an unclear antecedent (and being unfamiliar with Notch's and Rowling's recently releases ;) )

Interesting note, if an author uses a pseudonym of a different gender, its appropriate to use that gender of the pseudonym. I find it weird that James Tiptree, Jr. is still a "he" when we've known for decades it was Alice Bradley Sheldon's pen name. In fact, Tiptree, not Sheldon, has been inducted into the science fiction hall of fame, which is even weirder.

I don't think I've ever met anyone - in real life or in the UK educational system, anyway - who referred to George Eliot as being a "he" without instantly being corrected.

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#118

"It's not about the money (BECAUSE I HAVE TWO BILLION OF THEM!)." Haha, and who can blame Notch, I wouldn't work a day in my life and become a full time carpenter for the rest of my life.

He already had "fuck you money" before that deal, it's not like he needed the deal for that.

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#119
post #75

He should not give a fuck about random people on the internet, but just about opinions of the few he knows in one way or the other and respect. I understand this is more complex to do than to say, but still, how to have fun working in the current IT development scene without this crucial step, especially for a famous person like him?

Don't run a company. You cannot run any kind of business without caring what people think and are saying about you.

You can get a "general feeling" about your customers without actually feeling responsible/bad about the individual opinion of each of your users. Actually IMHO it is probably not possible to run a company caring in depth about everyone of your users. Of course there is from time to time this totally stranger that may send you a well argued / fact-supported opinion that may ring some bell, and this is great when happens, but here I believe we are talking about "Notch you suck because of the TOS change!" or similar toned messages.

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#120
post #32

> I don’t see myself as a real game developer. I make games because it’s fun, and because I love games and I love to program, but I don’t make games with the intention of them becoming huge hits, and I don’t try to change the world. I think that's the essence of being a real game developer. It's sad that Notch feels this way, I think the majority of old school games guys and girls were just like that. Since it's beco…

>I don’t make games with the intention of them becoming huge hits, and I don’t try to change the world. >I think that's the essence of being a real game developer. Really? (to be read with the least amount of snark possible) I think most game developers have the same sort of mindsets as other people in creative fields, and while the objective is to make great games, most developers seem to have that little twinkle in…

Phil Fish "needs" to hide because he's an asshole who, amongst many other things, successfully bullied a sexual assault victim into apologizing for talking about the fact that he'd been sexually assaulted.

Edit: and even then he doesn't have to hide from the internet except to avoid the flamefests he keeps actively starting, fueling, and turning into Twitter pileons against people he dislikes if he doesn't.

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