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I'm Leaving Mojang

notch.net

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Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#151

Post by jedmeyers »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #136
jedmeyers wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the beginning of humanity people have been slaves to the necessity of survival.

Yes, but for the first time ever, we've reached the theoretical capacity to change that. What's funny (for some definitions of fun), we will actually need to do that - given how our current economy pushes automation to replace humans everywhere, we can either accept that people should be allowed to live and thrive without having to earn for the living, or we'll see a massive increase of poverty.

I would like to ask if you have any hard data or studies that prove your first point, or you just feel that this is indeed the case? The reality is that there is no "we", there is no "economy" that pushes something - there are specific people and groups of people, like governments and corporations. Everyone is "allowed" to live and thrive if you have the means to do it. And being in poverty now has much more benefits to it than being relatively rich 200 years ago.

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#152

Post by cwyers »

iand wrote: post #114
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm glad that you're so up-to-date on the terms of Notch's contracts with Mojang that you can tell us with certainty that at any point he could have altered that relationship and had the public stop associating him with Minecraft's stewardship. It's good to have people in-the-know around.

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#153

Post by yalogin »

melvinmt wrote: post #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…

Posting this to the wrong crowd here aren't you?

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#154

Post by jedmeyers »

calibraxis wrote: post #148
jedmeyers wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the beginning of humanity people have been slaves to the necessity of survival.

In modern times, it's unnecessarily being slaves to bosses, whose commands wageslaves obey all day. We were born in a goofy time.

So, no one had to obey bosses' commands in previous times?

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#155

Post by ErikRogneby »

This was the hardest line to read: "If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I’ll probably abandon it immediately."

I hope when he says "abandon" he means upload it on github with an MIT license.

Seriously though, what a horrible thing to be fearful of creating something that people might like.

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#156

Post by pingwing »

I don't blame the guy and now he has plenty of money to do what he wants and not deal with the bullshit. Corporate America sucks. it is a horrible "culture". Not everyone wants fame, fortune maybe, but not fame.

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#157

Post by jrochkind1 »

gbog wrote: post #83
krelian wrote: post #29

This whole Minecraft thing has been very interesting to follow. I tried the game a few times and it's not really for me but everything around Notch's story is interesting (I bet their going to make a movie about this at some point). Not everyone can be an entrepreneur and I feel that in this case (on a different scale of course), we basically watched a plausible version of how Apple could have gotten started if there…

> there are many here that dream of having their idea be a huge success but aren't really interested in becoming the next Bill Gates or Zuckerberg. I think it's more than you think. I think Notch expressed clearly that he did not expect nor want his project to become a big hit. He may have been flattered for a while but he now sees it clearly: success is shit, big success is a shitstorm. The exact opposite of the ent…

Of course, it being a big hit is what gives him enough money that he now can live comfortably while working on whatever the hell he wants without worrying about making money.

I'm not critisizing him, I'm glad he has that opportunity, and I'm glad he's recognized what opportunity he wants (which is apparently NOT the opportunity to try and make even more money).

But it's a bit more complicated than "success is shit", success is what's allowed him to ignore success from here on out, without having to worry about a roof over his head, health care, etc.

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#158

Post by izolate »

gamesurgeon wrote: post #18

"I’m not an entrepreneur. I’m not a CEO. I’m a nerdy computer programmer who likes to have opinions on Twitter...If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I’ll probably abandon it immediately." I have the utmost respect for notch after reading that.

Same. He's my type of hacker. The best type.

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#159

Post by [deleted] »

willvarfar wrote: post #99
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmTUW-owa2w , presumably is the "This Is Phil Fish" video referenced ("talking about Phil is talking about fame"). http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=PmT... for the tl;dr.

Got a text summary for the phone users please?

[deleted]

Re: I'm Leaving Mojang

#160

Post by TeMPOraL »

jedmeyers wrote: post #151
TeMPOraL wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but for the first time ever, we've reached the theoretical capacity to change that. What's funny (for some definitions of fun), we will actually need to do that - given how our current economy pushes automation to replace humans everywhere, we can either accept that people should be allowed to live and thrive without having to earn for the living, or we'll see a massive increase of poverty.

I would like to ask if you have any hard data or studies that prove your first point, or you just feel that this is indeed the case? The reality is that there is no "we", there is no "economy" that pushes something - there are specific people and groups of people, like governments and corporations. Everyone is "allowed" to live and thrive if you have the means to do it. And being in poverty now has much more benefits…

> I would like to ask if you have any hard data or studies that prove your first point, or you just feel that this is indeed the case?

I don't think one needs to go and find hard studies to realize that we're living in times of prosperity, producing more food than needed, being able to construct a shelter for everyone and that more and more jobs are getting automated. But for citations and elaborations on that I direct you to any random HN discussion about automation and/or basic income; they seem to happen here every other month.

> The reality is that there is no "we", there is no "economy" that pushes something - there are specific people, governments and corporations.

The reality is, there are no specific people. The world at this level doesn't work like that. Human volition, randomness of individual values, all average out creating a predictable mass behaviour, following the incentive structures as surely and as predictably as water flows toward lowest points, going along the shape of underlying terrain.

This is econ 101, I don't think I need to support that with citations. There is The Economy, we can treat it as a complex system made of individual humans that still behaves in predictable ways, much in the same way we can talk about human beings and their behaviours without referencing all those cells human bodies are made of.

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