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I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

theeggandtherock.substack.com

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Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#381

Post by jclardy »

bambax wrote: post #315
Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #40

I feel for the guy, making a living off of art is difficult. However, with an extensive email chain explaining the story was written as the ending of Minecraft, even going into detail about how it was to be displayed in game, an agreed upon offer (if a bit vague), and then an exchange of funds - with no immediate attempt to return said funds. I'm no lawyer, but that sounds a lot like a legally binding agreement. > So…

That last quote is damning. The game works well without an ending poem -- or an ending, for that matter. I don't play Minecraft but my kids do, and I don't think they know Minecraft has an ending? I certainly didn't. I always thought Minecraft was this unlimited platform where you build things with no specific purpose, for the pleasure of building, like an infinite Lego set. That said, the rant, while much too long i…

I played it in college, during the beta. There was no ending, no purpose, or quest, and the phenomena was already in full steam. To me part of the appeal was that it was essentially infinite, there was no end. By the year mark when the full version was released, the game was already cemented in history. I've since never seen the ending until reading it in this article.

If he wanted more than $20k he should have asked for it then, but I think the appeal of putting your writing in front of over a hundred million people and a $20,000 check was "enough" compensation for the work, at the time. But resentment grew as the game continued to succeed.

To me this feels like it was written after seeing the Doom music story...which is entirely different as the music of the first (new) doom game was a huge part of its success. This is literally the opposite as the text was tacked on after the game was already successful (Just not yet at its peak success.) And in some ways feels like it is inviting MS lawyers to intervene, but he has much less of a standing.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#382

Post by wink »

wickedsight wrote: post #302
cmeacham98 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest problem with the post is the massive ego the author seems to have about the impact and importance of their writing. To be frank, the author made little to no meaningful contributions to Minecraft's success. The author is so self-centered they belittle the contributions of other Mojang employees and seem to genuinely believe their contribution is on the same level as people like Jeb and C418. They literally…

> the author made little to no meaningful contributions to Minecraft's success Any success exists because of the sum of its parts. I have never played Minecraft, but I've played Portal. The ending to Portal was emotional, it was the cherry on top of a great game. That song and the emotion that came with it is still ingrained in me and is part of why I still recommend Portal to people who haven't played it. Would I ha…

I'm not taking any side here but I don't think your comparison holds.

Portal is as much a story-driven game as it is about the mechanics. I know very few people who played Portal after they finished it, except maybe replaying it.

Contrast to Minecraft, where at least my peer group (adults already as of 2011), just spent hours, days, months building stuff on a map, completely ignoring the "story". I actually heard about this poem for the first time when I read this piece.

I've never finished Minecraft, but I guess I spent a few hundred hours building stuff and in my opinion, "played" it more than other games. But that doesn't mean I'm in any way stating an opinion about compensation or who did something wrong or how important anything is.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#383

Post by wokwokwok »

wikfwikf wrote: post #244
account-5 wrote: post #214

I think a lot of commenters are stuck on the €20k the author was paid for the work and their completely human reaction (jealously, etc) to seeing the payout other people who worked on the game got after the buy out. Yes they got paid for producing the work, yes they were jealous. Yes they reacted like most humans would. But, that €20k did not cover the copyrights to the work. Just the creating of it. Regardless as to…

a) Did the author really expect that he would be getting royalties to all the Minecraft end text teatowels and fridge magnets as part of the deal? Clearly, the success of these products is largely correlated with the success of the game rather than the importance of what he wrote. b) If I had wanted to make merch with this text on it last week but had been deterred by fear of M$ lawyers, I wouldn't really feel any di…

> His claim to own the rights in the first place is totally dubious.

Whether you care for him as a human or not is entirely irrelevant to the rights to his work.

If there was no legal agreement, he retains the rights to it.

It’s not ambiguous.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#384

Post by StingyJelly »

wickedsight wrote: post #302
cmeacham98 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest problem with the post is the massive ego the author seems to have about the impact and importance of their writing. To be frank, the author made little to no meaningful contributions to Minecraft's success. The author is so self-centered they belittle the contributions of other Mojang employees and seem to genuinely believe their contribution is on the same level as people like Jeb and C418. They literally…

> the author made little to no meaningful contributions to Minecraft's success Any success exists because of the sum of its parts. I have never played Minecraft, but I've played Portal. The ending to Portal was emotional, it was the cherry on top of a great game. That song and the emotion that came with it is still ingrained in me and is part of why I still recommend Portal to people who haven't played it. Would I ha…

I've played both and it's apples to oranges, dry rotten oranges. In portal the story slowly builds up into the grand finale and the ending is indeed emotional knot to tie up the story with a bow.

In minecraft you have a a long preparing to do before frustrating boss fight followed by some scrolling text you likely won't be bothered to read and skip thinking "Well, that was a waste of time." (Not by a fault of the poem but by a fault of game design.) Minecraft is a great sandbox and world exploration game. I see why they wanted to add an "ending" (to make it clear it's out of beta, (releasing on time)) but the ending doesn't make much sense game-wise.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#385

Post by disruptiveink »

mcv wrote: post #267
ohbtvz wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is he asking for nothing? Half of the post is about how Mojang got millions then billions and he got nothing. If he's not asking for what he considers to be his share of the pie, then I don't know what the whole post is about.

It's emblematic for his entire inability to talk about money. He didn't want to talk about money, but he also didn't want his agent to do it for him. He has some highly idealistic beliefs about how money is not important, but he struggles to pay rent. I love his story, I sympathise, and I want Microsoft, or Notch, or Mojang, to just give him a million dollars. But I can also see that his financial struggles are mostl…

This is what does it for me. This was entirely of his own doing. He didn't want to negotiate, didn't want to get his agent involved for either no reason or a reason that he's not explaining, he managed to annoy the CEO of a three person company so much over email that Mojang's Carl lost his patience and told him to either take the deal or go away.

You're trying to ship a game. This writer keeps hitting your inbox with prose that I assume that is about as annoying to read as the original article. He's wasting your time and not getting to the point. You don't know what the guy's deal is and you stopped trying to figure out two emails ago. Compared to all the other things that you need to be doing to actually ship the game, this is incredibly minor and taking up your time daily. You finally tell him, "look, it's 20k or we go look elsewhere".

From that story, the only thing Mojang did wrong is that they didn't send him the contract straight away. We all know he would have signed whatever was on it back then, as he clearly didn't know what he wanted. Looks like someone regretted behaving completely irrationally when closing a deal, then regretted it some more than he never attempted to get more compensation even after the fact (he could have easily gotten something a couple of years later if he had tried, and once more the article completely omits as to why he didn't try to reach out through his agent or anyone that can behave as an adult after the launch) and is now screaming at the universe that he's not being showered with riches and glory when all of this was his own doing, even after he had multiple opportunities to come out winning.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#386

Post by rkangel »

lelanthran wrote: post #163

Quoted post unavailable.

Most of that 47 came along after the game was created as discussed in this quote:

> I was one of the five people who had helped create this strangest of games. (Markus, and later Jens “Jeb” Bergensten, coded the original launch version; Daniel Rosenfeld, known as C418, wrote the music; the Swiss artist Kristoffer Zetterstrand did the in-game paintings ; I wrote the narrative ending. That’s it. That’s the team.)

You may not value his input compared to the coding, music and artwork, but he's part of a small select group that actually produced the original content.

The later team also contributed to later releases of the game I'm sure, as well as customer service, working in the canteen etc., but he's not making an unreasonable point about his contribution.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#387

Post by krisoft »

mcv wrote: post #226
spuz wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My interpretation of the legal status is that the author is entitled to accept the €20k as payment for his time but that amount doesn't constitute payment for the copyright of the work. Mojang subsequently wanted to purchase that copyright and hence why they sent the contract for £1 to be signed. Julian believed the copyright was worth more and so rejected the offer. All that is to say that if my interpretation is co…

> Mojang subsequently wanted to purchase that copyright and hence why they sent the contract for £1 to be signed. That is the move by Mojang that I didn't understand. They were about to be paid 2.5 billion. Why not offer 1 million for the signed contract? They could easily afford that, and with his financial troubles at the time, Julian would probably have signed it. And he'd have missed out on his subsequent persona…

> he'd have missed out on his subsequent personal growth

Maybe. Maybe not. People say these kind of things, but it is often a retcon aimed to help them deal with some emotion.

Maybe he would have asked his agent to agree on a deal. The agent would have got him a tiny percentage and he would have spent the money to bring something wonderfull to the world. During which process he would have attained even more personal growth.

Totally made up story, but so is the hint that if he would have had a contract he would have missed out on personal growth.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#389

Post by mcv »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #351
3np wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could you possibly read that into it? The only blame I see assigned in the text is self-blame. Select snips: > I just misunderstood what was going on. > Now, Carl didn’t do anything wrong here. Carl is not the baddie either. He was a CEO, and major shareholder, behaving the way a CEO and major shareholder is supposed to behave. The misunderstanding was all mine. > But that anger was of course misplaced. If I had…

While the author says this in a few places, the picture he tries to paint is one of a grand misunderstanding. Both sides of the communication just weren't understanding each other. But the reality is that _all_ of the misunderstanding comes from him. There is no "mutual misunderstanding", Mojang understood the conversation perfectly well. The author asked for an offer, Mojang offered $20k, and the author accepted. It…

I think it's fair to say that Carl, and Mojang in general, didn't understand him either. So the understanding was definitely mutual, even if the reason for that was almost entirely Julian's inability and unwillingness to talk about contracts and money, but also not wanting to hand that over to his agent.

But at the same time it's pretty clear he was jealous of all the money he didn't want to talk about, and that he saw himself as a partner rather than a contractor.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#390

Post by [deleted] »

wickedsight wrote: post #302
cmeacham98 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest problem with the post is the massive ego the author seems to have about the impact and importance of their writing. To be frank, the author made little to no meaningful contributions to Minecraft's success. The author is so self-centered they belittle the contributions of other Mojang employees and seem to genuinely believe their contribution is on the same level as people like Jeb and C418. They literally…

> the author made little to no meaningful contributions to Minecraft's success Any success exists because of the sum of its parts. I have never played Minecraft, but I've played Portal. The ending to Portal was emotional, it was the cherry on top of a great game. That song and the emotion that came with it is still ingrained in me and is part of why I still recommend Portal to people who haven't played it. Would I ha…

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