421–430 of 778 posts
The person who really got screwed in all this is poor Charlie, the agent. Here he is managing deals for Julian getting a percentage of those deals and Julian it sounds like is not making much, so Charlie probably isn't making much off Julian either. Julian goes and basically gives away his most successful work to ruthless Mojang and Charlie gets nothing for it at all because Julian keeps Charlie in the dark. Charlie…
Though I've come to understand that in this world you have to be ruthless when it comes to your interests. And I don't mean it in the "wolf of wall street level of ruthlessness" sense – all I'm saying is that you shouldn't allow others to walk all over you, even for things that are relatively small.
It can be difficult for some of us, but it will end up feeling very liberating in the end.
That's a lot of anger, negativity and bitterness, and entitlement (one of the game's creators for writing the ending text?). Reminds me of the kid on the cover of the Nevermind album and other people that are kinda tangentially connected to something massively successful, but not connected enough to benefit materially, and they let that define who they are and ruin their lives. Could have been a neat personal story,…
Im honestly chocked that people react so negatively to this piece. Yes, the author expresses many negative and self centered emotions. He is very clear about that. It is part of the story. It is a story about being a flawed person. I sympathize with him. I loved this piece. I hope he truly did let go of all the hangups he described. And it does seem that he actually did sell the the rights of use to microsoft, making…
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Of course I do, but I don't expect people to excuse me of them or ignore them, just because I say them. The OP isn't expecting that, but other people in this thread are expecting it on his behalf. I don't even think the OP wants people to excuse his flaws, like people in this thread seem to want to insist on doing.
This is called "empathy".
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He payed, and the writer accepted. That's it. It is a reasonable amount of money for the kind of work that was completed. Both sides didn't clear up the legal side of things, yes, but it doesn't change the fact that both were OK with it until... until what? What did change? The writer wanted more... money? Recognition?
You haven't answered the question. That Mojang paid some money isn't disputed. What they paid for is the unknown. > It is a reasonable amount of money for the kind of work that was completed. Paying to use something isn't the same as paying to own it and from what we know use vs own wasn't clarified at the time. > Both sides didn't clear up the legal side of things, yes, but it doesn't change the fact that both were…
That's a bad legal definition. It needs a clarification which usually comes in a form of a contract.
Mojang clearly acted un-professionally: there's money on the table without a clear job definition. What happens with the copyright? Authorship? Should the author be mentioned in the game? etc.
Same goes to the writer, obviously. Even this post sounds almost... Jealous?
The contract they suggested is a standard document suggested to contractors of the kind in IT. This is not "strong arming". The only thing that changes the discussion is the fact that it happened post-factum. And the text author, having seen the success of the game, is clearly not satisfied with just signing the doc.
He mentions money a lot so, i guess, this is root the problem.
Either way. 99.99% of Minecraft players would still play and enjoy the game with or without this text. It's a nice little touch to a brilliant game, not much beyond it.
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That was my reaction too, 20,000 (euros) seems quite decent for a tiny freelance engagement, and just skimming the contract, that all seems bog-standard, too. If he didn't think the money was fair, he shouldn't have accepted it. I expect Mojang would have simply pulled the plug and gone with someone else if he had done so. This really just smacks of sour grapes that Mojang was sold for squillions and the author feels…
> just skimming the contract, that all seems bog-standard, too. It is, and that's the problem. From way down the post: BEGIN QUOTE Copyright law was originally brought in to help artists make a living. But over the past century, corporations like Disney, Sony, Universal, and Microsoft, have lobbied hard to twist those laws out of shape. Now, the vast power imbalance between rich corporations and poor artists (particu…
Honestly, that's true at a lot of levels, not just the poverty level. It is said if you want to make a million dollars running a recording studio… spend three million dollars. If you want to be a million dollar rock star… invest (or have your family invest) ten million. It's like that.
It's like, you can wear rags, or you can wear a suit, or you can wear a Superman cape. Would you like to for-real wear that Superman cape, to be the hero? Well, you can, for real. And it will cost you everything, more than you could imagine.
I read this guy's essay in part because he WAS the Minecraft Story Guy, not because I thought he'd have good arguments. That's what he earned, and that's what it cost him (didn't sign up for his mailing list tho :) )
After he dies (assuming I don't go first) I'll remember things about his words. After Markus dies I won't remember a thing about his money (though I'll remember things about the game he made, he's not so different in that respect). I won't remember a thing about the Microsoft lawyers no matter whether they win or lose, whether they enjoin this guy from public-domaining what they see as their employer's property. So in a sense that thing didn't end up being their property and that's the writer's point.
It all gets into philosophic realms, and that's where poets live, not lawyers.
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Isn't the whole point that the author thinks he deserves more compensation than he got? He's quoting the compensation for various Mojang employees and comparing it to what he got. He seems quite jelaous and/or entitled. 20000€ would in most European countries be a pretty good compensation for about 3 months of work, after taxes. It doesn't seem unreasonable on the face of it.
I would be shocked if the Minecraft end text took 3 months to write.
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If flaws were fine things to be accepted, then they wouldn't be classified as flaws. What is society if we just accept all problems as part of the person or else society will be toxic? Also has there ever been a society where flaws are just accepted without any kind of judgement? I would suggest that in those societies they simply did not classify them as flaws. > If we all just accept that everyone has flaws and we…
> Also has there ever been a society where flaws are just accepted without any kind of judgement? We're moving goal posts here. You asked whether it was socially acceptable to be a flawed person and I responded to that specifically. I never wrote that any and every flaw should be accepted. That's very different from accepting that everyone is flawed in some way or another and actually dealing with those flaws in stea…
No I'm not moving the goalposts at all. It's not socially acceptable to be a flawed person by definition, that's why they are called flaws.
> That's hilarious in a period where politics is turning into nothing more than pointing out the flaws of others, whether those flaws exist or not. Attack ads have become more common than ads talking about plans and politics. There are entire TV shows only taking about flaws of others. All while pretending that the people judging others are in some way not flawed at all.
Yes because those fulfil our desires of the fact that we don't openly attack others' flaws in day to day life. If anything they are proof of our starvation of healthy judgement.
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> Imagine if all the developers expected to both be paid to write code and still own the rights to the code. Developers are accustomed to giving up all artistic agency and authorship, and those who can’t bring themselves to do so give up on being developers. (I’m partly in the latter category.) Thankfully, that isn’t (yet?) as ubiquitous among writers.
What other profession expects to be paid for producing work and expects to keep the result of the work? The guy got £20,000 for some pages of babel. He should be elated.
The definition of “keep” in that sentence is the principal question of copyright, isn’t?
That is to say, if I produce a physical object at someone’s behest, I have to completely give up on the result in order for them to have unrestricted use of it, for reasons of physics. There are no such reasons for texts, computer programs, and so on, unless imposed artificially by law.
(I’m not going to call something good just because it’s the natural state of things, but neither am I going to automatically consider something reasonable just because it’s the law.)
For example, if I’m employed as a teacher, a good portion of my work is producing notes to give lectures from or to hand out to students, so that’s partly what I’m being paid for. Yet it’d be pretty normal for me to then publish them in some form, for money or not, without my employer trying to lay claim to them.
Even a developer who is employed by virtue of his experience in databases is generally not precluded from publishing a book summarizing that same experience for others to use.
> The guy got £20,000 for some pages of [babble]. He should be elated.
I don’t know anything about his situation, but a freelancer’s budgeting always has to account for the time spent waiting or searching for the next gig; being paid fabulously for a job that occupies your every waking hour for a month, then spending the next two sucking on your thumb (and recovering from the overtaxing sprint you’ve just had) is pretty normal, and on average the money ends up much less abundant than you’d guess just looking at the numbers. (Unless you’re Brandon Sanderson and can finish a novel a year, I guess.)
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He payed, and the writer accepted. That's it. It is a reasonable amount of money for the kind of work that was completed. Both sides didn't clear up the legal side of things, yes, but it doesn't change the fact that both were OK with it until... until what? What did change? The writer wanted more... money? Recognition?
You haven't answered the question. That Mojang paid some money isn't disputed. What they paid for is the unknown. > It is a reasonable amount of money for the kind of work that was completed. Paying to use something isn't the same as paying to own it and from what we know use vs own wasn't clarified at the time. > Both sides didn't clear up the legal side of things, yes, but it doesn't change the fact that both were…
Would the author even bother with writing this post if not for game's success? Would he go to court? General public?