581–590 of 778 posts
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It can take a lifetime to get good at something, but a few hours of work after that lifetime generally doesn't cost much. Certainly not more than 5 figures.
You’re free to negotiate whatever contract you want with the voice actors you hire.
I didn’t even know it had an ending, and thought the headline to this story was meant to be a joke about it not having an ending.
Poetry is cool, man, but writing this absolute tome of a blogpost about how bitter you are for not getting rich off of a poem is a little bit pathetic. Move on with your life and write more poems.
What exactly is the point of this article? People here are saying it's an "emotional journey" or something. What a load of shit > Early next year, Markus earned a three-million-dollar dividend on his shares in Mojang. But, as the actual value of his company, which he mostly owned, had gone up by many tens of millions, he figured he didn’t really need another three million on top. So he divided it between the twenty-f…
This is like my babysitter observing some windfall in my life and, despite my transaction with them already paid at the rate they negotiated, expecting me to share more with them while using language like “I was a cornerstone of his family but that apparently wasn’t enough” because they watched DVDs with my kid.
I asked ChatGPT to come up with an ending poem for Minecraft. Here's what it wrote: Farewell, dear player, as you venture forth, Leaving this world of blocks and pixels behind. But know that the memories you've made here Will stay with you, etched in your mind. For in this game, we built and explored, Creating our own little universe. But now it's time to move on, To face new challenges and opportunities. As you go,…
If Minecraft were made today, Markus would probably have used GPT just like this to generate the end text, rather than trying to find a human writer. I think it's important for all of us to ask ourselves if we think this is a good thing or not. I'm not going to give my opinion because I don't feel like starting an argument this morning, but I think this is an objectively interesting ethical question especially given…
What I think makes ChatGPT interesting is being able to dynamically generate ending poems that are based on the player and what happened in the game. I replied above with one simple example.
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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.
There are, I believe, a non-negligible number of companies who will write software for you, to a specification, and grant you a (sometimes non-exclusive) license to use that software but absolutely will not give you the copyright. Pretty sure there's a lot of IT companies, for example, that UKGOV contract to which do this.
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> 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. It sounds like an awful, muddy mess that would take a great dea…
He could win in court and then what? Microsoft would remove his poem and nobody would read it ever again. He can only lose.
No, because he retained the copyright. If he won against Microsoft he would a) presumably get a lot of money (financial win), b) strike a small blow for the little guy against megacorps (moral win), and c) still be able to release the poem as CC0 or whatever he wanted (win).
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Indeed. The game would've made $0 less had the ending just said "The End".
The whole point of the post is that there are ways to express value other than dollars. That’s why the author lets go of the dollars and gives the story away for free at the end. Maybe the game would have made the same money. But it’s also true that Markus asked for an ending story, selected this one and put it in, and kept it there.
That may be the author's point, but their egotism also then seems to believe that a significant portion of the non-monetary value of Minecraft is a result of their own brief work on an unskippable wall of text that has a nice sentiment but is quickly forgotten by, I'd guess, nearly everyone that plays the game.
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Did you read the ending text? It's incredibly long. Are you claiming that people have the entire thing tattooed on themselves? I definitely can't see it fitting on a coffee mug in any readable fashion
Did you read the article? There's a picture of someone with one of the lines tattooed on their arm. Obviously people aren't putting whole poem on things
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> an agreed upon offer Where do you see that? I went back and re-read the section and it still seems to say that the negotiations failed and no agreement was reached.
> And eventually Carl threatened to dump me, and get someone else in to write the ending, if I didn’t wrap up the negotiations that day and take his first offer. I was stunned, I didn’t understand what was happening, and so I said, OK, I’ll take whatever the first thing you offered was. The friendship is more important than the money.
I don't think that's a contract. We need an offer and acceptance (and consideration). More broadly we also need adequate specificity to determine the essential terms.
Here there were two essential terms: 1) the author would write a poem for use in Minecraft, and 2) Minecraft would pay consideration.
Stepping through the rounds:
1. ... skip prior rounds ... 2. Minecraft demands that Julian accept Minecraft's first offer. [This is not an offer because it does not specify the essential term, consideration.] 3. Julian agrees to accept Minecraft's first offer. [This is also not an offer, because they still have not indicated what the consideration will be.] 4. Minecraft offers $20,0000 in exchange for the poem. [This is the first offer.] 5. Julian refuses to sign. [This is a rejection of the offer.]