Exactly. To quote Notch again: “I’ve become a symbol. I don’t want to be a symbol.”
It seems like a bunch of people have imposed some persona on Notch, and now they’re angry that he doesn’t fit into their ideas about how he should act. “He’s selling out his core ethics” really means “some of my assumptions were wrong and that makes me mad”.
I suppose this is an example of the fan entitlement that so many indie developers are (rightfully) complaining about lately. It’s sad to see, but I guess this is a symptom of “indie” becoming a marketable thing.
When will people learn that it’s not the names or titles or promises or anything we say that brings success.
It’s what we do and how we do it.
“Minecraft”, “Mojang”, and “Indie” can be corrupted, but the original ideas behind them will carry on. Lots of people are stupid and can be fooled at first, but even they will eventually realise the words they are told are just empty.
If Minecraft falls because of Microsoft, it opens the door for something new. While I think this is the beginning of the end for Minecraft, I don’t really care.
My one concern is the future of Oxeye and their game Cobalt, who were publishing through Mojang. Microsoft better keep their grubby hands of that.
He already “left” Java two years ago. He’s been working on things with Unity and Dart/WebGL in the meantime.
I’m going to be 100% honest here, I don’t blame him.
As @KevinWorkman had said earlier, people have basically turned Notch’s public image into an arrogant, clichéd hipster that calls himself an ‘Indie Game Developer’, who is some kind of sage of the video games industry and spews out controversial opinions on Twitter every once in a while. The reality is that Notch is just a hobbyist game developer who had become successful for once. He isn’t a god, he isn’t a complete hipster either. He isn’t a game design genius, nor is he an authority on video game development. He’s just a hobbyist programmer just like you and me, just like most of the people who go on this forum. He literally just is a JGO-tier game programmer. People should stop seeing and treating him as to that of how others see and treat him.
As for the Mojang/Microsoft deal itself… I don’t really give a damn. More power to Mojang for actually going through with it. Now I haven’t played Minecraft in a while, but I’m pretty sure everybody who’s played it knows that it’s pretty much a gigantic clusterf**k right now. If Microsoft has any impact on Minecraft’s development, let’s hope to goodness it’s a positive one. Maybe they’ll get professional developers in on the project so it will, as people have suggested earlier, stop looking like the world’s biggest hobbyist/pet project.
I think everybody, including myself, is just being a douche about the deal.
I’m no Mojang/Notch fanboy, but those are just my two-cents on the situation.
What does that mean? There is a broad mix of hobbyist to seasoned developers here. Wear JGO -tier programmer as a badge of honor
[quote]As for the Mojang/Microsoft deal itself… I don’t really give a damn. More power to Mojang for actually going through with it. Now I haven’t played Minecraft in a while, but I’m pretty sure everybody who’s played it knows that it’s pretty much a gigantic clusterf**k right now.
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You do?!? Hmmm…millions of players don’t, I guess? Oh, you haven’t played it in a while. Got it
[quote]If Microsoft has any impact on Minecraft’s development, let’s hope to goodness it’s a positive one. Maybe they’ll get professional developers in on the project so it will, as people have suggested earlier, stop looking like the world’s biggest hobbyist/pet project.
I think everybody, including myself, is just being a douche about the deal.
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Please, just speak for yourself.
Would probably be better if you explain what you think the misinterpretation lies instead of using a passive aggressive smiley. Also, I don’t see the need to downplay Notch; if he wasn’t good at game design, and if he’s just another programmer like us, how is Minecraft so successful?
Minecraft was a concept that just kinda “caught on” and went viral, the reality though is if you look at Notch’s project page, it’s no different (and hell, in a lot of cases worse) than some of our members on JGO. Minecraft, even admittedly by notch, was a complete fluke. I will completely agree it was a great concept that took off, but at it’s core, it was a complete total accident.
… and this is coming from a guy who believes that making in this industry is mostly hard work, with luck being a very small contributing factor and even I am saying it was mostly luck this time around.
I dislike attributing ‘luck’ to successful games but I do agree Minecraft took off because it’s a catchy and fun game that got picked up by the right people, at the right time, in the right websites, and boom: popularity explodes from there.
I completely agree, I absolute hate (with a searing passion) when people attribute luck to sucess. It’s almost always a result of hard work. Is there a tiny amount of luck? Of course! Some people just get the shit-stick, while others fall into the right place at the right time.
…and having said that, I still consider Minecraft’s early days as having luck as a major contributor. I mean, I love Minecraft (despite my annoyance at the development process). I’ve ran a adult MC server for 4 years now, but still, Minecraft’s infantsy days were no more than a technical demonstration of a voxel engine and he accidentally got the just-right blend of cute/fun that allowed people to overlook all the flaws, and boom, Minecraft was born.
He has worked almost independently until he began making money off of it which is quite a feat especially as he then sacrificed his career to give this chance a go.
In trying to figure out if “luck” was involved or not, it might be useful to look at the discussion around “black swans”.
[quote]The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight.
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