Hacker News Reader

Comment by samspot | Hacker News Reader

3. Notch really seems like just about the most pleasant guy in the world and really just wears his passion on his sleeve. He's an easy guy to like.

I realize I am in the minority, but something about him just rubs me the wrong way. This is not a criticism of him, more just a personal preference.

View on HN

Yes, indeed, you are right! You are in the minority!

My social group hates the guy. I can't bring up Mojang without them ranting about how he has an undeserved ego and takes all the credit for Minecraft when really Jeb did all the work.

I will say that I think it's incredibly self-absorbed that he hosts livestreams of him coding, but a lot of people seem to enjoy watching them, so it's not too bad.

Is there anything specific that rubs you the wrong way about him?

Livestreams of a game develpment sessions are very popular in the indie game scene[1]. It's just a trendy way to communicate things about your process to help other people who might benefit from the information. Think of it like a "tips and tricks" article for game development, in a form more suited for the media-focused game dev community.

Game jams such as Ludum Dare heavily encourage participants to stream their sessions and include tutorials on how to get the whole thing set up.

[1] http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/tag/livestream/

Man, he even streams himself coding to help others who want to pursue their hobbies and people find a way to spin that into a bad thing? Seriously?

It really does take a certain amount of ego and guts just to try to get into the indie game dev (or software period) industry. You have to be a decent coder and you have to have an incredibly thick skin because you don't have 5 layers of marketing and PR like EA where you could basically ignore the fact that you game sucked if your bonus didn't depend on the Metacritic scores. I read all this stuff all the time about how Phil Fish or Blow or whoever is such an asshole, and I just don't get what drives people to saying that stuff. There's a lot of people out there who I admire whose personality is sometimes grating or who is blinded by ego but that's in all walks of life. I don't need to be in love with someone to love their work. Plus I simply think it's too judgmental to call someone you don't know an asshole. You can say someone is being an asshole, but I don't think you can judge them personally by their persona online. It's the same with Linus, people think he's a jerk, and maybe he is sometimes but if he was really, I mean REALLY a huge jerk then the Linux kernel would never exist. He'd be programming weapons systems somewhere or something. It takes a certain kind.

Although I don't stalk Notch online except when he dips into Twitter, I mostly see that guy giving a ton of credit to other people at Mojang or at least often enough where it's my general impression of him.

I regularly get emailed asking if i can do another coding stream and regularly go over 50 viewers. If you don't like it, don't watch it.

"I will say that I think it's incredibly self-absorbed that he hosts livestreams of him coding"

Considering how many eyes would be on him, I'd think it'd be humble that one would be willing to allow people to watch them mock up anything and critique over-shoulder.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com