So that’s what I’m going to do
notch.tumblr.com
notch.tumblr.com
0x10c was a thing. It was announced, had a domain and website with documentation and updates [1], had preview videos, etc. The point is that it looked and was sold like a product, so it's perhaps understandable that lots of people were waiting excitedly for it.
That said, there'd be nothing worse than notch feeling like he had to finish the game no matter what. That would be a sure-fire recipe for a bad experience all around. I think it's great that he's given his blessing to the independent effort, because 0x10c is just the kind of project that benefits the most from a team of people who hardcore geek out on it.
So I ended up limiting my consulting considerably, and instead working on "fun" code (mostly robotics based) which as it turned out sometimes people wanted to pay for, but for the most part has been just for fun.
Notch has a wonderful gift, and while I mourn the fact that 0x10c is unlikely to ever see the light of day, I think having him make cool stuff is better than having him burn out trying to live up to the expectation momentum that 0x10c had developed.
I've only read a few of the feature length articles on Notch (such as this one in the NEw Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/04/the-m...) but he sounds like a real stand-up guy. I love the statement above, because it's a graceful concession as well as a statement that (hopefully) encourages creativity and innovation, even if it's among other people. What a morale booster it must be to have Notch believe that you (the team behind Trillek) can make a better game than he can.
Also, I think it's cool to be reminded that notch is also a gamer, after all, and that even he enjoys being a wide-eyed-consumer, something which he can't be when he's creating the game.
I deeply feel that very moment he describes, when a fun side project becomes a real duty and you have to work on it because people demand it. If you're without funds or income, it might be your only option, so even if it's not fun, it doesn't matter as long as it might generate income eventually. But once you're past that requirement, these things often stay little side projects that rarely end up being finished.
But these little side projects are basically how I taught myself most of what I know in programming.
Notch knowing himself - knowing that he isn't the right person for the game, is great. I hope the community does pick up the game. This was a game that I was looking forward to playing (as I am sure most others were).
It was his fun thing to do when he was bored.
As a programmer, he's clearly capable, but I think he serves better as a director than someone who is trying to tackle an entire game by themselves.
How addictive is minecraft? It sounds great. But I quit video games a few years back, and don't have good willpower with them.
I work from home as well, so there's no natural limits on my time. But I'd love to try the game in a limited way.
You sound like you may be similar to me with games so let me lay it out for you.
When you first start playing you know nothing. There's so much to do and learn. You'll be scared of nighttime and dark caves. You won't know how to craft anything. You'll probably get killed a lot and get lost. It will suck you in for the first 30-60 hours while you learn how to play single player.
At that point one of two things happen. Either you really like building structures and you keep playing a lot or you get bored. I got bored.
Then I realized I was only experiencing a small fraction of the game. The modding community is HUGE, larger than any other game I've played. There are hundreds of mods available that expand and modify gameplay making it far more interesting than "vanilla" MC. Each mod can add 5-50+ hours of interesting gameplay.
This isn't even accounting for multiplayer, which can be much different. PvP servers with clans, mod servers with large towns, creative servers with builds that take months to complete.
I'm not saying you shouldn't play. Minecraft is a great game. Just be aware of where it can lead if you don't plan your time well. I've since cut way back and don't play games as much.
One way you can get a good feel for MC is to watch some of the popular YouTubers. I primarily watch the Yogscast but there are plenty of other good ones.
This makes the pocket and xbox edition experience quite a bit different from the PC/servers version.
My experience was I made a lair basically tunneling out an entire 100x50 ish island, built a tower going up until I was bored and a spiral staircase from top down to bedrock, then dug what amounts to a giant multi-lobed endless loop subway just above sea level around the map (probably about 4 minutes, yes that is indeed a lot of mined/smelted iron, and gold/redstone to boost my cart up to speed) diverted into optimized partially-automated chicken production, then got kinda bored. I think I got about a hundred hours of fun out of it, which, for what it costs, is an excellent rate of return.
It reminds me of an old saying about "second life" from about a decade ago, where if you can't be entranced by it for at least a dozen hours, there's probably something wrong with you, but much after a hundred hours or so, its kind of boring.
A third comparison of about equal depth and entertainment was playing Eve:Online also about a decade or so ago without joining any social groups (which was impossible because I was scavenging random hours here and there, and clans wanted dedicated scheduled mining/raiding nights and such)
All three share the characteristic that its hard to go beyond a hundred or so hours without the community, although if the community drags you in, then you're stuck in there forever.
There's probably a startup lesson in here that if you want more than 100 hours of engagement, its going to come from the community, not the programmers / artists / suits.
(E.g. I built a residence, garden, etc. in a cloud then decided I could expand that to a several-cloud city. Then decided I could build a tower with railroad in an attempt to bring cows and pigs up there. The next project might be an underwater city, or play around with the new horse stuff they added.)
New content is added occasionally. I'm not entirely sure why, since they don't have continuous subscription revenue like WOW does. I actually find it kind of annoying since then I need to explore another huge swath of territory to get new chunks to generate with the new stuff in it. Or worse, if the new stuff breaks the timing on some of my red stone circuitry or the effectiveness of my experience generator.
There are a large variety of clones out there, and "inspired" titles, but Minecraft got a lot right as far as a sense of exploration is concerned.
There's a fairly advanced open source "Minecraft-inspired" game called terasology I found this weekend:
It's not as polished as Minecraft, but if you just want to get a feel for the basic mechanics and tinker without having to pay anything, it's worth a look.
Notch doesn't maintain Minecraft himself these days; Jeb at Mojang does. But they're doing a great job.
I no longer have the time to play Minecraft regularly, but I revisit it from time to time, just like Simcity.
As a game with any purpose aside from building, it falls flat. After the first evening or two, monsters aren't a real issue unless you want them to be, exploration is somewhat dull after your first few caves, and the graphics (while arguably part of Minecraft's charm) are about as basic as you can get.
There are a number of mods and texture packs which address some of these issues to some extent or another, but even they get dull quickly.
Ultimately, it's a set of digital legos, and your enjoyment of the game will depend greatly on how much you want to play with digital legos.
Most games sort of pull you along. They want you to finish the whole thing, so there are various incentives to make you want to keep playing and progressing the game's storyline, or your character level or whatnot.
Games like Minecraft are more of an environment to push against. You keep playing because you want to finish your castle of doom or lake of lava or whatever.
Either type of game can suck you in, it just depends on your personality type. Personally, Minecraft doesn't do much for me; I'm much more vulnerable to the "just one more level" attraction of more linear games. I can't speak for you, though.
This is a free Java applet early version of the game. Perhaps not addictive or polished enough to represent a major distraction.
It runs much faster than normal Minecraft, and some of the features like cuboid, permissions, multiple maps running on the same server, etc, still haven't been added back to the main version of the game.
Cuboid is part of WorldEdit, there's tons of permissions plugin (PermissionsEX seems to be the most mentioned, though in both positive and negative terms) and there are quite a few MultiWorld plugins for Bukkit nowadays.
Sounds promising for him being back in Ludum Dare this weekend! :-)
Suggestion : blueharvester
Obviously this is the reason Rowling did it with her recently uncovered book, but plenty of other reasons exist to use pseudonyms, both for existing and new writers.
That's what I like about Notch: He's got a conscience and great self-awareness.
I can find issues with his games but I've always liked the guy and continue to do so. Great success, Notch!
Just watched a monumentally depressing (IMHO) documentary called "Indie Game" about indie game devs with various flavors of mental and physical illness, putting themselves through hell to get their game out. All of them seemed to find the buzz and pre-launch expectation/pressure, as well as the public response after (both good and bad) to be extremely distressing.
I wonder if this will be the lesson that gets him to shift into that last bit of understanding as to what it means to be so watched by the wider world, awaiting your next bit of output.
Thanks for doing what you do!
maybe game haiku?
Glad he didn't want to be an english teacher.
"English" should be capitalized. People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
Notch's native language isn't English, is it?