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Comment by tst | Hacker News Reader

I think the analogy to Wozniak is great. I remember an article some months ago in which he basically said the same: He wants to tinker and hack.

I remember watching some parts of notch's livestreams. I loved the enthusiasm he had. He was a bit like a young boy, trying things, throwing some away, creating games. I'm happy for his decision.

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I see the echos of that enthusiasm in my daughters when they build in their Minecraft worlds. Notch's sense of wonder and joy of creating has been spread to millions.

It's unfortunate that all our greed and crazy fandom keep scaring the great minds away from continuing to push us all forward.

I think it's less the greed and crazy fandom and more a new generation of people that feel they are entitled to everything and anything they want and if they don't get it, start an online witch hunt.

There are numerous examples of this in the past 6 months and in Notch's case, it happened with EULA and 3rd party server support.

A community that supports this sort of behavior wouldn't have my support either. I don't blame him.

This is just what happens when you sell 54 million copies of your product. Granted, I'm not exactly entrenched in the Minecraft community, but I'm guessing it's just the usual case where the vocal minority start getting uppity. Whenever you have a group that large, there will be some bad apples.

Not that I'm disagreeing with you, however. There comes a point when the amount of vitriol you're receiving isn't worth the success.

> a new generation of people that feel they are entitled to everything and anything they want and if they don't get it, start an online witch hunt

Is it really fair to characterize this of a specific generation?

> “Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.” — Socrates

> …in Notch's case, it happened with EULA and 3rd party server support.

What, you don't think that people who have paid for a game client and server have the right to run that client and server? That's Freedom 0, and it's fundamental. Attempting to violate it with any sort of EULA is simply wrong.

No, its just that a really small minority has the chance to be absurdly vocal on the internet.

Come on, it's the entertainment industry. You don't see greed and crazy fandom pushing away fundamentally important people like Vint Cerf, since their work isn't related to entertainment.

Wozniak was unusual in that his story wasn't entertainmnet-related, but most of these "I can't handle the public's demands for my attention" stories come from the entertainment industry.

I see what you are saying, there are many smart, if not brilliant people out there. Woz is able to "think different."

Unfortunately, Vint Cerf is not close to being a billionaire. Our economic system doesn't award brilliance, it doesn't award productivity, it awards the ability to convince other people to give them more money. I'm not saying that that's totally bad, just that the money chasers scare away some great minds.

Yeah, exactly. Dealing with social media as a divisive personality is exhaustive - either you completely shut it off and let some underpaid underdealing deal with it, or you will get horrendously burnt out by all the negativity.

I hope he will produce another master work, but either way, I wish him a very happy life with all the money he earned.

> If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I’ll probably abandon it immediately.

This is the part of the post that bothers me, especially in the context of 0x10c which seemed to follow that exact track. Its his life obviously, I just wonder what awesome stuff won't be made because Minecraft made him wealthy enough that he didn't need to worry about being productive anymore.

I don't think "so wealthy he doesn't need to be productive" is what happened. Rather the horrific experience of having indie game fans obsess over him made him determined never to do anything that would draw their attention again.

If this analogy is so good, and I'm not doubting it, then is MSFT like adding Jobs to Minecraft? Will we see a small successful company become a dominant global technology/gaming company?

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