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Money isn't everything, according to Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson's "increasingly despondent" tweets:
Shortly after the sale of Minecraft's parent company, Mojang's co-founder Markus Persson had reportedly left the studio in order to pursue other projects. Naturally, before immediately moving on to another enterprise, the man more affectionately known in the gaming community as "Notch" has taken several beats to reap the benefits of his success, outbidding Beyoncé and Jay-Z on a $70 million home, and hosting lavish parties in his newly acquired mansion. However, he's also been afforded plenty of time to reflect on how far he's come, and not surprisingly, it's quite lonely at the top.
Recently, Notch took to his Twitter account to air his grievances with the current situation in which he finds himself. Although Persson's net worth currently rests at $1.33 billion as of writing, the famous game designer has confessed that such prosperity has essentially cursed him in the grand scheme of things, as he's "never felt more isolated". Apparently what John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote all those years ago is true, and it's that money can't buy love. Taking that into consideration, Notch's Tweets grow increasingly despondent, as seen below.
[Extended Copy]
The problem with getting everything is you run out of reasons to keep trying, and human interaction becomes impossible due to imbalance.— Markus Persson (@notch) August 29, 2015
Hanging out in ibiza with a bunch of friends and partying with famous people, able to do whatever I want, and I've never felt more isolated.— Markus Persson (@notch) August 29, 2015
In sweden, I will sit around and wait for my friends with jobs and families to have time to do shit, watching my reflection in the monitor.— Markus Persson (@notch) August 29, 2015
When we sold the company, the biggest effort went into making sure the employees got taken care of, and they all hate me now.— Markus Persson (@notch) August 29, 2015
Found a great girl, but she's afraid of me and my life style and went with a normal person instead.— Markus Persson (@notch) August 29, 2015
I would Musk and try to save the world, but that just exposes me to the same type of assholes that made me sell minecraft again.— Markus Persson (@notch) August 29, 2015
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2015, @03:18PM
Heaven forbid he make another game. Hell, he's got the money to do it up right this time... Now, if only some indie dev would come up with the right core mechanics to run with. In fact, after the failure of 0x10c (268, a play on 80286), he mentioned he needed to hang out with some small time indies again.
Except, now small gamedevs know that the bigger fish will rip off your Tiny Towers and make Dream Heights. Lots of us don't care and keep churning away, prototyping all sorts of game mechanic combinations, just for fun. Most games don't ever see completion, either due to lack of execution skill or the game isn't fun, team breakdown, no funds, etc. Of the games that get completed most are only played by other (indie) gamedevs. Sometimes a dev will break even on the time/cost or make enough money to quit their day job. Occasionally a game will touch on some interesting elements and become moderately successful, such that average gamers will have heard of it. Rarely will a game become huge. Having been in the industry it seems odd he'd just decide not to do games anymore. A few flops or failed projects doesn't mean anything about you as a designer, that's expected.
Most independent gamedevs I know do it for the love of making games, not for the money and surely not to solve some imaginary world problems. Rich people can be some of the biggest suckers for scams. Stop watching the news, and listening to people like Bill Gates (who's been going around getting billionaires to donate "to the greater good" -- just enriching certain foundations and pushing crap like Common Core). You don't have a moral obligation to "fix" the world, and the problems are created by other billionaires anyway (sometimes purely as propaganda), so don't buy into the "you must save the planet" or "find a higher purpose" nonsense: It'll never happen and the planet of these apes will always be under some "imminent" sensationalized threat.
Well, Notch, at least you're not using your fat stacks of cash to steal ideas from the little guys -- You could buy a small studio and add your ideas to make a new game, like when you added crafting to block stacking, [youtube.com] except the other dev would actually get some benefit for their R&D time spent finding the fun core mechanic combo. Oh, there's an idea! Why not give Zachtronics a little slice of that pie since you were so heavily "inspired" by his game? Maybe collaborate with some other devs and see what you both could make next? Drop the "not invented here syndrome" and go back to ripping off games like Super Mario Bros again. Infinite Mario Bros. was neat, if only it had some more original elements other than $RETROGAME + proc-gen. Alternate reality and Augmented reality games are pretty cool, there's more gamedev mediums now, some even using multiple disparate devices -- Eg: A persistent FPS for PCs with tactical elements like supply management and troop deployment managed via players on mobile platforms. There are even people releasing FORTH and C compilers for old consoles and cabinents. New (homebrew) games are coming out for everything from (S)NES to Sega Genesis, from GameGear to GameBoy, even the cult-classic Dreamcast. All by gamedevs who don't have or expect funding. If you've got the money, there's no excuse NOT to do whatever you want.
Maybe that's why Notch is sad? He tried to do original games without borrowing ideas and couldn't make anything fun? Since 0x10c, Notch says he's got a creative block. Well, that's strange. Every poor gamedev I know of has more ideas than they have time and resources to implement. Esp. the ones churning out stuff for free doing game jams/competitions like Lundum Dare, One Game a Month, Space Cowboy Jam, [itch.io] etc. [compohub.net] Having a shortage of game ideas is not a problem any gamedev actually has (not having any good ideas, on the other hand...) What's more important than the idea is its execution.
Seriously, I have no sympathy at all. There are so many avenues open to billionaires (he can even afford meds if it's depression). IMO, the reason he's so lonely is due to the actions he's taken himself. I wouldn't hang out with Notch in the first place, but if I did I wouldn't talk gamedev and risk being his next Infiniminer. If the mony disparity is so bad maybe try hanging out with "equals", like Carmack? He could just retire but is having fun strapping toasters to peoples heads and reminiscing about the VR craze that took off just before Doom. Maybe help him remake Dactly Nightmare and Exorex? [youtube.com] (that was my shit back in the day).