Notch Is Worried He Might Never Top Minecraft

[RJ Dalton]

I'm not terribly worried myself. I mean, maybe nothing is going to be as successful as Minecraft, but he can still make good stuff. Personally, I myself can't get into building games because I have a hard time putting it all together in my head. I mean, I appreciate what can be done with it and it is totally awesome, but I'm just so terrible at it.
I'm looking forward to seeing what else he can do, though.

 

[Magnicon]

Notch seems to have confused himself with some kind of developer or general creative person. He is neither.

Minecraft started as essentially a stolen product. He literally recoded one game, then took all the features from another, and mushed them together. There was nothing creative about this, which is fitting, because if you look at the list of games he "made" before Minecraft, they were all mini chopped up versions of popular franchise games.

After he got lucky with this particular rip-off, not because he created content, but rather because the community was able to create their own content, he decided to start charging people for an alpha. Once the millions started rolling in, he spent more time on vacation then not.

Move forward 2 years of the slowest development in history, and you have a game released with admitted unfinished features and a multitude of bugs. If any other game released like this it would be universally panned. Instead, Notch wins awards, person of the year, universal acclaim from millions, praised as the savior of the independent games market.(if anyone saved the indi game market its Valve/Steam)

Minecraft has made over 100m now. He has used almost nothing of that to put back into Minecraft itself, which could be improved upon so ridiculously the whole thing is sad.
Instead he decided to make Scrolls, a card game, of which are there dozens of for free on the internet that you can go play right this second without downloading anything.
On top of that, he is publishing a dinky flash type side scroller, of which there are literally hundreds of you can go play right now for free and without downloading anything.

Then theres that creative contest he took part in, where the challenge is to show your creativity by making a game in 48 hours. What did Notch do? He made a mini version of Minecraft. He did literally the least creative thing he could have possibly done.

Then of course theres his twitter account, which he has used to regularly make a fool of himself. Attacking people, ignorantly accusing people of shit, blatantly lying, releases legal information of ongoing cases. His recent comments about people who have rip-offed Minecraft are record breaking hypocritical.

Notch is a bottom of the barrel java scripter who ripped off other peoples work until he got lucky. He has never truly created anything. He is not a developer. So no, Notch will never top Minecraft. Not because Minecraft is such a success, but because he never had the ability to create anything to being with.

Notch's 15 minutes are up, and its 15 minutes too late.

Yes I'm mad brah. /endrant

 

[TWEWER]

Of course Notch can't make another game as good or successful as Minecraft.

 

[Jegsimmons]

i can top minecraft in one word.

Spacecraft

entire fucking galaxies

Can you code the whole thing in Java and take vacations every other week?

'Cus if so, you're hired.

WOOOHOOOOO!!!!!!!

 

[Allthingsspectacular]

I think he should be more worried about becoming George Lucas.

No, not in the way that he ruins Star Wars. But in the way of getting consistently dragged back to his popular IP instead of working on smaller and more personal projects.

 

[Peter Peter]

its called Minecraft 2 ..the game that would top minecraft -_-

 

[Steve the Pocket]

Here's what Notch should do: Use his earnings to fund development of all of Yahtzee's game ideas that he isn't interested in building himself. There's a guy who actually has more than one original idea in his head.

Also, in regards to all the people who claim he "ripped off" Infiniminer... I want to force them to actually play Infiniminer for a day and tell me whether they honestly think it's a better game. Because to be a ripoff, something has to be an inferior product.

 

[cookyy2k]

He may never top minecraft, then again he might. I'm going to check out whatever he comes up with next anyways.

I think we can all agree it's refreshing to have someone in the industry being this honest to everyone about what they're thinking and not just giving the same lines over and over. It's what makes Mojang seem like a company you want to contribute to and want to succeed as opposed to EA where a good proportion want them to go down in flames.

 

[General Ken8]

Yeah, I imagine Minecraft would be hard to top, but I have no doubt that Notch will make some good games in the future. Even that adventure game he made in 48 hours was really fun, I have a lot of confidence in his ability to make creative and fun games.

Said game, "Prelude of the Chambered"
http://s3.amazonaws.com/ld48/index.html

 

[jollybarracuda]

I think as long as Notch puts the same amount of love and care into his future games as he did with Minecraft, he'll do just fine with his career. Sure, his preceding games won't be as incredible as Minecraft, but has id made anything as earth-shattering as DOOM since its release? Not quite, but they obviously love their games and they do just fine as a company because they maintain a solid quality standard in their products. I see what Notch means though. I mean, how many times has a great game come out and then the preceding game wasn't quite as good? Now multiply that by a million for Notch. I mean, Minecraft is probably going to be one of the only games in a long while where people will grow up and remember the game with nostalgia; if not still be playing it. That's a tough act to follow.

 

[The Wooster]

I think as long as Notch puts the same amount of love and care into his future games as he did with Minecraft, he'll do just fine with his career. Sure, his preceding games won't be as incredible as Minecraft, but has id made anything as earth-shattering as DOOM since its release?

A little game called Quake.

 

[Zer_]

If one strives only for the summit one will never pass the first step, but if one works from the base one can achieve lofty heights.

Notch forgot his beginnings, the days at TIGsource where he presented a silly little experiment with random 3D world generating, where a player could simply move blocks about and create wierd architecture.
Notch was just playing about with ideas then... now he wants to make games.

In my opinion Notch should just play around with mechanics and ideas and then see if any of them can grow into a full game, its pointless trying to make a full game unless you are satisfied with just churning out rehashes of whats already out there ( CoD / BF / Gears / etc ).
I mean I have several ideas I need to get through, and I am only learning to code in C++ and SDL ( I at least had one game out there )... imagine how many ideas Notch has from years of experience in programming.
( NO, my ideas are not the far fetched immpossible to code , FPS + WoW + Angry Birds mixture with realtime weather systems and universe simulation type ideas... ideas I can code with my current limited skills, just need to get time to get through them )

You're lucky, I must be the only person in the Game Development and Design degree track who is a great programmer, but isn't creative enough to come up with any sort of original game idea. Guess I'll just have to hired on to work on other people's ideas. Weirdly enough, I'm alright with that.

The best programmers in the world can hardly call themselves creative. John Carmack is very much an engineer and nothing else. Can't speak for Notch's coding abilities, though.

I think as long as Notch puts the same amount of love and care into his future games as he did with Minecraft, he'll do just fine with his career. Sure, his preceding games won't be as incredible as Minecraft, but has id made anything as earth-shattering as DOOM since its release?

A little game called Quake.

Yeah, but consider that Quake was Earth Shattering because of the Multiplayer aspect. The graphics were great too, all of those come from the mind of an Engineer, not an Imagineer.

 

[jollybarracuda]

I think as long as Notch puts the same amount of love and care into his future games as he did with Minecraft, he'll do just fine with his career. Sure, his preceding games won't be as incredible as Minecraft, but has id made anything as earth-shattering as DOOM since its release?

A little game called Quake.

Yeah, but consider that Quake was Earth Shattering because of the Multiplayer aspect. The graphics were great too, all of those come from the mind of an Engineer, not an Imagineer.

Very much that. Quake wouldn't have been what it was without DOOM; no shooter would be. (Though one could assume that someone, at some point, would have made a shooter that defined all other shooters...I wonder what that alternate reality is like?)

 

[Andy of Comix Inc]

I don't think it's possible to feel sad for Notch considering the sizable nest egg he has.

Well, that is sort of the point you might be missing. Money to some people only have value if they can use it to successfully be creative. It doesn't matter if it allows them to continue to create, if they feel that they will never make something "good" again (since only what is equal or better to their previous installment is "good" to them).
One might think "Why don't you chill back, use your 30 million bucks to buy a house, two cars, get a playboy wife and start your own internet-café that you can chill at and be worshipped as a god when you show up?", but then you crucially misunderstand what these people live for.

"Money can't buy you love" is true for some people. If Notch truly feel that he can never top Minecraft, and thus feels that everything else becomes shallow and dull, only different shades of gray, then I feel for him as well. All the money in the world won't make you happy then.

Oh, I understand your point 100%, but I was more thinking the sort of money he has to be able to realize his ideas now. He can invest in whatever kind of game engine he chooses, he can pay professional artists and start a studi- ...well, he's already done that, basically! Money can realize potential - and I more than believe his brain is up to it.

 

[Dice Warwick]

As far as I can see, Minecraft is not just his biggest successes, but his biggest lesson. With Minecraft, it was not "go big or go home" but "simplicity trumps all" Notch may never top Minecraft because of how simple it is, and that would be like trying to top Tetris, you can try, but everyone will still go back to play tetris.

If he were to ask me how to top Minecraft (which he never do) I would say "make an awesome, but simple story, and see if it is possible to make a game around it." I would also suggest that his fans would be his best resources in making it.

In the end Minecraft can't be "toped" only updated, but that would not be something to be sad about, all that money will just give him time think up the next big thing.

 

[Olas]

Poor poor Notch. I'd hate to be him right now.

In all seriousness though, I understand the bizarre pressure that follows early success and the need to 'top yourself'. That being said, I find it hard to pity someone who's already achieved 100 times as much success as most of us feeble humans will in our entire existence.

The only thing I would worry about if I was him is pulling a George Lucas.

 

[rapidoud]

If I was Notch, I would've retired after Minecraft.

More than $50million is like winning Tattslotto, and I would've been happy doing free content every now and again like Dwarf Fortress.

But no, having a huge game is such a hard life, and now my life will be so poor now that my best title was my first independant one, oh woe is me!

 

[Innegativeion]

Maybe it's just that I've never been a pessimist, but I can't really feel sorry for Notch.

I mean... he made minecraft, it's not like the early success is hurting him directly.

If I were in his position, I would be invigorated by striking gold (pardon the mining metaphor) so early on.

"Well, my old project was just so good..." That's GREAT! What, do you think you'll get worse at your job as you gain experience?

"But it'll be impossible to top..." That's ALSO great! Your future project will meet that much MORE success when it trumps the "impossibl"ly successful minecraft.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

While I can't wait to see what he comes up with, how can he possibly top Minecraft? The world was obsessed with it, still is. People have built their own cities, with cities inside those! He built a game where we could build worlds, more or less however we'd like to build them. He gave us the powers of God, and with our god-dom, we thanked him, and eagerly awaited patches and upgrades of our godly powers of creation and destruction. What else is there?

Also, extremely relevant:

Spoiler: Zach Weiner knows his existential problems

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