The story of Markus Persson (full version). The story of Markus Persson (full version) See what “Persson, Markus” is in other dictionaries
The rumors were confirmed: Microsoft acquired the rights to Minecraft and the development studio Mojang for a crazy 2.5 billion dollars. Immediately after the news was announced, Minecraft creator Markus Persson announced that he was leaving Mojang. We are publishing Notch's farewell letter in which he explains the reasons for his decision.
“I'm leaving Mojang.
I don't see myself as a real game developer. I make games because they're fun, and because I love them, and I love programming. But I don't make games with the intention of them being huge hits, I'm not trying to change the world. Minecraft has certainly been such a huge hit, and people constantly tell me that it changed modern video games. I never imagined this would happen. Of course, all this flatters me, and I found myself in the center of public attention, it was interesting.
But quite a long time ago I decided to leave Minecraft development. Jens was the perfect candidate to lead this project, and I wanted to do some new things. At first my plans failed because I was trying to do something big and ambitious again. From then on, I decided to focus on small prototypes and interesting concepts - and I had a lot of fun doing it. I wasn't sure that this "job" of mine was bringing much benefit to the company (while the people around me were really working hard), but I was always told that I was important to the company culture, so I stayed.
A couple of weeks ago, I was lying at home with a bad cold when the Internet exploded with a torrent of hate directed at me based on some licensing agreement that I had nothing to do with. I was terribly upset. I didn't understand what was happening. I even left this tweet:
Anyone want to buy my share of Mojang so I can move on with my life? Getting hate for trying to do the right thing is not my gig.
A little later I looked This is a Phil Fish video and realized that I didn't really have the understanding from the fans that I had always hoped for. I became a symbol. I don't want to be a symbol, responsible for something that I don't understand, that I don't want to work on, and that constantly catches up with me in life. I'm not an entrepreneur. I'm not the CEO. I'm just a regular nerdy programmer who sometimes likes to express my opinions on Twitter.
Once the details of the deal [with Microsoft] are finalized, I will leave Mojang and continue to participate in the Ludum Dares game design competition and other small online experiments. If I ever do anything else that becomes popular, then, most likely, I will immediately leave this project.
My public image has been criticized more than once, so I don't even expect that my actions will be spared from your negative comments. But now at least I don’t feel the responsibility that I have to read them all.
I am well aware that all of the above goes a little against what I have previously said in interviews and in public. I have nothing to add to this. I'm also aware that for some reason many of you consider me a symbol of the struggle between indies and big publishers. I am not such a symbol, I am an ordinary person, and I am participating in this fight along with you.
I love you. All of you. Thank you for making Minecraft what it is today. But there are too many of you, and I cannot be responsible for something of such enormous size. In a sense, it's now owned by Microsoft. In a much broader sense, he has always belonged to all of you, and that will never change.
It's not about the money. It's about my mental balance."
This game has recently attracted a huge number of players. The number of people who play this game exceeds one hundred million people. We are talking about which consists of many small blocks.
During the gameplay, the hero, controlling his avatar, builds, mines and moves these blocks from place to place. In addition, the player fights mobs that attack his home at night.
This popular game, which has attracted a lot of attention, has its own legendary author, the man who is its creator. Who created Minecraft? This question is asked by many children who play this virtual constructor. From this article you will learn about who created Minecraft. The name of this person is also interesting to some adults.
Creator of the game "Minecraft"
The author's name is Markus Persson. Markus is a programmer from Sweden and also a game designer. He is much better known under his pseudonym Notch. He created his first game at just 9 years old on his home computer. As an adult, he became the owner of Mojang AB. In addition to him, the founders were also Karl Manneh and Jacob Porser. The company was founded in 2009.
Notch's office
The company currently employs more than 35 people. Marcus is one of Sweden's largest taxpayers. His company is valued at two billion dollars. The attitude towards employees in Notch's company is very loyal. Every Friday, Marcus allows the people who work for him to play games and also work on their own projects.
Quite remarkable. It is designed in a "hunting lodge" style. His office has a pool table, a room for showing a variety of films, a jukebox, and a pinball machine. In addition, there is even a wall with portraits of employees. These portraits are quite unusual. They painted in oil, people pose in the clothes of the 19th century aristocracy. If we look at the portrait of Notch, we see that there he is in an evening suit and fedora, sitting on a chair with an arrogant look. Next to him, as an essential piece of furniture, is a large globe.
Atmosphere at Persson's company
All this became possible thanks to his key project "Minecraft". The author of this game, which became the most unexpected breakthrough in this field in a decade, attracted a lot of attention. It's quite common for him to throw a party with stadium-level DJs. According to rumors, Britain's Prince Harry was also present at one of these parties.
In 2012, Notch even organized a pyrotechnics festival in one of the Parisian establishments. Musical accompaniment for this event was provided by Skrillex. Marcus takes his employees and their families to Monaco. The photo album that lies on the conference table in his office contains several photographs of workers being brought in by a fleet of airplanes, also in these photographs of them driving around in Ferraris, having a party on a yacht, and riding in helicopters. Commenting on the photos, company co-owner Porser says, “We wanted to make Mojang a place where we would always want to work.”
The unexpected success of a strange game
Notch is the man who created Minecraft. Although there is no script or levels in this game (there isn't even an obvious goal), players can explore a virtually endless world. They can gather resources and build almost anything. Create entire worlds with your own attractions. This is what the faithful followers of Markus Persson do.
Well, now you know who created Minecraft. We wish you to get acquainted with this magnificent game and discover colorful endless worlds more often in everyday life.
It's seven o'clock in the evening in Stockholm. Markus Persson sits on the balcony of his office, sipping Red Bull and vodka - a cocktail that quickly knocks a person off his feet. Three hours ago he swore he wouldn't drink today, having downed 12 drinks just Thursday to try to cope with an ear infection. Nevertheless, he pours generous shots of Belvedere vodka, and we watch as people working in the high-rise office buildings next door tirelessly tap away at their keyboards.
“He looks worried,” Persson says, pointing to a man in the building opposite who is helplessly rubbing his face while staring at a computer screen. Persson watches the office worker for a few more seconds, then he gets bored and his attention turns to us. For the past five years, the 35-year-old Swede has spent much of his time as the man in the window across the street, stressed out by his brainchild, Minecraft, the best-selling video game in gaming history. However, the word “game” is clearly not enough to describe the essence of this phenomenon. With over 100 million downloads and continuing to grow, Minecraft has become a platform for people to express themselves. Players start in an empty virtual space where they can use bricks and Lego-like blocks (which can be “mine”) to create anything, with one important condition: other players can also interact with the objects they create. Most players are children who build simple houses or villages and then throw parties in them or hide from zombie robbers. But adults who really get into the game spend hundreds of hours creating full-scale models of the Death Star, the Empire State Building, or cities from Game of Thrones.
The word "Minecraft" is searched more often on Google than "Bible", "Harry Potter" and "Justin Bieber".
And this game has brought in more than $700 million in revenue since its inception, most of which is pure profit.
"It can't be compared to other popular games," says Ian Bogost, a Georgia Tech professor who studies video games. - It stands on a par with popular phenomena on a larger scale. Minecraft is essentially this generation's Lego."
In this virtual world, Persson, or rather his Internet character, the loud-mouthed eccentric Notch with a hat on his head, has become a god-like figure for millions of gamers, establishing and explaining the rules of the game with the authority of Zeus. In life, Persson is the least likely to look like a self-confident extrovert. In personal interactions he is polite, frank and secretive (he is rarely seen in the press). The expectations and demands of the game's fans, who expect Notch to develop his virtual world, have turned him into a shy weirdo.
So three months ago, Persson shook it all off by completing the sale of Minecraft to Microsoft for $2.5 billion in cash. A 71% stake in the company behind Minecraft, Mojang, has made him a new and very bright member of the Forbes global list of billionaires. And now a man who still has more than half his life to live, the creator of an entire universe, the symbol of which his own character has become, a man who suffered the furious wrath of the community when he decided to leave it, has to find out who he really is.
The results so far are not impressive: his actions resemble a dog hunting passing cars. Deciding to buy a house in Beverly Hills, Persson shelled out $70 million for a mansion with an area of more than 2,000 square meters. m - the most expensive house in this elite area in its entire history.
He is known to squander more than $180,000 at a time in Las Vegas nightclubs.
He's started a new company, Rubberbrain, with Jacob Porser, another Mojang founder, in case they come up with a new game, but he can't seem to focus on anything yet. This conversation with Forbes is Persson's only interview in which he talks about the Minecraft deal and what followed. It turned out that the main result of the unexpected wealth that fell upon him was difficult introspection. And the only thing he is absolutely sure of is that he did the right thing by parting with Minecraft. Explaining his decision, Persson cites a saying attributed to Leonardo da Vinci: “A work of art cannot be finished, but only abandoned.”
Swedish games.
The mind-bending saga of Minecraft began in the small Swedish town of Edsbyn, with 4,000 inhabitants and located in the vast forests between Stockholm and the Arctic Circle. While other children played soccer in the summer or the local form of bandy in the winter, introverted Persson spent hours on end tinkering with Legos. His father, a railroad worker, brought a Commodore 128 desktop computer into the house when Persson was seven years old. By the age of eight, his diligent son had already written his first computer program.
Persson was a good student, but after his family moved to Stockholm when he was in second grade, he found school life difficult. Unable to make new friends easily, he spent more and more time at home on his computer, which offered entertainment like the 8-bit puzzle game Boulder Dash or the role-playing game The Bard's Tale. In the book "Minecraft: The Untrue Story of Markus "Notch" Persson," his mother Ritva recalls how her son would pretend to have stomach pains to avoid school and spend hours sitting in front of the computer.
Young Persson began to find even more solace in the computer after his family broke up. His parents divorced when he was 12.
My father abused alcohol and became addicted to amphetamines.
The younger sister also began experimenting with drugs and eventually ran away from home.
Persson himself never graduated from high school. His mother, a nurse who worked nights at a local hospital, forced him to take an online coding course. It was a wise investment. Indulging in his childhood passion, he began baking games like pancakes and in 2004, at the age of 24, he ended up working for Midasplayer, which later released the popular game Candy Crush under the name King.com.
There he became friends with Jacob Porser, an equally introverted young developer. “It was a great place to start,” recalls Porser. “We released small games in Flash, and you could almost create the entire game alone, not counting the graphics.” They began writing scripts for their own games, some of which gained fame on independent gaming sites. Their bosses didn't like it. "We felt we couldn't have someone working for us and starting their own company at the same time," says Lars Markgren, one of the founders of Midasplayer, who hired Persson.
In 2009, Persson left Midasplayer for Jalbum, an online photo-sharing service whose management did not care what the programmer did on the side. He soon began devoting all his free time to a strange project where players collected resources such as stone or wood, using them to create everything from axes and shovels to houses and cities. Persson called his creation Minecraft and in May 2009 uploaded it as an unfinished program to the independent gaming portal TIGSource. The game had a lot of new technical solutions, but there was almost no documentation, and early players were forced to form a community to figure out how to play it together. Minecraft wasn't the first creative sandbox game, nor was it the first time it forced players to gather resources in a virtual world to survive in a hostile environment. (When night fell in the virtual world, players could be attacked by suddenly appearing creatures called "creepers.") But the timing of the game's launch was perfect: it came out at the same time that a new generation of children, still too young for Facebook and Instagram, But already old enough to strive to do something online, laptops, smartphones and tablets began to appear.
By June 2010, PC users were buying 400 copies per day, at about $6 per download. Persson and Porser quit their day jobs. Persson even lured his former boss, Jalbum CEO Karl Manneh, to take over commercial leadership. They named the newborn company Mojang, which means “device” in Swedish. Minecraft's secret weapon was Notch. More than just an online pseudonym, Notch allowed Persson to overcome his introversion in the real world. Through blogs, forums and Twitter, he answered every question from his fans regarding the game, its development and life.
Notch became a model for followers: a sharp-tongued icon character in a hat spoke on behalf of independent game manufacturers. With the help of this alter ego, Persson acquired more than 2 million followers on Twitter, who sympathetically read his diatribes against the “cynical bastards” at Electronic Arts, who deigned to release a whole series of independent games, or the manufacturer of technical devices for virtual reality Oculus VR, for that he sold out to the “vile” Facebook.
Persson didn't spend a single crown on marketing, and Minecraft grew virally as Mojang released versions for Android and iOS smartphones that remain among the top three paid downloadable apps in the US, according to App Annie. In May 2012, Mojang released a version for the Microsoft Xbox 360, which sold over 1 million copies within a week (more than 15 million copies sold to date). Then came licensing agreements. Minecraft-themed clothing marketed by San Diego-based J!NX became a bestseller among young fans of the game, and Egmont Publishing International's Minecraft-themed books became instant bestsellers, selling more than 7.5 million copies in more than 60 countries. Last year, Warner Bros. bought the rights to shoot a feature film from Mojang.
Mojang, with only about 30 employees, was profitable, and it seemed like it would stay that way forever. It ended 2012 with revenue of about $230 million and gross profit of more than $150 million, of which Persson paid $101 million to himself in exchange for Minecraft intellectual property. (Shortly after this he bought the most expensive apartment in Stockholm.)
Investors got worried. Manneh says he talked to about 100 venture capital firms at the time, including Silicon Valley bigs like Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, but didn't take money from anyone because Mojang simply didn't need it. They were even visited by billionaire Sean Parker, who flew Persson, Porser and Manneh on his private jet to London, providing them with a wild program of nightly entertainment. And yet they rejected his money.
“We had the opportunity to fly on a private jet for the first time in our lives,” recalls Manneh. But not the last. As a private company with no outside investors, Mojang, growing by leaps and bounds, commissioned oil portraits of characters. Celebrating 10 million downloads, they took all their employees to Monaco for three days to drink champagne and ride a yacht. And although all the shares of the company were owned by its three founders, Persson thanked all employees with a group bonus of $3 million in 2012.
But even with the world at his feet, Persson at times felt as if it was pressing on his shoulders. After the official release of Minecraft at the end of 2011 at the first convention of fans of the game in Las Vegas (MineСon), Persson resigned from his post as chief developer in order to experiment with new games and live with his girlfriend, who became his wife in the summer of that year.
But his happiness was short-lived. Persson's father, still abusing drugs and depressed, committed suicide on Christmas Eve. This greatly shocked Persson, and he began to behave more and more like a man who does not know what he wants. He divorced his wife a year after their wedding. “As of today I am single: #MixedFeelings,” he wrote on Twitter. And when Persson returned to work after his brief sabbatical, he felt compelled to recreate the magic of his first hit.
And at the same time, Persson remained the face and voice of Minecraft. Even though he was no longer involved in day-to-day development of the game, Notch was still the figure that players emailed about new code modifications or left messages on Twitter when they thought something was wrong with the game. In response to minor changes in the mechanics of virtual ships, users burst out with poisonous messages to Notch, who had nothing to do with these changes. Look through Persson's Twitter responses or any YouTube video featuring the Minecraft creator, and you'll likely come across comments like "I'm always amazed at what a fantastic nerd Notch is" or "Notch is a fat loser."
“I couldn’t understand why people on the Internet were so unkind,” says Persson. “You see the hateful comments and they always seem to be in larger font.” A person who identified himself with his online character found himself in a trap, faced with the negativity that such identification provoked. And Persson began to think about how to get out of the game. His exodus began with a simple message on Twitter. On June 16, 2014, Persson lay in his penthouse with a cold. Meanwhile, Minecraft users are up in arms against the company over its decision to strictly enforce a licensing agreement that prevented players from selling virtual items, such as more powerful swords, to each other.
When Twitter started receiving hundreds of messages per hour, Persson, feverishly excited due to a cold, burst out with a response in just 129 characters that changed his life forever.
“Someone wants to buy me out of Mojang so I can get on with my life? - he asked. “Causing everyone’s hatred while trying to do the right thing is not my thing.”
Mojang CEO Carl Manneh was sitting at home with his family when he saw the post. 30 seconds after he read it, the bell rang. One of the Microsoft executives responsible for cooperation with Mojang wanted to know how serious Persson's statement was. “I don’t know, let me talk to him,” Manneh replied.
And although Persson wrote this half-jokingly, the thought that he might part ways with Mojang took hold of him. The man who once publicly vowed that he would not sell out to evil corporations has changed his mind.
For the next week, Manneh's phone kept ringing off the hook. Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard and others showed interest in the deal. Negotiations with Activision stalled immediately. Persson was reluctant to discuss what happened with Electronic Arts, but cryptically said that Mojang excludes potential buyers "who treat games in a way we don't like." But Microsoft clearly made the cut.
Ultimately, Microsoft's main motivation for this deal was the opportunity to save on taxes. The software giant has amassed a whopping $93 billion in cash reserves overseas and can't move it into the US without paying Uncle Sam his cut.
As a result, the terms of the sale were dictated by Manneh: Persson and Porser wanted to get out of the business outright, severing all ties with the company. In addition, given the massive layoffs at Microsoft after the takeover of Nokia, it was stipulated that there should be no layoffs in the business (the company has only 47 employees, so such a condition did not threaten the buyer with serious material costs).
Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft's Xbox division, dealt exclusively with Manneh. Persson and Porser withdrew from the negotiations, although Spencer did spend some time drinking Swedish herbal tea and arguing about the direction of the gaming industry. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella did not show up in Stockholm, despite it being the biggest deal of his tenure. He only called Manneh twice to speed up the negotiations.
While lawyers worked around the clock to close the multibillion-dollar deal, only indirect information leaked to the press. Microsoft has been fairly secretive; in a July message to employees, Nadella said only that he was investing in games, calling them “the biggest digital phenomenon in the world of mobile devices.”
The usually talkative Persson also remained silent. He looked for small ideas for new games and studied programming languages. On September 11, he published a post where he described his work with the Dart language, in which he rewrote the first version of the classic shooter Doom, and hinted at the upcoming sale - Doom served him as a metaphor for Mojang. “If I do get into something new, I'm sure someone more patient than me can take over the project,” he wrote. “I can’t be attached to him all the time.” On September 15, Microsoft announced that it was willing to pay $2.5 billion in cash for Mojang. A few hours after this announcement, Persson wrote his final blog post, explaining the details of his departure from the company he founded.
In hindsight, Persson says he expected a stronger reaction from Minecraft fans to the announcement of the game's sale. “The day we announced the deal, I was going to close my Twitter for fear of not being able to handle it,” he says. “But people reacted surprisingly calmly to the news. They read my explanation and said, 'Okay, I hope you're okay.'"
What about his previous promises not to sell out, especially not to corporations? Persson shrugs and says the $2.5 billion controversy doesn't bother him.
“Of course, you have to be responsible for your words,” he admits, “but, honestly, I don’t feel much shame because my point of view has changed.”Mojang employees had a harder time understanding their former boss's abrupt change of position. Although they received bonuses from the amount owed to Persson (Porser's share after taxes was more than $300 million, Manneh's share was more than $100 million), many felt "disappointed" and "devastated" when they heard about the end of his game, one employee says , who wished to remain anonymous. Some people still hold a grudge against Persson.
“We upset them, and their reaction hurts me,” says Persson. But no matter what, he intends to move on. In November, when the deal closes, Persson, Porser, Manneh and Manneh's twin brother will fly to Miami and St. Barthelemy to celebrate. Persson calls this short voyage a “sales tour.” Now Persson pays less attention to snarky remarks on Twitter and more to the insults he receives from close friends in a WhatsApp group they crudely call "Farts."
In Rubberbrain's temporary office, jokes about topics below the belt cause laughter that shakes the ceiling and causes the neighbor upstairs to knock on the floor in irritation.
Persson ignores the angry knocking overhead, just as he ignored Internet trolls before. He admits to loving the Twitter button that allows him to mute obnoxious people without telling them they're blocked. However, sometimes curiosity gets the better of him and he answers. He recently responded to his haters with an animated figurine of Woody Harrelson from the movie Zombieland wiping away his tears with a wad of cash. “I know responding to Twitter with a picture is a little stupid,” he shrugs. He's just as awkward around his crushes when he chronicles his chartered jet vacation on Snapchat. What about the girls? “I tried to use Tinder (dating app - Forbes), but it didn’t help. In Sweden it works terribly: about four people use it.” Hence the $180,000 nightclub bills.
“I’m now partly catching up on what I missed when I sat and programmed in my early 20s,” he admits. - Partying isn't the smartest way to spend money, but it's fun. When we were young, we had no money, so I thought that if I ever got rich, I would never become one of those boring rich people who don’t spend money.”
Now he is spending it on his new company. Her office is a teenager's fantasy, complete with a full-service bar, a DJ booth (he's learning how to spin records himself), and secret rooms hidden behind bookshelves. And this despite the fact that Rubberbrain is just the name of a company that is waiting for its founders to have some idea.
It seems that inspiration will certainly come. Persson spends a lot of time in the office, keeping up with Twitter and Reddit, while Porser scours fan forums for his childhood hockey team and plays a mindless online game of clicking, blowing up bugs and other critters for coins.
“It's like a kindergarten for us, a kindergarten for the adults,” says Persson. “Whenever an idea comes up, we try it out for a couple of days and then get back to playing.”
Perhaps this too will pass. But there are still plenty of younger Markus Perssons who are less jaded and more sensitive to what the next generation of kids wants. When asked about this, the creator of Minecraft replies that he feels quite good about being the author of a one-hit wonder. Such trump cards as insane wealth and the status of a person who has retired can cover the stress of being responsible for the population of the virtual world, which either reveres you or despises you.
“People began to see an ideal in Notch,” he argues, analyzing his two incarnations. - I remember how I met my own idols and realized that these were real people. And this discrepancy became very clear to me. I didn’t have the relationship with my fans that I imagined.”
As Persson's assistant leaves Rubberbrain's office, he gives him a note from one of his American fans. The letter, written in the rounded, studious hand of a fourth- or fifth-grade student, has a dollar bill pinned to it and asks Persson to add a few new elements to Minecraft for him.
“We were bribed today,” Persson joked before he could read the note and frown.
Then he turned the dollar over in his hand: “Should I send it back?”
[Melody: "The Last Test" (part 4). Track "Nightmares"] Late evening. The small room is buried in dense twilight. The sound of a key grinding in the lock is heard. The front door opens, and a tired, heavily built man, Persson Sr., walks in. Without turning on the light, he takes off his hat, presses the answering machine button and, unbuttoning his coat, listens to the message left:- “We sympathize, but your brother has passed away. Please accept our sincere condolences...” There are beeps. A man approaches the sofa, sits doomedly on its edge and looks up at the ceiling. At this time, a dark figure in a cloak appears in the corner, from under the hood of which whitish empty eye sockets glow with an unnaturally bright light:-You weren’t waiting for me, dear Persson? Why don't you look me in the eyes, stupid? - I don’t know you, go away... (surprisedly calm, somewhat sad) (The man removes the hood from his face. Notch sees the ghost of his younger brother in front of him)- We went through both fire and water together - You just got blown away by the copper pipes... - Get away from me!!! (jumps up, breathes sharply; it’s clear from his face that he’s scared)- Would you like to add anything, Notchik? By the way, I’m here for your soul, by the way... There’s no need to hiss like an angry cobra! You will still find out who Herobrine is! Weakling! (The man in the cloak disappears. The room changes its shape, turning into one of the game locations - The Edge. Mobs appear)- Where are you all from? (looks around) This is the Abyss! You are not here! - Do you recognize your comrades from the world of tags? You made us and you ran away from us! You are now rich, you are now famous! But you can’t escape the payment! Show me, Persson, show me the trick! You are alone - and your brother will not come to your aid! You are now great, but your host has flown away, And now you will remember our fists! Weakling! Persson, you are a weakling!!! Juggle the balls, friend Persson! The square world is the torment of your heart. All your admins are powerless against us! We are your fears, we are your death, We are your torment, we are your death! We are your torment, we are your death!!! - You are not here!!! (starts to back away, tries to run away)- You are alone, Persson, on the edge of the grave! (- It all seems!) - We are your pathetic suckers! (- Don't touch me! Let me go!) - We are the nightmare and torment of your heart! And we will sing a deadly song for you! (- I'll call my brother!) - Die, Persson! (- Leave me alone!) - Die, Persson! (- Leave me! Brian!) - Die, die, die, (Brian! Brian, help! Get out everyone! Brian!!!) - Persson! (- Brian, where are you?!!) - You are alone, and your brother will not come to the rescue! You are now great, but your host has flown away... (- Don’t touch me, don’t touch me! Go away!) - And now you will remember our fists! (- Go away! Brian!) - And now you will remember our fists! (standing in a circle, they push the victim to each other) Weakling! Weakling! Weakling! Weakling! Weakling! Weakling! Weakling! Weakling! (- Mom-ah!!!) The ghostly purple light goes out. A man wakes up on the sofa in the same room and jumps up in a cold sweat.