MORE THAN LUCK
Written by Justus Blair (me)
As the cold wind whistles outside, the chilly night air seeps into every building. Most are asleep in their warm beds at two in the morning, but as we look through the windows of the sleeping city we find one alight. Inside is the silhouette of a fatigued young programmer hunched over a computer tirelessly typing lines of unintelligible code. Who could this man be? This man came from a poor and shattered family. Finding his dream, he gave up a well paying job to work on a small unknown game. Obviously, this man is not a millionaire, which is easy to see from his shabby apartment. One month later, he would become a world wide celebrity. This man is Markus Persson, inventor of Minecraft. Notch.
The hugely popular game, Minecraft, was created by a small town programmer, who in his childhood, never would have imagined that he would create one of the most popular video games in the world. Markus Persson, ‘Notch,’ was born on June 1, 1979 in Stockholm, Sweden and later grew up in Edsbyn. In his childhood, Markus was a devoted Lego fan, creating anything that he could imagine. He liked them so much that he kept some at his school in an old wooden desk with a flip up lid. One day Markus told his younger sister that when he got rich he would take her for a helicopter ride, her dream. When Markus was seven, his father, Birger, came home with a massive Commodore 128 computer. Markus was hastily hooked. Bringing his curiosity to life, Markus used the computer to channel all his creativity into his magical programs. Eagerly, he spent every free second of his day astutely programming and later on, sharing his projects online by the name, ‘Notch’. Even though he didn’t finish highschool, Markus landed a job when he was just eighteen. He had not yet created the game that changed his life, but Markus’ younger years were extremely important.
Markus recognized what was important to him through his first few job experiences. After a couple of gigs with private companies, Markus was quickly employed at a major and renowned video game company called Midasplayer, later known as King.com. At Midasplayer, Notch met Jakob Porser, who would later become his most trusted colleague in his future company. Unfortunately, although Midasplayer paid well, there were three things Notch did not like about the company. One, they would not allow Notch to develop his own games when he wasn’t at work. Two, he would spend weeks animating a character without even knowing where it would fit into the game. And three, he was not allowed to give feedback on the game or give ideas. Midasplayer was a proficient game developing giant with hundreds of programmers and designers, each toiling on one piece of the enormous puzzle. Stopping his job, Notch left Midasplayer for another company named jAlbum. Since jAlbum did not develop games, they didn’t care what Notch did in his free time. While at jAlbum, Notch missed Jakob since Jakob was still at Midasplayer. Markus was lonely. Notch was finally realizing what he wanted to do with his life.
As Notch proficiently tinkered with his programs, he never would have guessed that he was on the verge of creating one of the most popular video games on earth. When he worked on his ideas, sometimes Notch ran out of inspiration and would get burned out, so he would play other games and think about how he could improve his own. Particularly two of his favourite games were Dwarf Fortress and Infiniminer. Dwarf Fortress was incredibly hard to understand with its complicated controls and primitive graphics. Infiniminer’s graphics were much like Minecraft’s, but with some differences. In Minecraft, Notch combined the aspects of Dwarf Fortress and Infiniminer to engineer a LEGO-like world with no set objective; this type of game is called a sandbox game. You are the one who decides what will happen, when playing this type of game. You can mine blocks or place them. You can craft one thing into another. You can battle dangerous monsters. Running through an infinite world, the possibilities are completely endless. The name Minecraft came from two game components, ‘Mine’ came from the mining part of the game and ‘Craft’ came from the building and creating part. This was the beginning of a gaming phenomenon that would change Markus’ life forever.
Markus was about to become a prominent figure in the gaming community. Launching the game in 2009, Minecraft was an instant hit. A professional game developer, who worked at Valve saw Markus’ game and he liked it so much that he put a link to it on his website declaring, “You should play this game.” After that, the game was being downloaded 400 times a day at six dollars per download. As the game became more popular, Notch added features to it such as land biomes, different dimensions, portals, farming, randomly generating structures, monsters, dragons, and animals known as mobs. The list goes on and on. The most famous mob and iconic Minecraft symbol appeared when Notch was trying to create a pig. Hastily he mixed up the coordinates for length and height and the result was a four legged creature. With a green tinge and a creepy face, the Creeper was complete. Sales skyrocketed. At one point, Notch had so much money so quickly coming into his Paypal account, that they temporarily blocked it from him. They were concerned that he could be involved in criminal activity. Notch wanted to start his own game company with his old friend Jakob Porser. They wanted to create a game they called, Scrolls, and also improve another game they had been working on for years called, Wurm Online. Notch had struck a chord with the gaming community and he wasn’t going to let this opportunity go down the drain.
Hard work and imagination were the only tools Notch needed for Minecraft. It became something that he never would have imagined. One day, Markus got a call from Valve, a major game developer. He knew that they saw potential in Minecraft. In a flurry, Markus quickly packed up for the trip. This was a huge opportunity and every game developer’s most relished dream. He excitedly flew to the Valve headquarters in Washington State. When he got to the headquarters he met some famous video game developers as he waited for an interview. A few minutes into the meeting, he realized that they wanted to take Minecraft and turn it into their own game. Many programmers can only dream of this opportunity, but Notch realized that it would kill his vision of working with Jakob and starting their own game company forever. Notch was torn. He had to make a decision and that decision was no. Quickly, he flew back to Sweden and started working with Jakob and his former boss at jAlbum, named Carl Manneh. Starting their company, they rented a small office and called the business Mojang, which means thingamajig or whatchamacallit in Swedish. The logo of the company has been debated for a long time. People argue it could be anything from a sewing machine to a rhinoceros. Notch had become a gaming celebrity. Through hard work and imagination, he had created the opportunity he had been seeking or years.
In 2011, Notch, who was getting richer by the minute, staged the first official Minecon and saw an assortment of Minecraft communities and organizations. It was a huge and unrivaled hit because it released Minecraft in its beta stage. Finally the game was finished. At Minecon four thousand people were logging on … per second. As this was happening, Block by Block, a non-profit organization, was empowering citizens of neglected cities and countries to build a new future. The Education Edition was helping schools across the globe, Story Mode was being created by Telltale gaming, and the Youtube phenomenon was instantly making gamers rich when they posted videos online. Minecraft is more than just a game. Notch has created a community. In May of 2012, Minecraft saw its first Xbox release. Continuing on, the Pocket Edition was added. The entirety of 2011 was an amazing year for Minecraft and Notch was glad he could bring so many people together with his game.
Where will Minecraft be in the future, no one knows? Chatting one day, Notch posted something on Twitter. A statement that would make him a billionaire and that statement was, “Does anyone want to buy my share of Mojang so I can move on with my life?” Soon after that, Microsoft, who was intrigued, bought Minecraft for 2.5 billion dollars. Notch was instantly a billionaire. Even though Notch was a billionaire, he remembered his promise to his younger sister so many years ago. Benevolently, he hired a helicopter for a day and let her tell the driver to fly wherever she wanted. To celebrate his success, Markus quickly purchased a seventy million dollar Beverly Hills home. Microsoft has taken Minecraft to new heights. When adding new features and mobs in their updates, Microsoft has improved Minecraft. At this writing, the latest is the Nether Update. Interestingly, new ways to play have been added like Minecraft Earth, which is augmented reality, and Minecraft Dungeons, which is centered on the fighting part of Minecraft. Who knows where Minecraft will be in the future?
Even at the young age of seven, Markus had quickly found his passion. Code, code, code. As he grew up, Notch began to see that he did not want to be controlled and just follow everyone else’s plans. He wanted to be free. After many years of extremely hard work, that quiet boy from Edsbyn hit the jackpot. Amazingly, he had at last gotten what he was looking for since his childhood. His game, which was globally recognized, was famous. Notch was one of those people that experienced incredible fortune. Many people that look at his success see it as all luck. Diving deeper into the story though, you will find that it was more than just luck. Sure, good fortune was part of it, but the key to Markus’s success was hard work and resolute perseverance.
Bibliography
Goldberg, Daniel, and Linus Larsson. Minecraft, The Unlikely Tale of Markus ‘Notch’ Persson and
the Game that Changed Everything. Virgin Books, 2014.
“Markus Persson Biography.” Biography, 2019,
https://www.biography.com/business-figure/markus-persson
Martin, Chris. Big Brands, Minecraft. Wayland, 2015.
Zeiger, Jennifer. The Making of Minecraft. Cherry Lake Publishing, 2017.