Minecraft: The Unlikely Tale of Markus Notch Persson and the Game that Changed Everything

by Daniel Goldberg

  Those who savor Schadenfreude can find plenty of material in tales like these; they usually end with the winners or someone close to them dying. But they don’t change a basic fact of wealth—the research does confirm that we humans become happier when we have a large sum of money in the bank.

  For Markus, the money was not rolling in as fast as it does for a lottery winner, but things happened quickly when the media got a whiff of the mysterious Notch and his millions. From being just a popular indie developer, in just a few months’ time he became one of Sweden’s most discussed individuals. Patiently, he answered the journalists’ questions. No, he hadn’t been blinded by the money. No, he hadn’t spent it all on craziness.

  When we speak with people close to Markus, they all maintain that the riches haven’t changed him. Some say that it’s because of his choice of friends; he has few instead of many, and most of them are slightly obsessive game developers rather than expensive-cocktail-drinking jet-setters. Others point out that Markus’s success came gradually, over the period of a few years. A third explanation is that Markus’s family has always kept him grounded. It would be a lie, however, to say that he’s never been tempted by conspicuous consumption.

  For instance, there was the time he sat at his computer, randomly surfing the web while taking a break from programming. On a shopping site he had stumbled upon, he saw a watch he liked. It had a classic design, really sharp. And best of all, he could afford it. He called Elin, who looked over his shoulder at the screen.

  Elin was silent for a while, looking at the price tag: $114,000.00.

  “Markus, it’s a watch. A watch.”

  After a short discussion, the purchase was averted. Markus realized that a gadget he would never dare wear was worthless anyway.

  Many articles written about Markus’s sudden wealth are about how it doesn’t seem to have changed his behavior. He showed up for interviews in the same hat and clothes as before. One article mentions that he seemed to have been shopping on the way to the interview; the reporter noted that his bag was from Dressmann, a popular low-price chain in Sweden. But to a certain extent, Markus’s spartan lifestyle is a myth. He and Elin have moved into an exclusive residence in central Stockholm.

  In the spring of 2011, Markus began talking about taking his family on a trip. He needed a break from working on Minecraft. His sister, Anna, had been talking about taking her youngest daughter on a flight for the first time, maybe to Turkey, a destination that was within her budget thanks to the charter flights to the coast. Instead, Markus booked a private jet to Paris. When the plane took off, Markus’s mother, Ritva, and Anna, accompanied by kids and fiancé, were aboard, along with Elin and her mother. After a few days of sightseeing and shopping, they flew home. When the plane was in the air, Markus leaned over to his sister, as far as the seatbelt would allow.

  “Is this fun?” he asked.

  The question might seem strange, but Anna saw that her answer was important to Markus. The money that had dropped into his lap would, first and foremost, make it possible for him and his family to have fun. He needed an answer.

  “Yes, this is fun,” said Anna.

  Five years had passed since Markus’s sister had kicked her drug habit. Her path had been via therapy, a new partner, and children. She continued to go to AA meetings. Her job as a care assistant didn’t pay very well, but she could live on what she earned. Now she was sitting back, gazing through the window of a private jet, on the way home from a trip to Paris.

  The Mojang team at MineCon 2011 in Las Vegas, just before the opening ceremony. To the right, Markus's sister Anna Hemming. Photo by Elin Zetterstrand.

  Anna and Markus have an agreement when it comes to how he shares his wealth. She has promised never to beg for money from her brother. Of course, she’ll gladly accept gifts, but it must always be Markus’s initiative. Part of it is that she’s afraid she’ll become greedy and the money will destroy their relationship. Besides, she got herself clean and off the streets all by herself, not with the help of a rich relative. When she began to get her life together, the condition of her teeth remained visible evidence of her troubled past. But instead of strewing money over his sister, Markus paid her dental bills.

  In less private contexts, Markus’s fortune is a hot topic of speculation. Everyone who knows his background knows how important gaming is to him, and to developers, the thought that his money might finance other independent game is titillating. As a patron, Markus’s millions would go far in bankrolling promising-but-broke developers. Besides, the money would be funneled back into the world Markus was a part of and perhaps form the foundation of future success stories. That’s why many were overjoyed when he sent out a signal in early 2012 suggesting he was going to do just that.

  It all began when famous game developer Tim Schafer wrote a few lines about wanting to do a follow-up to his game Psychonauts. Psychonauts had been released in 2005 and had been widely acclaimed by reviewers. Schafer, who in the nineties had worked at LucasArts on classic adventure games such as The Secret of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, and Full Throttle, was already a legend in the gaming world. He was praised for his singular sense of humor and his ingenious way of telling stories with his games.

  Even today, many people maintain that Psychonauts is one of the best games ever made. Markus is one of them. But Psychonauts was a commercial flop. Majesco, the publisher, lost a lot of money on it, and its CEO was forced to resign shortly thereafter. Among players who know their history, Psychonauts is a popular example of the moneyed publishers’ total disinterest in games with artistic ambitions. Indie developers in a bad mood like to point to it as proof of the unfairness of the world.

  Now, Schafer says, he would like to make a sequel. To do that, he would need “a few million dollars.” With the memory of its predecessor’s miserable sales still fresh, he understood that the chance of anyone financing his project was minimal. Until Markus piped up and openly tweeted, “Let’s make Psychonauts 2 happen.” Everyone knew he could afford it, and what would be more beautiful than to use Minecraft’s millions to give new life to a classic game? The gaming world was in a whirlwind over the story. We meet with Markus a few days later. He’s already explained that the financing of Psychonauts 2 won’t happen. It turned out to be significantly more expensive than he’d expected, more money than the sequel could reasonably earn back in sales. Mojang is not interested in charity.

  “There’s no purely altruistic help-others spirit,” says Markus, but quickly adds that he would like to invest in promising games. Cobalt, for example. Cobalt is a classic platform game that Mojang took under its wing shortly after the company was founded. Markus wants to do more of that. He’d rather Mojang act as a mother ship for game developers with great ideas but empty bank accounts than employ five hundred people.

  Just before MineCon, Markus had decided to invite his family along, for the trip of their lives. Anna, Ritva, and Markus’s father, Birger, would each receive a plane ticket to Las Vegas. It would be one of the few times since Anna and Markus were teenagers that the whole family would be in the same place at the same time. The siblings recall that Birger was withdrawn during the whole stay. Markus had pleaded with his father before the trip. He was welcome to come, Markus told him, but only as long as he stayed drug-free. “I love you,” Markus said when he invited him. “But I can’t talk to you when you’re high.”

  When the fans left his son alone for a short while, Birger told him he was proud and happy about what Markus had accomplished. But Birger had come directly to Las Vegas from the countryside of Hälsingland, so he also admitted that it was alarming to be among so many people. Maybe it was hard for him to come to terms with the fact that everyone was there to see Markus. Birger saw how the fans swarmed around his son, the boy who hadn’t been able to tear himself away from the Commodore 128 at home in Salem twenty years earlier. The Commodore 128 they’d both spent so much time together on before their relationship deteriorate
d.

  MineCon ended with a giant party in classic Las Vegas style. Deadmau5 stood in the DJ booth. One of the world’s most acclaimed house producers, he plays Minecraft himself when he isn’t busy getting sold-out arenas full of people up and dancing. Great Britain’s Prince Harry was seen in the vicinity, which got game bloggers wondering if even royalty had come to love the shy Swede’s creation. At one point during the party, Anna turned to her brother.

  “You did it, Markus. You really did it.”

  When the family woke up the next day, only one thing remained to be done. A long time ago, Markus made his sister a promise that someday he would get rich and celebrate it by taking the family on a helicopter ride. Markus lay exhausted in bed, but Anna, Ritva, and Birger went down to the hotel lobby and into a waiting car. Still tired from yesterday’s festivities, they boarded the helicopter and flew out over the Grand Canyon.

  Markus and Anna have thought a lot about what their father said and did during those days in Vegas. They both noticed that he was quiet and withdrawn, but thought it was just because he was overwhelmed. During the last few years, he’d lived far from both of his children and city life. Now he saw his son greeted like a rock star. Anna describes Birger as impressed by what he saw, but also as worn-out. The siblings knew that his most recent drug-free period had, like so many times before, ended in relapse. It would turn out to be his last.

  Around a month later, they received word that Birger had committed suicide at home in his village in Hälsingland.

  Chapter 16

  Back to the Boys’ Room

  After MineCon, Markus took a step back. He took a leave of absence until the end of the year and spent most of it at home playing video games. He felt run-down. He needed time to rest, to be with his wife, and reestablish contact with the friends he’d hardly had time to see during the past six months. But most of all, he needed time to think.

  The months before the Las Vegas trip had been insanely hectic. It was out of the question for anyone other than Markus to put the finishing touches on Minecraft, and Markus had worked more or less around the clock to get it ready in time. Interviews, meetings, and the other trappings of success consumed almost all his free time. It wasn’t what he’d imagined a couple of years earlier.

  To understand why Minecraft became such a success, you must remember how everything began. When Markus released the earliest version of his game, he considered it an experiment. He wanted to see if he could, on his own, finish a more ambitious project than those he’d worked on before. He wanted to test his ideas and maybe, if he was lucky, make enough money to finance the next game.

  It was all about creating games for their own sake and creating new and different experiences. It was not a problem for him that it involved spending long nights in front of the computer with no company. Others often perceive Markus as shy, maybe even introverted—none of which is out of character for skilled programmers. Writing good code, not least for games, demands many long hours.

  For those who’ve never programmed, the code may seem a means to an end. But impassioned developers often speak of their handiwork with great affection. It’s fun for them, stimulating, and even peaceful to grapple with abstract problems, the solutions to which are found by placing commands in the right sequence. Being as introverted as Markus, at least during some period of life, may be a prerequisite for truly learning the art of programming. A programmer who doesn’t enjoy sitting all night long in a dark room, eyes glued to the screen, will never become an expert, in the same way that the soccer player who has to force himself onto the pitch will never become a Zlatan Ibrahimović.

  Neither is it a coincidence that Minecraft was created outside of the tight framework of the established computer-game industry. At Midasplayer, Markus’s ideas were too odd, and the game he wanted to make had nothing to do with those that had already proven successful. At Avalanche, a programmer couldn’t just drop into the director’s office and suggest a new project. In fact, when we ask his old bosses, they admit without hesitation that Minecraft would never have become a reality inside the walls of their companies. The idea was too strange, too difficult to fit into their existing product catalog. Most of all, it was untried. They would never have dared.

  Perhaps Markus’s decision to leave his permanent job in the game industry is the most important aspect of this story. It was only when he resigned himself to the fact that no job with a salary would allow him the freedom to design the games he dreamed of that he was able to quit and create Minecraft. At home in his apartment, no one told him what to do. Of course, he was crazy to say no to a promising career at Midasplayer, but he was crazy in exactly the right way.

  The weeks before MineCon in Las Vegas, the world was spinning so fast around Markus that he almost forgot about all of that. His daily life by then had very little in common with the life he dreamed of. He’d never had better circumstances for doing exactly as he pleased, but almost all his time was eaten up by the game he’d worked on virtually nonstop for three years. Great changes were in the works for Minecraft: a subscription model, for example, and better functions for user-generated content. These were ideas that had very little to do with Markus’s original vision. They were afterthoughts, intended to lengthen the lifetime of a game he felt he was essentially finished with. With each passing day, the feeling grew that he was getting stuck in Minecraft.

  So he decided to quit.

  Markus Persson. Photo by Kristina Sahlén.

  Shortly after MineCon, Markus informed the world that Jens Bergensten was taking over as lead developer for Minecraft. Now Jens would have the last word in all decisions while Markus promised to stay in the background. Many people raised their eyebrows when Markus gave his share of Mojang’s profits, $3.5 million, to the employees in early 2012. The decision was sudden. One day, at the office, he gathered his T-shirted colleagues and told them that they were now wealthy men. The money was divided according to how long they had been employed, so Jens received a lesser fortune. But considering the fact that Markus had already made almost twenty times that much on Minecraft, his generosity feels more comprehensible.

  Markus could at least put one thing behind him. In March 2012, the court case between ZeniMax and Mojang about who owned the right to the name Scrolls, was definitely over. A settlement gave the creators of Minecraft the right to call their next game Scrolls but not to trademark the title. In addition, Mojang was not allowed to make a sequel to Scrolls using the same name. The agreement is almost identical to the suggestion Markus and others on Mojang’s board of directors had made to ZeniMax almost a year earlier, an offer that had been refused. When Carl received the invoice from his attorneys, he saw that the case had cost Mojang more than $200,000 in legal fees.

  Work on Scrolls could continue, but Scrolls was Jakob’s game. No matter how much Markus liked the game, he was not going to interfere in its development. He would have to begin something totally new.

  It is no small thing to follow up the most talked-about game of the decade. The pressure on Markus can be compared to a musician who has released an award-winning hit album. Everyone is waiting for something new, and they all have ideas about what is most important. Some emphasize making money, others point to what would be most interesting artistically. Markus knew that the next game could never be as successful as Minecraft. Nothing could garner him as much money or as much attention. Nothing, except possibly an immediate sequel, milking more from the same recipe for success. And that’s exactly what Markus had promised himself he’d never do.

  There was only one reasonable way to go. Markus needed to do something really strange. A game so weird that no one could accuse him of selling out or of being a one-hit wonder.

  At the time of writing, the first images from what Markus earlier simply called “the space game” had just surfaced on the Internet. It takes place on a spaceship and will contain programmable 16-bit computers. Markus has decided to call it 0X10c—a title difficult to interpret, let alon
e pronounce, that refers to the year when the game takes place. It’s yet another nightmare for marketers and yet another game that the bosses at a larger company would immediately have waved off as lunacy.

  The first few days, Markus sat for hours, sunk deep in code. He lives in a significantly larger apartment now than he did when Minecraft was created. He is married and has more money in the bank than he can spend in the rest of his life. Otherwise, not much has changed. The old school desk that used to house his LEGO pieces followed in the move. His programming stints in front of the computer are just as long as they were in Sollentuna. Minecraft is history, but Markus has found his way back to what he loves.

  With a smile, Elin tells us about the Markus she now sees every day at home. He spends most of his time coding. His eyes are shining again, she says. One day, he burst out of his home office. He was exhilarated.

  “I’ve done it,” he said, talking quickly, “I’ve sorted out that thing with the shadows.”

  Photographs

  A replica of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, built on the popular FyreUK server. By FyreUK (www.fyreuk.com) (www.youtube.com/user/fyreuk)

  High Rossferry, a city of skyscrapers, bridges, and parks built entirely in Minecraft. By Dydtor and Darkone (www.highrossferry.blogspot.com) (www.youtube.com/user/highrossferrycity)

  The city is surrounded by water and connected to the mainland by bridges. The architecture is inspired by US cities such as New York and Chicago. By Dydtor and Darkone (www.highrossferry.blogspot.com) (www.youtube.com/user/highrossferrycity)

  A beachfront village with an ark, inspired by the biblical story of Noah. Built in survival mode on the Mindcrack server. By BdoubleO (www.youtube.com/bdoubleo100) and Guude (www.youtube.com/guudeboulderfist) http://www.youtube.com/bdoubleo100