This article was taken from the December 2011 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Big publishers such as EA and Activision have teams of hundreds working on their blockbuster games. But Markus "Notch" Persson (above) created a smash hit by himself. The 32-year-old Swede coded
Minecraft, a downloadable PC title that's racked up several awards and almost £47 million in sales. There's even been a conference for fans at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas. And all while Minecraft was in beta.
More and more game designers are making and releasing their own titles. But none has experienced a success like Persson's. It's an especially dazzling feat given that
Minecraft Classic merely challenges players to dig tunnels and stack blocks into structures in a pixellated lo-res sandbox. "I developed it for people like me," says Persson, "who grew up in the late 80s and early 90s, back when smaller game studios were just exploring the boundaries."
It turns out there were a lot of players like him: Minecraft enthusiasts fell in love with the game's charmingly retro aesthetic and the easy-to-use toolkit that gave them the freedom to create whatever they could imagine. Persson released a free prototype on the back of a week's development in May 2009 and since then has kept fans abreast of updates. He has more than 465,000 follwers on Twitter. Millions happily coughed up when he started charging €10 (£8.60) for the alpha version, then €15 for the beta.
The sold-out Vegas MineCon event marked the official release of Minecraft 1.0. Several thousand fans basked in the glow of their guru, but more than four million paying customers worldwide downloaded the update. Persson will continue to work on the game when he isn't managing the company of 13 employees he has now assembled, most of them focused on new titles. (He's overseeing versions of the game for Xbox 360, iOS and Android.) And though he has bought himself a nice watch and a bigger apartment, he largely maintains his low-maintenance coder lifestyle. In fact, most of his fortune remains unspent. "I play games, and it's not that expensive a hobby," he says. "I am slowly learning how to be less frugal."
Better be careful in Vegas, player.
In Minecraft*, players have the freedom to create amazing installation, check the gallery to see a selection.*
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
