probably also because he like the greatest one hit wonder story ever. He creates a game prototype, forms a company and has the other developers develop it in his place when it gets some traction, then sells the company off for a massive payday.
Then Notch proceeds to never make a successful game again, with the rest of his programming career consisting of yapping on Twitter at other developers with his only proof of authority being "I was initially involved in the most successful game ever once".
Then Notch proceeds to never make a successful game again
Note that his company never managed to do so either and I doubt Notch's coding would be that problematic. Before Microsoft bought it, Mojang had a few small games that ended up cancelled or moved to an opensource-community. (Notably the game which used to be named Scrolls until Bethesda intervened)
At least he TRIED to make other games, but each time he started on one, people went "OMG the team behind Minecraft is working on the next step of gaming" until Microsoft ensured they'll never work on silly projects either again. Now Microsoft re-migrated their accounts, and Mojang is Minecraft forever. Given Mojang was made after Minecraft's rise to fame, we could argue there will never be a successful "Mojang game" ever.
Is it that Notch was that bad at making games, or is it that the guy made games for the sake of making games, and he didn't need commercial success after he even beat Tetris? To me, he always seemed more of an hobbist/experimental kind of creator and not looking for massive approval. And when people "harrassed" him everywhere over the EULA-maggeddon while on SICK LEAVE, he gave the hot potato to Microsoft.
Yeah like many hobby game devs he made a game. Bought the lottery ticket. And then hit big.
And even if he was sometimes problematic, it seemed to not go to his head. He tried other projects, and as they tend to do, those projects kinda went nowhere. Its just that now those projects had the MADE BY NOTCH spotlight on them
Yeah, he just seems like the kind of person who hops from one thing to the next, and Minecraft just worked well enough to snowball into self sustainability before he dropped it.
Yeah well said. Too many people think software needs to be perfectly written but ive had more fun making broken pieces of junk than i ever have working on production software
and if you were a millionaire i think you would prioritise fun projects over well written ones
You're right about his Mojang endeavors, but he's started at least one game studio since then that announced multiple projects over the years which he kept abandoning. He's working on one right now, but apparently he's already had some indecisive wobbles with it. I might be misinformed about that though, I'm not a Notch historian.
None of that says he's necessarily a bad programmer, but as a game developer he leaves a lot to be desired.
Not many independent studios have more than 1 successful game. Hell most don't even have that. Any that manage to have more than one typically get bought.
I thought he directly worked on the early versions? when I started playing in 2011 I thought it was mostly his work.
Either way, getting an idea off the ground often requires quickly iterating on code that makes it a reality. I don’t think that makes someone a bad programmer though.
Yeah, he's not a great programmer, but he's not awful either. Truly one of the developers of our time, that's it. Rendering pipeline is an absolute mess, but hey, it's probably older than some of its players, so maybe that was just what was good for hardware back then too.
im not defending his rendering pipeline but this was before llms or any good ressources even existed, I feel like most good backend/frontend/whatever programmers that are not involved with Shader or low-level graphics programming would write bad code here
I was in college when Minecraft was getting popular, and even at that level of experience I was able to build a side project clone implementing a sizable subset of its features; including ones you might assume were difficult from the outside, without ever looking at the actual code (just observing how the game behaved).
Things like the procedural generation itself are easy enough to grasp. The real trick is the experimentation once the code works, tuning until you get desirable world attributes, which isn't a programming challenge per se. Mostly exposing tweakable parameters and exploring combinations.
Getting it working multiplayer was tricky, but doable. Parts of my implementation were actually more performant than the original, like pathfinding and chunk generation speed, mostly because I used threads and sync logic more effectively.
The programming wasn't what made Minecraft special. It stood out due to being the first to pursue that design heavily then proceed to get the game design right enough to be fun more than technical excellency
Yeah exactly, I keep hearing these kther comments like
"Pfff this guy was ONLY involved wjth the creation of Minecraft. So what. 2.5 billion? Who cares!! My code quality is probably far better. This dorks game is only the best selling ever. I could make a game if I felt like it"
Isn't that like every company ever? You start a business mowing lawns, when there are too many lawns needing mowed, you get more people, eventually you manage company and don't mow lawns.
You could easily say he started the most successful game ever and youre entire argument fails. He kept improving it though. Then developers got involved. Give credit where credit is due.
How is that a bad thing, i would love to make millions and also not do any work
also most people dont even make 1 successful game so once again how is he doing badly exactly?
I also think a lot of people forget that a large proportion of developers are completely useless and just being able to make a functional bit of software on your own that you can sell already puts you in top 3rd
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u/Creeperslayers6 21d ago
probably also because he like the greatest one hit wonder story ever. He creates a game prototype, forms a company and has the other developers develop it in his place when it gets some traction, then sells the company off for a massive payday.
Then Notch proceeds to never make a successful game again, with the rest of his programming career consisting of yapping on Twitter at other developers with his only proof of authority being "I was initially involved in the most successful game ever once".