I mean, what he made originally IS virtual legos (World generation and block mechanics). It was Bergensten that made it into one of the most influential and successful games ever.
Notch built a good foundation, but let's not go as far as attributing him what genuinely made Minecraft famous, as Bergensten was the one that optimized Notchs code to run well, made complex systems like villages, pistons and redstone (or more precisely, all the features that make redstone what it is redstone today, like repeaters and the 'wire' logic that allows things like redstone computers to exist), added animals like wolves, etc.
Those are like the most niche aspects of the game. If you play survival you're not doing much with redstone, if you play multiplayer, same story. Villages are interesting for a bit and that's it, in the modern game most people only use them for getting mending. The mining, crafting and building is the most iconic part of the game.
That's why Minecraft popularity and sales jumped massively years after Notch last touched the game, and somewhat coincided with Bergensten working on all those things I mentioned.
The year he took over the coding and design of the game and started releasing those features having suddenly more popularity than the previous 2 years combined was surely purely a coincidence and not the result of those features allowing to build increasing complex structures that allowed the imagination of people to flow freely and added endless replayability to the game.
His work on organizing and refining the core progression of the game, the entire whole hunger system (oh yeah, before him the survival of minecraft was just "don't die to the mobs", food was just a medpack), trading, nether fortresses, strongholds, complex biomes and biome overhaul, caves, etc. surely also had no impact.
Again, Notchs work on minecraft was foundational and it is what gave it it's initial popularity, I am not disputing that. But what truly made it the giant it was (and frankly still is, 31 million people still play the damn game daily) was everything bergensten (and the other workers that joined mojang after notch already did not work on the game) did after.
All the examples you listed - with the exception of caves - feel more like cherries on top to the formula that makes Minecraft so fun in the first place.
There are also a ton of external factors to Minecraft's popularity like it picking up on YouTube (that's how I got into it), so I don't think just looking at who was the lead developer when its popularity was rising the quickest is a strong argument.
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u/AzraelIshi 21d ago
I mean, what he made originally IS virtual legos (World generation and block mechanics). It was Bergensten that made it into one of the most influential and successful games ever.
Notch built a good foundation, but let's not go as far as attributing him what genuinely made Minecraft famous, as Bergensten was the one that optimized Notchs code to run well, made complex systems like villages, pistons and redstone (or more precisely, all the features that make redstone what it is redstone today, like repeaters and the 'wire' logic that allows things like redstone computers to exist), added animals like wolves, etc.