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Lord of Minecraft

Markus 'Notch' Persson on resisting VC, the lure of DLC and why he's open about revenue

GamesIndustry.biz What kind of audience do you think the game has now, after that explosion? I know it kicked off on Something Awful and a number of gaming sites, but has it extended beyond that now?
Markus Persson

Yeah, the people you mentioned are probably the largest group, but there are a lot of children who are playing it with their parents. I know a few of them in real life who do it, and I get emails from parents. That seems to be a fairly large group, actually.

GamesIndustry.biz Will you try and target that a bit more as you get closer to going gold?
Markus Persson

Possibly not, because I'll be trying to target the game as much as I can towards myself - I buy a lot of games, so if we can make games I like then there's probably other people on the internet who like the same games. But if I get feedback that the game's too scary or something, I might add like a scary-free mode or something like that.

GamesIndustry.biz There was reportedly some interest from Valve and Blizzard, but are you still being courted by big companies now you've become a studio?
Markus Persson

We're getting other types of interest now, people who want to throw money at us. I don't really understand that world that much, so I don't really know what it means. I'm getting the business people to talk to them. I'm just focused on the development so I'm not really in the loop there.

GamesIndustry.biz In theory, would you be interested in that kind of investment?
Markus Persson

I'd rather have it just be self-funded, because we can run the company we want. If we fail with a game it's because we failed it, not because we had to rush it to meet a deadline.

GamesIndustry.biz You've also said that you'll release the source code for Minecraft once you've completed it - are you still planning on that?
Markus Persson

Yes. I haven't really talked to other people in the company, but personally I still want that. I don't think they're going to object that much. It's basically because the game has so much potential for features that can be added, so it would seem a bit unfair if I just stopped working on it. It's a fairly interesting base for a game as well. My to do list is longer than ever, it keeps growing. Every time I do something I have to add two new things, basically.

GamesIndustry.biz Would you take people on to help design the game, or do you want to keep it your baby entirely?
Markus Persson

We're going to get some more programmers as well. One is starting on December 1st and is going to get involved in the Minecraft source code almost immediately. In case I get hit by a truck and go to hospital for three months, he can work on it - and also to help me to move the development speed and polish it. But I don't think it's a good idea to have like 10 developers on it, because then you just get different opinions. But if you have two or three people working on the source code, I think that could work really well.

GamesIndustry.biz How open are you to those guys' suggestions? Is there a fixed, mapped out plan of what you want the game to be, or are you still making it up as you go along?
Markus Persson

I stick fairly close to the original idea, but I feel like I'm just adding things kind of randomly. But it seems to always turn out that I meant it, and I blogged it five months ago or something. I try to stay open to new ideas, definitely. There's some kind of vague game feeling about what works - like I won't have guns, because it doesn't feel like it fits, but I can't really explain why it won't fit.

GamesIndustry.biz Of the stuff that the players have made, like a to-scale Starship Enterprise and a working in-game CPU, how much does it feed your own plans?
Markus Persson

Yeah, it does. When people started programming in it, that's when I added Redstone, so people could actually make their own computers. That what made sure that the game was Turing complete. I told my fiancée "someone's going to make a computer now" and then they did.

Markus Persson is the founder of Mojang Specifications. Interview by Alec Meer.

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Alec Meer: A 10-year veteran of scribbling about video games, Alec primarily writes for Rock, Paper, Shotgun, but given any opportunity he will escape his keyboard and mouse ghetto to write about any and all formats.
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