Minecraft: The Unlikely Tale of Markus "Notch" Persson and the Game That Changed Everything - Hardcover

Goldberg, Daniel; Larsson, Linus

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1609805372 ISBN 13: 9781609805371

Verlag: Seven Stories Press,U.S., 2013

Inhaltsangabe

A completely unique and in-depth look at the creator of Minecraft, Markus "Notch" Persson, and his rise from unknown computer programmer to multi-millionaire international gaming icon. Minecraft, the "virtual Lego" game Markus crafted in his free time, has become one of the most talked about activities since Tetris. Talked about by tens of millions of people, in fact. It is the story of unlikely success, fast money, and the power of digital technology to rattle an empire. And it is about creation, exclusion, and the feeling of not fitting in.

Here Markus opens up for the first time about his life. About his old Lego-filled desk at school. About the first computer his father brought home one day. But also about growing up in a family marked by drug abuse and conflict. But above all it is the story of the fine line between seeming misfit and creative madman, and the birth of a tech visionary.

Minecraft: The Unlikely Tale of Markus "Notch" Persson and the Game that Changed Everything is a Cinderella story for the Internet age.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

LINUS LARSSON and DANIEL GOLDBERG are two of Sweden’s best-known writers on new technology and the internet. They have been published in theWashington Post and American Computer World, among other places, and quoted by BBC News, theNew York Times, and the Sydney Morning Herald. Their first book, Swedish Hackers, was published in 2011 in Sweden. Minecraft, their bestselling English language debut, followed that same year.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1
Three, Two, One . . .

It’s November 18, 2011. An old man in a faded gray
sweater looks up from his slot machine. A long and
steady stream of children, teens, and grown-ups flows
through the casino. Their outfits are odd, even for this
place. In Las Vegas, you can count on seeing pretty much
anything: Elvis impersonators lined up on the sidewalks,
gigantic fake-gold lions, drunken weekend revelers, and
fountains shooting water hundreds of yards into the air
synchronized to the tune of the national anthem.
The people streaming through the casino at the Hotel
Mandalay Bay are wearing cardboard boxes on their
heads. Some are in full cardboard-box bodysuits with
armholes that look uncomfortable and make their elbows
stick straight out, like cubist comic-strip characters with
the posture of bodybuilders. The cardboard suits they’ve
squeezed into are painted in large colorful squares, some
green, some black. Others are light blue, brown, and
pink. The man at the slot machines, clueless, returns to
his game, his cigarette, and his morning cocktail.
The cardboard-box people aren’t there to win money.
They continue toward the convention facilities that are next
to the casino, where in a few minutes they will be cheering
as they watch a thirty-two-year-old Swede pull a lever and
release the finished version of their favorite game.
Minecraft. A computer game as incomprehensible to
the uninitiated as it is wildly adored by tens of millions
of people. Those who’ve traveled here are among the
game’s most devoted fans. Not only have they paid airfare
but also, before embarking for Las Vegas, they cut
and glued their suits, modeled on the game’s primitive
block graphics and shapes.
And there are thousands of them, representing a total of
twenty-three countries. The youngest is four years old and
the oldest is seventy-seven. Of the many parents, some
have made the trip just for their kids and are now observing
in awe a world their offspring adore but that is alien to
them. Others are just as passionate as their children.
“We play together constantly,” says a dad with
green-tinted hair, wearing a suit sprayed green, his face
covered with black bars as he poses for pictures with his
identically decked-out son.
A few minutes later. The convention hall where we’re seated
is the largest at the Mandalay Bay. It’s completely packed
and the lights are off. All eyes turn toward the stage and
Lydia Winters, who—impossible not to recognize with her
short, shocking pink hair—is firing up the audience.
“This weekend is going to be awesome!”
Giant screens are mounted on both sides of the stage
so that those sitting farther back can see what’s happening.
They all show Lydia’s happy, glowing, almost cartoon-
character-like smile.
“So many people’s . . . lives have been changed by this
game!”
Next to the stage, just to the left, the weekend’s big star is
waiting for the signal to step up into the spotlight: Markus
Persson, dressed in jeans, well-worn sneakers, and a black polo
that’s a bit tight around the middle. As always, he’s wearing a
black fedora. Markus doesn’t know what to do with his hands
while he waits. He pulls absentmindedly at the hem of his shirt
before his hands land in his jeans pockets, thumbs out.
There is an ocean of five thousand people seated
before him—if seated is the right word, because many
of them stand up as the first of Markus’s colleagues
arrive onstage. Lydia Winters calls them up and one by
one they trudge onstage, shyly wave a little at the audience,
and line up beside her. Jens Bergensten—the programmer,
tall, lanky, his red ponytail hanging down his
back. Carl Manneh—the CEO, who is perfectly okay with
Lydia keeping the microphone. Jakob Porser—Markus’s
old friend and the cofounder of his company. The graphics
guy, Junkboy—no, his real name is never given in
public—who leaps onstage wearing a cardboard box
on his head and making victory signs for the audience.
They’re all Swedish men, all in their late twenties and
early thirties, and they all work at Mojang, the company
that produces Minecraft. Most days they sit and work at
their computers in a shabby apartment on AÅãsoÅNgatan, in
Stockholm. But this is no ordinary day.
This is the moment when the final version of Minecraft
will be released to the public. Which means that until
today, the five thousand people in the audience—and
several million others around the world—have been
playing an unfinished game. A kind of prototype, which
has earned Markus close to $70 million and created one
of the world’s most admired companies.
This is MineCon, the first convention dedicated entirely
to Minecraft. The event began as a random idea at
the Mojang headquarters on SoÅNdermalm, in southern
Stockholm. Markus Persson asked on his blog if anyone
would pay ninety dollars to go to a Minecraft convention
in Las Vegas. Within a few weeks more than 43,000 people
said they would, and the Mandalay Bay was booked.
The hotel is a forty-four-story monumental monstrosity
built entirely of gold-tinted glass. In its twenty-two
restaurants, smoke-filled poker dens, and meandering
indoor malls, you can easily spend several days without
leaving the hotel—exactly as intended. As a rule, casinos
in Las Vegas have no windows or clocks, so that gamblers
will continue to feed money into the machines throughout
the night. The desert gambling mecca is no place for
people with regular circadian rhythms.
The coming days will be an unparalleled spectacle,
bizarre for those unfamiliar with gaming conventions
in general and especially so for those who don’t know
Minecraft in particular. People will line up for hours to
get Markus’s autograph. A costume contest will nearly
degenerate into a riot. Two British men, known by millions
of fans from their YouTube channel, will be greeted
like celebrities when they play videos on the stage, showing
functioning electronic equipment built entirely within
Minecraft.
It’s not that surprising. Minecraft had grown into
an unprecedented success story well before MineCon.
Sixteen million players had downloaded the game; more
than four million of them had paid for it. Minecraft had
been praised by pretty much every gaming magazine and
website in the world. And after all, it’s a game so engrossing
that thousands of its most faithful fans have traveled
to Las Vegas to celebrate that it is finally finished.
We have come here to understand why. We want to ask
the costumed men and women what it is about Minecraft
that makes them love it more than any other game. And
not least of all, we want to know why Markus’s strange
creation has earned him such enormous sums of money.
For it was, of course, the money that made us take note
of Markus Persson in the first place. In late 2010, the
unassuming programmer began to pop up in interviews,
describing how he’d struck gold with his remarkable
game. He always displayed a modest, almost surprised
demeanor in the face of his success. He didn’t seem to
have any idea what to do with his millions.
It looked like an improbable business success, a story
of a quick breakthrough and of sudden riches, a shining
example of how the Internet can shake the foundations
of an industry and create empires within months. But the
closer we looked, the more difficult it was to fit...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Seven Stories Press,U.S.
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1609805372
• ISBN 13: 9781609805371
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 255
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar