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

Goldberg, Daniel; Larsson, Linus

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1609805755 ISBN 13: 9781609805753

Verlag: Seven Stories Press, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

The incredible tale of a little game that shook the international gaming world--now with new material including a behind-the-scenes look at the sale to Microsoft.

For this second edition, the story has been enriched with more Minecraft than ever--a new section describes Minecraft's sale to Microsoft, Notch's less than heartwarming last day in the office, and Mojang's final days of independence.

His whole life, all Markus Persson wanted to do was create his own games. Create his own games and get rich. Then in 2009 a strange little project of his quickly grew into a worldwide phenomenon and, in just a few short years, turned its maker into an international icon.

Minecraft: The Unlikely Tale of Markus "Notch" Persson and the Game that Changed Everything is a Cinderella story for the Internet age—improbable success, fast money, and the power of digital technology to shake up a rock-solid industry. It's a story about being lost and finding your way, of breaking the rules and swimming against the current. It's about how the indie gaming scene rattled the foundations of corporate empires. But, above all, this is the story of how a creative genius chased down a crazy dream: the evolution of a shy amateur programmer into a video game god.

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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 the Washington Post and American Computer World, among other places, and quoted by BBC News, the New 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.

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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...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Seven Stories Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1609805755
• ISBN 13: 9781609805753
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 2
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar