Yea I was a little harsh to say Notch doesn't deserve any credit. He deserves credit for being the first person to successfully create the concept in a full game and loosely guiding the game through Beta. I was really pointing out that Notch doesn't deserve nearly as much as we give him. The game isn't awesome because Notch made it, it's because the idea that he took advantage of was a good idea. It would have been awesome if anyone that knew java made it and was serious about making it. The fact that Notch took ideas from Dwarf Fortress and Infiniminer shortly after Infiniminer released its source code makes me think he just took Infiniminer's source code to make the most complicated bit of Minecraft or at least heavily used it as a template.
I could go on a major tangent on why I don't think Notch knew what he was doing when he first made Minecraft, but I don't think I need to. I think it's apparent to anyone who knew the course of actions that took place near Minecraft's birth that Notch just took ideas that weren't his own and made a game while he was still learning Java. It would explain the poorly written code that took him months to fix over time, and the fact that even adding smaller things into the game would screw up other things, and the fact that SMP is so disjointed from SSP (novice mistake).
I guess what I was trying to get at was that Notch was holding Minecraft back due to novice mistakes and poor communication. It pissed people off back in early Beta, and it pissed people off in 1.0.0. Jeb has always seemed open to the community, and his success as a leader shows that Notch was going about the game completely the wrong way, and 1.8 showed that it cost months of development to recoup from Notch's mistakes.
I would normally agree that the creator should always receive some credit for what their creation evolves into, but Minecraft is a special case. I felt that at times Notch's ego got in the way and Notch selfishly put himself first instead of the game. It was at these times when I contemplated whether Notch truly deserved the praise he was getting. Should we still be giving him praise after he stops caring about his creation and begins to neglect it? Should we be giving him credit for what people he hired has done? It's like giving the head of the CocaCola company credit for a successful new flavor of coke that was formulated by the Coca-cola flavor division.
It's a very tough decision for me, because of this analogy. If the head of the Coca-cola company was originally against adding a new flavor but finally allowed it to happen and that flavor was successful, should the head of coca-cola really receive credit for something he didn't agree with to begin with? Should we be praising Notch for something Jeb had to pull teeth with Notch for him to allow in the game? If the creator is dragging the creation down because of his own egoism and selfishness how much credit should we give him for Minecraft's success?
I have to give Notch this. He did add many standard features during Beta that contributed towards Minecraft's popularity and made people want to keep playing. But at some point there was a disconnection. Notch begin to drastically change the main focus of Minecraft. This pivotal change marked a shift from being mostly Notch to a team effort. This is the point I want to make clear to people, Notch changed the way the game worked here. He is responsible for this change for the better or worse.
I'm going back to the Coca-cola analogy here. Say that the head of Coca-cola ordered that the formula for Coke be changed. The head is responsible for the success or failure of his change. If people don't like the new formula but they the head likes it enough to keep it should the head of coca-cola still be credited with the same regard with the new formula because of the success of the old formula? Does the fact that it's not as good negate previous efforts?
I have to say that 1.8 and 1.0.0 were not as good as 1.7.3. The formula for Minecraft had changed and Notch was largely responsible for the mess that followed and Notch dared to call it fully-released. Consider what fully-released means to most people and compare that to how much credit Notch deserves for the update that made Minecraft full. Isn't credit given for a product as a whole?
It doesn't matter that pieces of the old formula still remain that if parts of the new formula made it worse overall. Notch's focal points for the new formula were way off the mark and Jeb saved the scene. In a way Jeb was Notch's Get Out of Jail Free Card. It was the right thing to do, but it doesn't get him off the hook. Notch should be given credit for the good things such as making the game, but also the bad things like adding unappealing features in a rushed manner, and terming an incomplete game as fully released. People will consider the game for what is now, not what it was then, and Notch had zero involvement in fixing the things he was credited with breaking in 1.8/1.0.0.
Credit shift occured when Notch stepped down. If Notch breaks the game and then steps down before fixing it, he shouldn't be accredited when the game gets better under new management. Notch broke it, and left it broken. Now Jeb is proving that Notch isn't even needed to make the game better. Jeb leaves his ego at the door, and Jon is just a working machine! Notch is just a person who was lucky enough to create a game that raked in millions that required very little effort on his part. It shouldn't take months to fix a bug.
Jeb is at least willing to tackle the hard issues in the game, the issues that Notch was avoiding. Notch needs to learn that adding effort into something actually pays off: not always in sales, but in respect and recognition as a game developer. Respect must be maintained. It is so easy to lose respect when you appear like you don't give a **** anymore. Notch is learning this the hard way.
Jeb and Jon are updating the game like professionals. They aren't adding lots of useless **** that wasted precious time like Notch did. The updates have structure and are coherent. 1.1 and 1.2 make 1.8 and 1.0.0 look like a ****ing mess. Few things in those updates complemented and a lot of it was pointless. I don't want to see this incoherent garbage way of updating ever again.
IMHO Notch ****ed up at full-release, it was his own fault, and I have a hard time getting over the fact that he managed to balance the game so perfectly and then strip all that balance away so masterfully. Full-release is so trivial and he went way overboard. Notch has lost all respect and trust from me. I would prefer that he not come back without a full statement that he will listen to us, the community. Otherwise he was just one more bug removed from the game.
Edit: Cleaned up some off-made points. I know a lot of it is off-topic, but I had to get this out. I'm just tired of people giving Notch respect that he truly doesn't deserve. He betrayed us, and people still flock to him like he's the best person in the world. It really disgusts me!
VileAssassin, you've made responses to arguments that were never even posted; no one stated that Notch deserved all of the credit. Anyone who does say that is a moron. However, I think that you're being a bit misguided here. One could certainly argue that Notch was holding Minecraft back during the months leading up to 1.0's release, sure, but that's not the point. Just because you're personally discontent with Notch doesn't mean he doesn't deserve his credit in all of this.
I made some adjustments. I was running out of time, and my opinion softened half way through, so it was much harsher before I posted it. Notch is accredited for most of beta and all of alpha. However we don't need him anymore. Notch originally got us hooked, and now us veterans are relying on Jeb and Jon to keep us entertained with new content. Notch has been completely removed from this equation.
Ever since Jeb fixed the flatness in 1.1 and the future 1.2 jungles people have been happy. They have been overwhelmed with the new updates. Shouldn't something as important as 1.0.0 full release have felt as overwhelming as 1.2? No. Notch had to go on this time consuming effort to create an end game that is only moderately fun to do, and there was a lot of other "random" things added that didn't have anything to do with anything, and existing mechanics were mostly unchanged.
If Notch is going to throw a wrench in the awesome updates, then I don't want him to come back.
The fact that Notch took ideas from Dwarf Fortress and Infiniminer shortly after Infiniminer released its source code makes me think he just took Infiniminer's source code to make the most complicated bit of Minecraft or at least heavily used it as a template.
They're in different languages, so if you were to accuse him, it would only be of using it as a template, as he couldn't have ripped the source code directly.
However, there is no evidence of this assertion, so I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say he probably didn't use the source code of infiniminer, just the concept.
I think it's apparent to anyone who knew the course of actions that took place near Minecraft's birth that Notch just took ideas that weren't his own and made a game while he was still learning Java.
Honestly, it seems more like a case of ADHD rather than a lack of coding skill. Notch can certainly code, as evidenced by his Ludum Dare entries and Minicraft, and he chose Java because he was comfortable with the language.
I think he just can't keep his attention on a single thing. He doesn't have the focus to stay on a project for very long. The randomness of the additions he made shows to me that he really didn't know where to take the game. He just had some vague ideas, and he gets too distracted by random suggestions.
So, in my opinion at least, it's more a case of ADHD rather than a lack of coding skill.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
When all is said and done, Will you have said more than you have done?
That seems to be Notch's main problem, and he even said it himself multiple times in his blog, "The word of Notch," that he can't stay focused or he usually gets board of something and moves onto another without finishing the first. I think from what he has said in his blog that it's a miracle that he was able to stick with Minecraft as long as he did. He seemed to loose a LOT of interest during early beta since that is when he started adding some pointless stuff and small, broken updates spaced unusually far apart for their content load... I think Jeb and Jon will be able to keep their interest in the game going so long as we give them support since they seem to thrive more on the community than Notch did. To be frank I think Notch's interest may have dipped off once he noticed he had earned quite a large amount of money from Minecraft, either that or he just got board with it because he realized it was turning into an actual job instead of a pet project. I think Jeb and Jon will, even after they start thinking of Minecraft as a job they'll be able to stay invested in it since they didn't start it off as a fun little pet project. Just my opinion.
I don't think "Anvil" is quite finished. It's only starting and might surprise us even more =)
I love Jeb and Jon for what they are doing, but don't forget they are working on something that is already built. It's easier to fix the ice and cherries on the cake than making the cake.
You make a good point. I have something I might add to this that makes it less pertinent. When Notch (and Jeb) decided to do the Adventure Update, they nearly completely rebuilt the terrain generator and lighting engine for the game. Any previous credit from the old generator should be given lightly, because the main engine of the game was heavily modified and Jeb had a hand in it.
The only thing that hasn't been greatly modified is SMP. It's long been overdue for an upgrade. I mean it's probably better to just completely scrap it and start over. Notch's design for multiplayer is terrible.
My point is that all of the core components of the game except mining, achievements and weather, and things like skin applications has been revised at some point. The Minecraft from Alpha and early Beta almost doesn't exist anymore. It's entirely different and Notch relied on Jeb to help him make the necessary changes. Notch still did the majority of the new terrain generator though. I think Notch worked on the generator, while Jeb worked on the abandoned mines, and villages, and future NPCs. Jeb worked on potions, and enchantments too.
I would say that at this point Jeb had about 45 % of the credit for 1.0.0, but that only leaves Notch with 65% credit and this is just percetage of the game they worked on. If you consider who contributed most to it's popularity then that fluxuates and one could argue that Notch didn't really have to do much for Minecraft to be hyped. It was cheap and addictive, Notch had little to do with this, because he constantly released updates that killed mods, introdced new bugs that we had to wait until the next update to be fixed, and the game was often unstable. Really I doubt he was the reason so many people played the game.
But that was then. Now Jeb is tasked with keeping minecraft popular at a higher price. I think he is doing an amazing job at keeping the focus on what we want in Minecraft. I don't remember Notch caring about what we wanted in the game. He only cared about what he wanted in the game, and reason 1.8 was evidence that Notch was haphazardly trying to cater to us after he knowingly neglected us all through Beta. He tried to cater to whims made back in late alpha, not what people cared about presently. It's obvious that the only feedback he paid attention to was an entire generation back. This is why I'm crediting Minecraft's popularity during full release almost entirely to Jeb, because Notch didn't give a **** how we wanted to play Minecraft as a fully released game. He should have!
And congrats, I gave you 30+ :biggrin.gif:
Can't wait for all these to be implemented to MC. It will be soo amazing.
Yea I was a little harsh to say Notch doesn't deserve any credit. He deserves credit for being the first person to successfully create the concept in a full game and loosely guiding the game through Beta. I was really pointing out that Notch doesn't deserve nearly as much as we give him. The game isn't awesome because Notch made it, it's because the idea that he took advantage of was a good idea. It would have been awesome if anyone that knew java made it and was serious about making it. The fact that Notch took ideas from Dwarf Fortress and Infiniminer shortly after Infiniminer released its source code makes me think he just took Infiniminer's source code to make the most complicated bit of Minecraft or at least heavily used it as a template.
I could go on a major tangent on why I don't think Notch knew what he was doing when he first made Minecraft, but I don't think I need to. I think it's apparent to anyone who knew the course of actions that took place near Minecraft's birth that Notch just took ideas that weren't his own and made a game while he was still learning Java. It would explain the poorly written code that took him months to fix over time, and the fact that even adding smaller things into the game would screw up other things, and the fact that SMP is so disjointed from SSP (novice mistake).
I guess what I was trying to get at was that Notch was holding Minecraft back due to novice mistakes and poor communication. It pissed people off back in early Beta, and it pissed people off in 1.0.0. Jeb has always seemed open to the community, and his success as a leader shows that Notch was going about the game completely the wrong way, and 1.8 showed that it cost months of development to recoup from Notch's mistakes.
I would normally agree that the creator should always receive some credit for what their creation evolves into, but Minecraft is a special case. I felt that at times Notch's ego got in the way and Notch selfishly put himself first instead of the game. It was at these times when I contemplated whether Notch truly deserved the praise he was getting. Should we still be giving him praise after he stops caring about his creation and begins to neglect it? Should we be giving him credit for what people he hired has done? It's like giving the head of the CocaCola company credit for a successful new flavor of coke that was formulated by the Coca-cola flavor division.
It's a very tough decision for me, because of this analogy. If the head of the Coca-cola company was originally against adding a new flavor but finally allowed it to happen and that flavor was successful, should the head of coca-cola really receive credit for something he didn't agree with to begin with? Should we be praising Notch for something Jeb had to pull teeth with Notch for him to allow in the game? If the creator is dragging the creation down because of his own egoism and selfishness how much credit should we give him for Minecraft's success?
I have to give Notch this. He did add many standard features during Beta that contributed towards Minecraft's popularity and made people want to keep playing. But at some point there was a disconnection. Notch begin to drastically change the main focus of Minecraft. This pivotal change marked a shift from being mostly Notch to a team effort. This is the point I want to make clear to people, Notch changed the way the game worked here. He is responsible for this change for the better or worse.
I'm going back to the Coca-cola analogy here. Say that the head of Coca-cola ordered that the formula for Coke be changed. The head is responsible for the success or failure of his change. If people don't like the new formula but they the head likes it enough to keep it should the head of coca-cola still be credited with the same regard with the new formula because of the success of the old formula? Does the fact that it's not as good negate previous efforts?
I have to say that 1.8 and 1.0.0 were not as good as 1.7.3. The formula for Minecraft had changed and Notch was largely responsible for the mess that followed and Notch dared to call it fully-released. Consider what fully-released means to most people and compare that to how much credit Notch deserves for the update that made Minecraft full. Isn't credit given for a product as a whole?
It doesn't matter that pieces of the old formula still remain that if parts of the new formula made it worse overall. Notch's focal points for the new formula were way off the mark and Jeb saved the scene. In a way Jeb was Notch's Get Out of Jail Free Card. It was the right thing to do, but it doesn't get him off the hook. Notch should be given credit for the good things such as making the game, but also the bad things like adding unappealing features in a rushed manner, and terming an incomplete game as fully released. People will consider the game for what is now, not what it was then, and Notch had zero involvement in fixing the things he was credited with breaking in 1.8/1.0.0.
Credit shift occured when Notch stepped down. If Notch breaks the game and then steps down before fixing it, he shouldn't be accredited when the game gets better under new management. Notch broke it, and left it broken. Now Jeb is proving that Notch isn't even needed to make the game better. Jeb leaves his ego at the door, and Jon is just a working machine! Notch is just a person who was lucky enough to create a game that raked in millions that required very little effort on his part. It shouldn't take months to fix a bug.
Jeb is at least willing to tackle the hard issues in the game, the issues that Notch was avoiding. Notch needs to learn that adding effort into something actually pays off: not always in sales, but in respect and recognition as a game developer. Respect must be maintained. It is so easy to lose respect when you appear like you don't give a **** anymore. Notch is learning this the hard way.
Jeb and Jon are updating the game like professionals. They aren't adding lots of useless **** that wasted precious time like Notch did. The updates have structure and are coherent. 1.1 and 1.2 make 1.8 and 1.0.0 look like a ****ing mess. Few things in those updates complemented and a lot of it was pointless. I don't want to see this incoherent garbage way of updating ever again.
IMHO Notch ****ed up at full-release, it was his own fault, and I have a hard time getting over the fact that he managed to balance the game so perfectly and then strip all that balance away so masterfully. Full-release is so trivial and he went way overboard. Notch has lost all respect and trust from me. I would prefer that he not come back without a full statement that he will listen to us, the community. Otherwise he was just one more bug removed from the game.
Edit: Cleaned up some off-made points. I know a lot of it is off-topic, but I had to get this out. I'm just tired of people giving Notch respect that he truly doesn't deserve. He betrayed us, and people still flock to him like he's the best person in the world. It really disgusts me!
http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=155932
Crates
http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=239467
Item Scrolling
http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=174539
Ever since Jeb fixed the flatness in 1.1 and the future 1.2 jungles people have been happy. They have been overwhelmed with the new updates. Shouldn't something as important as 1.0.0 full release have felt as overwhelming as 1.2? No. Notch had to go on this time consuming effort to create an end game that is only moderately fun to do, and there was a lot of other "random" things added that didn't have anything to do with anything, and existing mechanics were mostly unchanged.
If Notch is going to throw a wrench in the awesome updates, then I don't want him to come back.
http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=155932
Crates
http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=239467
Item Scrolling
http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=174539
Why ya sonnofa leech.........
Although I agree.
I bet your behavior will lead our Top-Notch man to *******.
They're in different languages, so if you were to accuse him, it would only be of using it as a template, as he couldn't have ripped the source code directly.
However, there is no evidence of this assertion, so I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say he probably didn't use the source code of infiniminer, just the concept.
Honestly, it seems more like a case of ADHD rather than a lack of coding skill. Notch can certainly code, as evidenced by his Ludum Dare entries and Minicraft, and he chose Java because he was comfortable with the language.
I think he just can't keep his attention on a single thing. He doesn't have the focus to stay on a project for very long. The randomness of the additions he made shows to me that he really didn't know where to take the game. He just had some vague ideas, and he gets too distracted by random suggestions.
So, in my opinion at least, it's more a case of ADHD rather than a lack of coding skill.
(Unless you know something horribly unexpected happens...)
Let your anger be as a monkey in a piñata... hiding amongst the candy... hoping the kids don't break through with the stick!
We are what we eat and we are who we meet. These are not mutually exclusive.
You make a good point. I have something I might add to this that makes it less pertinent. When Notch (and Jeb) decided to do the Adventure Update, they nearly completely rebuilt the terrain generator and lighting engine for the game. Any previous credit from the old generator should be given lightly, because the main engine of the game was heavily modified and Jeb had a hand in it.
The only thing that hasn't been greatly modified is SMP. It's long been overdue for an upgrade. I mean it's probably better to just completely scrap it and start over. Notch's design for multiplayer is terrible.
My point is that all of the core components of the game except mining, achievements and weather, and things like skin applications has been revised at some point. The Minecraft from Alpha and early Beta almost doesn't exist anymore. It's entirely different and Notch relied on Jeb to help him make the necessary changes. Notch still did the majority of the new terrain generator though. I think Notch worked on the generator, while Jeb worked on the abandoned mines, and villages, and future NPCs. Jeb worked on potions, and enchantments too.
I would say that at this point Jeb had about 45 % of the credit for 1.0.0, but that only leaves Notch with 65% credit and this is just percetage of the game they worked on. If you consider who contributed most to it's popularity then that fluxuates and one could argue that Notch didn't really have to do much for Minecraft to be hyped. It was cheap and addictive, Notch had little to do with this, because he constantly released updates that killed mods, introdced new bugs that we had to wait until the next update to be fixed, and the game was often unstable. Really I doubt he was the reason so many people played the game.
But that was then. Now Jeb is tasked with keeping minecraft popular at a higher price. I think he is doing an amazing job at keeping the focus on what we want in Minecraft. I don't remember Notch caring about what we wanted in the game. He only cared about what he wanted in the game, and reason 1.8 was evidence that Notch was haphazardly trying to cater to us after he knowingly neglected us all through Beta. He tried to cater to whims made back in late alpha, not what people cared about presently. It's obvious that the only feedback he paid attention to was an entire generation back. This is why I'm crediting Minecraft's popularity during full release almost entirely to Jeb, because Notch didn't give a **** how we wanted to play Minecraft as a fully released game. He should have!
http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=155932
Crates
http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=239467
Item Scrolling
http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=174539