Minecraft Creator Raking In The Dough, Turns Down Valve And Bungie To Create Own Studio

Minecraft: The Next Obsession

See kids? This could happen to you! All you have to do is quit your day job, take some inspiration from classic games, add some hard work and voila! Minecraft isn’t even out of its Alpha stage yet, but the Swedish developer behind the phenomenon has been turning down jobs from industry leaders like Valve and Bungie, only to turn around and pour some of his acquired millions (that’s right… millions) back into his own brand new independent studio.

So you might be asking… what the hell is Minecraft?

I’m the perfect person and totally qualified to tell you what Minecraft is… because I started playing it today on my laptop. And it feels like I won’t be putting it down for a long, long time. It is the ultimate sandbox game. Games like Grand Theft Auto and The Sims are credited with the term ‘sandbox’ because you are given the opportunity to jump into their worlds and play with all their toys, guns, cars, etc. In Minecraft, you create the tools that you want to use from your environment in your own randomly generated world.

But it’s more than just taking two sticks, adding a piece of metal at the top, and calling it a pickaxe. There are monsters, wildlife, plants that grow over time, and a persistant day/night cycle that will make you wish that you had started building somewhere safe to hide from those nighttime zombies a little sooner. Creationists who have more time on their hands will (and have) built entire worlds that can rival the planet Earth. All you need is hard drive space. And that’s pretty much it in a nutshell.

So what does Markus ‘Notch’ Persson do with his newfound fame? He keeps plugging away at it. The original game premiered after a week of coding in May of 2009 and has been undergoing constant revisions/additions since then. But, €9.95 x 278,000 subscribers (and counting) has filled the coffers up quite a bit. Markus has stated that these days, he’s been overwhelmed not only with job offers, but with the logistics of owning and running an actual company.

“Most my time these days is taken up by meetings and lawyers, accountants, banks, potential partners, potential employees, and the occasional interview,” he claimed yesterday. “The few hours I do have to develop the game every now and then are mostly spent on looking into bugs and replying to emails.”

Those looking for a purely creative platform need look no further. Just look past the graphics. The game is moving to Beta soon and will see a higher price point attached, which may piss some players off, but hey… isn’t that what they say about illegal drugs? ‘The first one’s free baby!’

[GameIndustry.biz]