Posts Tagged ‘notch’

RPS Feature Infinicraft

Have You Played… Infiniminer?

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

No, neither have I. Infiniminer was a team-based game in which players competed to collect more minerals than their opponents in a blocky, randomly-generated cavern. But during development in 2009 the source code was leaked by hackers. In the wake of new modified versions, the small community of players that had formed around the game dissolved. The developer made the game open source and shelved the project. Not long afterwards, a man called Notch started work on a little somethin’ somethin’. And it looked a wee bit like Infiniminer…

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RPS Feature Digging Deeper

Minecraft In 2014: Your Guide To Mods and Modpacks

Minecraft gets more popular every day, but we don’t talk about it much anymore. To find out what the game is like in 2014, we asked Duncan Geere to impart his wisdom. The result is a three-part series which will run across this week. To start, a look at the game’s modding scene.

It’s been an eventful few years for Markus Persson, the Swedish programmer known to the world as Notch. After building a game in his bedroom, he watched as it slowly took over the world, rising to become the third best-selling videogame of all time – behind only Wii Sports and Tetris.

But Minecraft in 2014 bears only a superficial resemblance to the Minecraft of just a few years ago. The PC version of the game today is less about building a dirt shed to cower in overnight, and more about space exploration, magical dueling or building enormous factories controlled by banks of computers and powered by nuclear reactors. Minecraft’s ongoing popularity is largely thanks to its mods, and more recently, modpacks – collections of several mods together.

It can be overwhelming, but chances are there’s more to do in Minecraft than you realised.

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TheirCraft: Microsoft Buying Mojang, Notch Leaving

Edit #2: updated to include Microsoft’s video statement.

Edit: updated to include Notch’s statement regarding the sale and his own departure from Mojang.

Speculation occasionally has a basis in fact. A few minutes ago, Minecraft creators Mojang confirmed that Microsoft’s purchase of the company is going ahead. The price? Two and a half billion dollars. The reason?

As you might already know, Notch is the creator of Minecraft and the majority shareholder at Mojang. He’s decided that he doesn’t want the responsibility of owning a company of such global significance. Over the past few years he’s made attempts to work on smaller projects, but the pressure of owning Minecraft became too much for him to handle. The only option was to sell Mojang.

The company founders will be leaving the company and Notch has released a statement (notch.net down, pastebin link supplied) regarding the sale and his own future – “It’s not about the money. It’s about my sanity”.

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RPS Feature Mo Monetisation Mo Problems

Pay To Play: Notch On Minecraft And Monetisation

You may have heard that changes are afoot in the world of Minecraft. You may also have heard that nothing much is changing at all. The story of monetisation, community and servers has led to plenty of discussion and rhetoric from various sides, and the issues at the heart of the situation haven’t always been clear. I spent some time last week looking into the rise of for-profit Minecraft servers, a development I hadn’t followed over the months. Armed with fresh knowledge and thoughts, I spoke to Markus ‘Notch’ Persson, the game’s creator and Mojang’s majority owner.

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The Complications Of Minecraft’s Paid Server Situation

Edit: Please note that we’ve updated and expanded this post to lend more clarity to what is a complicated and still-changing issue.

Yesterday we posted about the outraged reaction to Minecraft’s new no-charging-for-gameplay-affecting items policy and, in turn, Notch’s response to that. That initial post was pretty dismissive of the anger because it didn’t really seem like Mojang had changed a whole lot. The newly published ruleset is a clarification of the existing regulations rather than a modification or expansion, but some servers will find their core means of monetization cut off by the eventual enforcement of those rules. Many monetization options will remain, however, and looking at the specifics of Mojang’s restrictions sheds light on what the developer would like to prevent.

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Notch On New Minecraft EULA: Not ‘Literally Worse Than EA’

Did you hear the news? You can’t sell items that affect gameplay anymore in Minecraft. If your server does that, you have been bad and will probably be shot to death by the police after a high-octane car chase full of cool lighting and witty quips. You are, however, still allowed to accept donations to keep your server up and running, promote advertising/in-game sponsorship, and sell items that don’t affect gameplay. Minecraft’s new EULA essentially codifies a lot of things that were already happening while preventing pay-to-win. The community’s response to the changes? Not good.

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RPS Feature Emerging from the shadows

Wot I Think: Age Of Wonders III

It’s only been a month and a half since I wrote my mega-preview of Age Of Wonders III and spending around fifteen hours with a review copy of the game hasn’t done a great deal to change my mind about its many merits. It hasn’t extended its tendrils to tickle any deeper fancies either, although I’ll concede that the world is a little weirder and more wonderful than my initial expeditions suggested. I’ve spent many hours with the long-awaited strategy sequel and here’s wot I think.

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Notch Cans Minecraft Oculus Version Over Facebook Buyout

Looks like All of Humanity wasn’t the only one surprised by Facebook’s $2 billion purchase of Oculus Rift. Minecraft creator Markus Persson was equally taken aback, and not in a good way. His solution? Cancel plans for an Oculus-Rift-specific version of Minecraft on the spot. He first made the announcement on Twitter, only explaining that he finds Facebook “creepy.” Now, though, he’s elaborated a fair bit.

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Rogue Footage Of Age Of Wonders III

IMAGE DESCRIPTION
Actually, that should be “Footage Of Age Wonders III‘s Rogue Leader”. I was trying to be cool, and now I’ve backed myself into a corner. Help me out by shaking your monitor around as you watch this short trailer for the fantasy strategy game’s Rogue class. It will make it appear as if the footage was roguishly taken.
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0x10c Cancelled For Good, But Fans Plan To Do It Anyway

Edit: Notch has clarified his intentions for the immediate future in blog-wise fashion:

Last week, I participated in the 7dfps and made a hectic shooter greatly inspired by Doom, called Shambles, and it was some of the most fun programming I’ve done in many months. This is what I want to do. I want to do smaller games that can fail. I want to experiment and develop and think and tinker and tweak.

Well, YOU follow Minecraft. Marcus “Notch” Persson, having moved on from Minecraft development a year back, has been focusing on an ambitious space sim 0x10c. Except, not any more. We knew that back in April Notch had put the game “on ice”, citing creative struggles. They don’t seem to have gone away, and now – as spotted by US Gamer – he’s told some people via a Team Fortress 2 livestream that he’s given up entirely. But some fans plan to make it anyway.

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Hexagonal: Notch Releases New Thing Called Drop

A game titled Drop that's full of dance music? I am expecting dubstep as the twist ending.

Last time Notch competed in a Ludum Dare game jam, he made Minecraft again, only tiny. Also Zelda. And this time around? He, er, didn’t throw his unmistakable hat into the ring at all. But he coincidentally released a game that practically fits the theme – minimalism – to a tee on the same day the competition wound down, so close enough. Titled Drop, this one contains no traces of survival, blocks, or ill-timed creative blocks. Instead, it’s about typing, pulsing dance beats, Super Hexagon, and Notch’s home ceiling. Naturally, I’m expecting it to be the next Call of Duty.

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Notch Yet: 0x10c On Hold, Won’t Release Unless It’s Fun

Oh, I wonder if this thing has solitaire!

REPORTER: “Mr Notch, you just made several quadrillion dollars and simulated a nigh-infinite terrestrial expanse where nearly anything is possible via the wide-eyed machinations of human ingenuity. What are you going to do now?”

NOTCH: “I’m going to Disneyland space! Only it’s more of a space-themed hacker heaven. But it’s also kinda like Firefly somehow. Or something.”

EVERYONE EVER: “Ooo! Wait, huh?”

Seeing as Minecraft is basically a series of unending, entirely re-moldable Earths, a giant leap into the stars makes sense for Notch, and he’s got some intriguing ideas backing it up. But allow me to echo the confused dog head tilt of everybody else in saying, er, how? How will all those elements fit together? What will I actually be, you know, doing? Turns out, Notch himself is part of that very same everyone, and for now, he’s stumped. As a result, 0x10c‘s frozen in carbonite for the time being, and Notch feels no need to rush its development into high gear.

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Money Blocks: Notch Funding Age Of Wonders III


The news funnel at Eurogamer has become all clogged up with the surprise news that Minecraft-enrichened indie dev Notch is the mysterious benefactor behind Age Of Wonders III. Lennart Sas, managing director of developers Triumph (who previously made Overlord) told EG: “We noticed Minecraft’s random title-screen blurb mentioned Age of Wonders, so I thought what the heck and I sent Notch an email.”

This, as it turns out, was a wise move, as Notch is a big fan of the old myth ’em up. Despite publisher interest, Triumph decided to let Mr Notch put his Minecraft dollars in because he didn’t push for the same harsh terms as a traditional game company: “He’s a fan of the game and didn’t insist on owning it like many of the publishers do these days when they fund development,” explained Sas. The game is now due in the autumn, and it looks pretty good, as you can see from the announcement trailer, below.
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Sad News: VG247 Editor Won’t Be Eating His Trousers

Denied :(

How we had hoped to see Pat Garratt enjoying a hearty feast of broiled denim and shallow-fried zipper, but it was not to be. The editor of VG247 last year swore to eat his own trousers in the event Minecraft man Markus ‘Notch’ Persson made good on his talk of funding a sequel to Double Fine’s Psychonauts. Alas, Persson has recently confessed that such a thing is not currently possible/desirable, as Double Fine’s estimated $18 million budget for the game was beyond even his mighty means (or, at least, what he considered to be a lucrative investment of his mighty means).
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Wurm Welcome: Wurm Online Emerging From Six Year Beta

Did you know that Notch existed before Minecraft? Not only that, he breathed and ate food and made games and everything! Just like a real flesh being. But when he decided to pursue Minecraft’s blocky green pastures, his previous claim to fame, sandbox fantasy MMO wonderland Wurm Online, didn’t miss a beat. And by that, I mean it stayed in beta for six years and change. But with good reason: after all, even the likes of EVE Online certainly didn’t get anything-goes craziness entirely right on day one. And it had a team of more than, er, roughly three people. So then, why is Wurm worming its way out of beta’s nourishing soils now? Well, apparently, this was the plan all along.

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RPS Feature The Man Behind The Hat, Pt 2

Future Talk: Notch On Steam, Windows 8, What’s Next

Yesterday, we ran the first part of my chat with Minecraft creator and needer-of-no-introductions Notch, wherein we largely talked about life after Minecraft and what he’s been up to recently. But there’s more to this world than Minecraft (at least, until we discover our entire world is actually a block-by-block Minecraft reconstruction of the real world), so today, we’re forging ahead into the future. And also the present, but the other thing sounds cooler. So read on to see Notch discuss copycatting in games, his ideas for non-games ala Proteus, a virtual reality version of Minecraft, Steam, Windows 8, and heaps more.

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RPS Feature The Man Behind The Hat, Pt 1

Beyond Minecraft: Notch On Fame, Pressure, Sequels

Notch is Minecraft. Minecraft is Notch. A year ago, those statements might have been true to some extent, but not anymore. The man behind the most pervasive invention since the wheel (which he achieved by simply putting the corners back onto the wheel) hung up his pick axe late last year. That does not mean, however, that he’s escaped from the shadow of the monolith he created. Notch and his creation are still synonymous, for better or worse. And so, during PAX, I spoke with the quick-to-smile yet surprisingly introverted developer about the pressures of overnight fame, having people hang on (and quote) your every word, the current status of 0x10c, and tons more.

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Space, Squared: Notch’s 0x10c First Screens

beep boop i am a robot

Information about Notch’s recently announced space exploration game 0x10c has been slowly emerging from stasis. The fine fellow tweeted a screenshot of the forthcoming game, showcasing “Flashlights, for spelunking and fixing broken ships!” featuring two spacemen (who resemble the Soldier from that low-res TF2 model pack quite a bit, come to think of it. Notch stealing content! Proof that Notch is more evil than EA!) standing in a creepy dark room with what looks to be the much talked about 16bit Basic computer in the background. But there’s more! That screen from the tweet was linked on the official site as 006.jpg, and if you cunningly replace the numbers with 001 through to 007, more screens are revealed. Im’ a propa investelagativ jurnlist. Naturally it’s likely that more screens will be added as work progresses, but for the time being I’ve put the seven already up at the time of writing after the jump for your convenience.

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Notch In Space: 0x10c Revealed

Markus Persson’s put a name and a description to the Elite-inspired space game he’s been teasing Twitter about recently, and it’s pretty obvious this is going to be a full-fat endeavour rather than another micro-project. 0x10c is the game’s name, how it’s pronounced is anyone’s guess but I’m gonna go with ‘Derek’. It’s a reference to a programming error that caused space travellers (from an alternate 1988 where the space race hadn’t ended) going into deep sleep to stay under for billions of years.
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Spacecraftcraft: Notch Starting An Elitey Firefly-ey Game

With apologies to Notch, NASA, and Photoshop.
I think I’ve found serenity: Minecraft creator Notch is slowly thumbing through the Big Book Of Awesome Space Things while he comes up with his next game. He told the handsome devils over at PC Gamer that he’s pondering a sandbox style Elite game, “except done right”. To clarify, he’s not saying Elite is rubbish and broken, but that no-one’s ever done it as well since. Something I’d agree with, although these guys are working on that. While he’s pondering if this is a game he wants to be the Next Thing after the monolithic Minecraft, he’s pointed out his other influence is the magnificent Firefly. How would this work?
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