When was Markus Persson born? The story of Markus Persson (full version)
[Melody: "The Last Test" (part 4). Track "Nightmares"] Late evening. The small room is buried in dense twilight. The sound of a key grinding in the lock is heard. The front door opens, and a tired, heavy-set man, Persson Sr., walks in. Without turning on the light, he takes off his hat, presses the answering machine button and, unbuttoning his coat, listens to the message left:- “We sympathize, but your brother has passed away. Please accept our sincere condolences...” There are beeps. A man approaches the sofa, sits doomedly on its edge and looks up at the ceiling. At this time, a dark figure in a cloak appears in the corner, from under the hood of which whitish empty eye sockets glow with an unnaturally bright light:-You weren’t waiting for me, dear Persson? Why don't you look me in the eyes, stupid? - I don’t know you, go away... (surprisedly calm, somewhat sad) (The man removes the hood from his face. Notch sees the ghost of his younger brother in front of him)- We went through both fire and water together - You just got blown away by the copper pipes... - Get away from me!!! (jumps up, breathes sharply; it’s clear from his face that he’s scared)- Would you like to add anything, Notchik? By the way, I’m here for your soul, by the way... There’s no need to hiss like an angry cobra! You will still find out who Herobrine is! Weakling! (The man in the cloak disappears. The room changes its shape, turning into one of the game locations - The Edge. Mobs appear)- Where are you all from? (looks around) This is the Abyss! You are not here! - Do you recognize your comrades from the world of tags? You made us and you ran away from us! You are now rich, you are now famous! But you can’t escape the payment! Show me, Persson, show me the trick! You are alone - and your brother will not come to your aid! You are now great, but your host has flown away, And now you will remember our fists! Weakling! Persson, you are a weakling!!! Juggle the balls, friend Persson! The square world is the torment of your heart. All your admins are powerless against us! We are your fears, we are your death, We are your torment, we are your death! We are your torment, we are your death!!! - You are not here!!! (starts to back away, tries to run away)- You are alone, Persson, on the edge of the grave! (- It all seems!) - We are your pathetic suckers! (- Don't touch me! Let me go!) - We are the nightmare and torment of your heart! And we will sing a deadly song for you! (- I'll call my brother!) - Die, Persson! (- Leave me alone!) - Die, Persson! (- Leave me! Brian!) - Die, die, die, (Brian! Brian, help! Get out everyone! Brian!!!) - Persson! (- Brian, where are you?!!) - You are alone, and your brother will not come to the rescue! You are now great, but your host has flown away... (- Don’t touch me, don’t touch me! Go away!) - And now you will remember our fists! (- Go away! Brian!) - And now you will remember our fists! (standing in a circle, they push the victim to each other) Weakling! Weakling! Weakling! Weakling! Weakling! Weakling! Weakling! Weakling! (- Mom-ah!!!) The ghostly purple light goes out. A man wakes up on the sofa in the same room and jumps up in a cold sweat.
It's seven o'clock in the evening in Stockholm. Markus Persson sits on the balcony of his office, sipping Red Bull and vodka - a cocktail that quickly knocks a person off his feet. Three hours ago he swore he wouldn't drink today, having downed 12 drinks just Thursday to try to cope with an ear infection. Nevertheless, he pours generous shots of Belvedere vodka, and we watch as people working in the high-rise office buildings next door tirelessly tap away at their keyboards.
“He looks worried,” Persson says, pointing to a man in the building opposite who is helplessly rubbing his face while staring at a computer screen. Persson watches the office worker for a few more seconds, then he gets bored and his attention turns to us. For the past five years, the 35-year-old Swede has spent much of his time as the man in the window across the street, stressed out by his brainchild, Minecraft, the best-selling video game in gaming history. However, the word “game” is clearly not enough to describe the essence of this phenomenon. With over 100 million downloads and continuing to grow, Minecraft has become a platform for people to express themselves. Players start in an empty virtual space where they can use bricks and Lego-like blocks (which can be “mine”) to create anything, with one important condition: other players can also interact with the objects they create. Most players are children who build simple houses or villages and then throw parties in them or hide from zombie robbers. But adults who really get into the game spend hundreds of hours creating full-scale models of the Death Star, the Empire State Building, or cities from Game of Thrones.
The word "Minecraft" is searched more often on Google than "Bible", "Harry Potter" and "Justin Bieber".
And this game has brought in more than $700 million in revenue since its inception, most of which is pure profit.
"It can't be compared to other popular games," says Ian Bogost, a Georgia Tech professor who studies video games. - It stands on a par with popular phenomena on a larger scale. Minecraft is essentially this generation's Lego."
In this virtual world, Persson, or rather his Internet character, the loud-mouthed eccentric Notch with a hat on his head, has become a god-like figure for millions of gamers, establishing and explaining the rules of the game with the authority of Zeus. In life, Persson is the least likely to look like a self-confident extrovert. In personal interactions he is polite, frank and secretive (he is rarely seen in the press). The expectations and demands of the game's fans, who expect Notch to develop his virtual world, have turned him into a shy weirdo.
So three months ago, Persson shook it all off by completing the sale of Minecraft to Microsoft for $2.5 billion in cash. 71% of the shares in the company behind Minecraft, Mojang, turned him into a new and very bright participant in the Forbes global list of billionaires. And now a man who still has more than half his life left to live, the creator of an entire universe, of which his symbol has become own character, a man who suffered the furious wrath of his community when he decided to leave it must find out who he really is.
The results so far are not impressive: his actions resemble a dog hunting passing cars. Deciding to buy a house in Beverly Hills, Persson shelled out $70 million for a mansion with an area of more than 2,000 square meters. m - the most expensive house in this elite area in its entire history.
He is known to squander more than $180,000 at a time in Las Vegas nightclubs.
He's started a new company, Rubberbrain, with Jacob Porser, another Mojang founder, in case they come up with a new game, but he can't seem to focus on anything yet. This conversation with Forbes is Persson's only interview in which he talks about the Minecraft deal and what followed. It turned out that the main result of the unexpected wealth that fell upon him was difficult self-analysis. And the only thing he is absolutely sure of is that he did the right thing by parting with Minecraft. Explaining his decision, Persson cites a saying attributed to Leonardo da Vinci: “A work of art cannot be finished, but only abandoned.”
Swedish games.
The mind-bending saga of Minecraft began in the small Swedish town of Edsbyn, with 4,000 inhabitants and located in the vast forests between Stockholm and the Arctic Circle. While other children played soccer in the summer or the local form of bandy in the winter, the introverted Persson spent hours on end tinkering with Lego constructor. His father, a railroad worker, brought a Commodore 128 desktop computer into the house when Persson was seven years old. By the age of eight, his diligent son had already written his first computer program.
Persson was a good student, but after his family moved to Stockholm when he was in second grade, he began to count school life difficult. Unable to make new friends easily, he spent more and more time at home on his computer, which offered entertainment like the 8-bit puzzle game Boulder Dash or the role-playing game games The Bard's Tale. In the book "Minecraft: The Untrue Story of Markus "Notch" Persson," his mother Ritva recalls how her son would pretend to have stomach pains to avoid school and spend hours sitting in front of the computer.
Young Persson began to find even more solace in the computer after his family broke up. His parents divorced when he was 12.
My father abused alcohol and became addicted to amphetamines.
The younger sister also began experimenting with drugs and eventually ran away from home.
Persson himself never graduated high school. His mother, a nurse who worked nights at a local hospital, forced him to take an online coding course. It was a wise investment. Giving vent to his childhood passion, he began baking games like pancakes and in 2004, at the age of 24, he ended up working for the company Midasplayer, which later released the popular game under the name King.com Candy game Crush.
There he became friends with Jacob Porser, an equally introverted young developer. “It was a great place to start,” recalls Porser. - we released small games in Flash, and you could almost create the entire game by yourself, not counting the graphics.” They began writing scripts for their own games, some of which gained fame on the independent games new sites. Their bosses didn't like it. "We felt we couldn't have someone working for us and starting their own company at the same time," says Lars Markgren, one of the founders of Midasplayer, who hired Persson.
In 2009, Persson left Midasplayer for Jalbum, an online photo-sharing service whose management did not care what the programmer did on the side. He soon began devoting all his free time to a strange project where players collected resources such as stone or wood, using them to create everything from axes and shovels to houses and cities. Persson called his creation Minecraft and in May 2009 uploaded it as an unfinished program to an independent game portal TIGSource. The game had a lot of new technical solutions, but there was almost no documentation, and early players were forced to form a community to figure out how to play it together. Minecraft wasn't the first creative sandbox game, nor was it the first time it forced players to gather resources in a virtual world to survive in a hostile environment. (When night fell in the virtual world, players could be attacked by suddenly appearing creatures called "creepers.") But the timing of the game's launch was perfect: it came out at the same time that a new generation of children, still too young for Facebook and Instagram, But already old enough to strive to do something online, laptops, smartphones and tablets began to appear.
By June 2010, PC users were buying 400 copies per day, at about $6 per download. Persson and Porser quit their day jobs. Persson even lured his former boss, Jalbum CEO Karl Manneh, to take over commercial leadership. They named the newborn company Mojang, which means “device” in Swedish. Secret Minecraft weapons There was Notch. It was not just an Internet pseudonym, Notch allowed Persson to overcome the introversion characteristic of him in real world. Through blogs, forums and Twitter, he answered every question from his fans regarding the game, its development and life.
Notch became a model for followers: a sharp-tongued, hat-wearing icon character who spoke on behalf of independent game makers. With the help of this alter ego, Persson acquired more than 2 million followers on Twitter, who sympathetically read his diatribes against the “cynical bastards” at Electronic Arts, who deigned to release a whole series of independent games, or the manufacturer of technical devices for virtual reality Oculus VR, for that he sold out to the “vile” Facebook.
Persson didn't spend a single crown on marketing, and Minecraft grew virally as Mojang released versions for Android and iOS smartphones that remain among the top three paid downloadable apps in the US, according to App Annie. In May 2012, Mojang released a version for Microsoft Xbox 360, which sold more than 1 million copies in a week (to date, more than 15 million copies have been sold). Then came the licensing agreements. Minecraft-themed clothing marketed by San Diego-based J!NX has become a bestseller among young fans of the game, and Egmont Publishing International books dedicated to Minecraft world, instantly became bestsellers - the company sold more than 7.5 million copies in more than 60 countries. Last year, Warner Bros. bought the rights to shoot a feature film from Mojang.
Mojang, with only about 30 employees, was profitable, and it seemed like it would stay that way forever. It ended 2012 with revenue of about $230 million and gross profit of more than $150 million, of which Persson paid $101 million to himself in exchange for Minecraft intellectual property. (Shortly after this he bought the most expensive apartment in Stockholm.)
Investors got worried. Manneh says he talked to about 100 venture capital firms at the time, including Silicon Valley bigs like Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, but didn't take money from anyone because Mojang simply didn't need it. They were even visited by billionaire Sean Parker, who flew Persson, Porser and Manneh on his private jet to London, providing them with a wild program of nightly entertainment. And yet they rejected his money.
“We had the opportunity to fly on a private jet for the first time in our lives,” recalls Manneh. But not the last. As a private company with no outside investors, Mojang, growing by leaps and bounds, commissioned oil portraits of characters. Celebrating 10 million downloads, they took all their employees to Monaco for three days to drink champagne and ride a yacht. And although all the shares of the company were owned by its three founders, Persson thanked all employees with a group bonus of $3 million in 2012.
But even with the world at his feet, Persson at times felt as if it was pressing on his shoulders. After the official release of Minecraft at the end of 2011 at the first convention of fans of the game in Las Vegas (MineСon), Persson left his post as chief developer in order to experiment with new games and live with his girlfriend, who became his wife in the summer of that year.
But his happiness was short-lived. Persson's father, still abusing drugs and depressed, committed suicide on Christmas Eve. This greatly shocked Persson, and he began to behave more and more like a man who does not know what he wants. He divorced his wife a year after their wedding. “As of today I am single: #MixedFeelings,” he wrote on Twitter. And when Persson returned to work after his brief sabbatical, he felt compelled to recreate the magic of his first hit.
And at the same time, Persson remained the face and voice of Minecraft. Even though he was no longer involved in day-to-day development of the game, Notch was still the figure that players emailed about new code modifications or left messages on Twitter when they thought something was wrong with the game. In response to minor changes in the mechanics of virtual ships, users burst out with poisonous messages to Notch, who had nothing to do with these changes. Look through Persson's Twitter responses or any YouTube video featuring the Minecraft creator, and you'll likely come across comments like "I'm always amazed at what a fantastic nerd Notch is" or "Notch is a fat loser."
“I couldn’t understand why people on the Internet were so unkind,” says Persson. “You see the hateful comments and they always seem to be in larger font.” A person who identified himself with his online character found himself in a trap, faced with the negativity that such identification provoked. And Persson began to think about how to get out of the game. His exodus began with a simple message on Twitter. On June 16, 2014, Persson lay in his penthouse with a cold. Meanwhile, Minecraft users are up in arms against the company for its decision to strictly enforce its licensing agreement, which prevented players from selling each other virtual items, such as more powerful swords.
When Twitter started receiving hundreds of messages per hour, Persson, feverishly excited due to a cold, burst out with a response in just 129 characters that changed his life forever.
“Someone wants to buy me out of Mojang so I can get on with my life? - he asked. “Causing everyone’s hatred while trying to do the right thing is not my thing.”
Mojang CEO Carl Manneh was sitting at home with his family when he saw the post. 30 seconds after he read it, the bell rang. One of the Microsoft executives responsible for cooperation with Mojang wanted to know how serious Persson's statement was. “I don’t know, let me talk to him,” Manneh replied.
And although Persson wrote this half-jokingly, the thought that he might part ways with Mojang took hold of him. The man who once publicly vowed that he would not sell out to evil corporations has changed his mind.
For the next week, Manneh's phone kept ringing off the hook. Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard and others showed interest in the deal. Negotiations with Activision stalled immediately. Persson was reluctant to discuss what happened with Electronic Arts, but cryptically said that Mojang excludes potential buyers "who treat games in a way we don't like." But Microsoft clearly made the cut.
Ultimately, Microsoft's main motivation for this deal was the opportunity to save on taxes. The software giant has amassed a whopping $93 billion in cash reserves overseas and can't move it into the US without paying Uncle Sam his cut.
As a result, the terms of the sale were dictated by Manneh: Persson and Porser wanted to get out of the business outright, severing all ties with the company. In addition, given the massive layoffs at Microsoft after the takeover of Nokia, it was stipulated that there should be no layoffs in the business (the company has only 47 employees, so such a condition did not threaten the buyer with serious material costs).
Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft's Xbox division, dealt exclusively with Manneh. Persson and Porser withdrew from the negotiations, although Spencer did spend some time drinking Swedish herbal tea and arguing about the direction of the gaming industry. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella did not show up in Stockholm, despite it being the biggest deal of his tenure. He only called Manneh twice to speed up the negotiations.
While lawyers worked around the clock to close the multibillion-dollar deal, only indirect information leaked to the press. Microsoft has been fairly secretive; in a July message to employees, Nadella said only that he was investing in games, calling them “the biggest digital phenomenon in the world of mobile devices.”
The usually talkative Persson also remained silent. He looked for small ideas for new games and studied programming languages. On September 11, he published a post where he described his work with the Dart language, in which he rewrote the first version of the classic shooter Doom, and hinted at the upcoming sale - Doom served him as a metaphor for Mojang. “If I do get into something new, I'm sure someone more patient than me can take over the project,” he wrote. “I can’t be attached to him all the time.” On September 15, Microsoft announced that it was willing to pay $2.5 billion in cash for Mojang. A few hours after this announcement, Persson wrote his final blog post, explaining the details of his departure from the company he founded.
In hindsight, Persson says he expected a stronger reaction from Minecraft fans to the announcement of the game's sale. “The day we announced the deal, I was going to close my Twitter for fear of not being able to handle it,” he says. “But people reacted surprisingly calmly to the news. They read my explanation and said, 'Okay, I hope you're okay.'"
What about his previous promises not to sell out, especially not to corporations? Persson shrugs and says the $2.5 billion controversy doesn't bother him.
“Of course, you have to be responsible for your words,” he admits, “but, honestly, I don’t feel much shame because my point of view has changed.”Mojang employees had a harder time understanding their former boss's sudden change of heart. Although they received bonuses from the amount owed to Persson (Porser's share after taxes was more than $300 million, Manneh's share was more than $100 million), many felt "disappointed" and "devastated" when they heard about the end of his game, one employee says , who wished to remain anonymous. Some people still hold a grudge against Persson.
“We upset them, and their reaction hurts me,” says Persson. But no matter what, he intends to move on. In November, when the deal closes, Persson, Porser, Manneh and Manneh's twin brother will fly to Miami and St. Barthelemy to celebrate. Persson calls this short voyage a “sales tour.” Now Persson pays less attention to snide remarks on Twitter and more to the insults directed at him from close friends in a WhatsApp group they crudely call "Farting."
In Rubberbrain's temporary office, jokes about topics below the belt provoke laughter that shakes the ceiling and causes the neighbor upstairs to knock on the floor in irritation.
Persson ignores the angry knocking overhead, just as he ignored Internet trolls before. He admits to loving the Twitter button that allows him to mute obnoxious people without telling them they're blocked. However, sometimes curiosity gets the better of him and he answers. He recently responded to his haters with an animated figurine of Woody Harrelson from the movie Zombieland wiping away his tears with a wad of cash. “I know responding to Twitter with a picture is a little stupid,” he shrugs. He's just as awkward around his crushes when he chronicles his chartered jet vacation on Snapchat. What about the girls? “I tried to use Tinder (dating app - Forbes), but it didn’t help. In Sweden it works terribly: about four people use it.” Hence the $180,000 nightclub bills.
“I’m now partly catching up on what I missed when I sat and programmed in my early 20s,” he admits. - Partying isn't the smartest way to spend money, but it's fun. When we were young, we had no money, so I thought that if I ever got rich, I would never become one of those boring rich people who don’t spend money.”
Now he is spending it on his new company. Her office is a teenager's fantasy, complete with a full-service bar, a DJ booth (he's learning how to spin records himself), and secret rooms hidden behind bookshelves. And this despite the fact that Rubberbrain is just the name of a company that is waiting for its founders to have some idea.
It seems that inspiration will certainly come. Persson spends a lot of time in the office, keeping up with Twitter and Reddit, while Porser scours the fan forums of his childhood hockey team and plays mindless games. network game, in which you need to click the mouse, exploding beetles and other living creatures for coins.
"It's like kindergarten for us, a kindergarten for adults,” says Persson. “Whenever an idea comes up, we try it out for a couple of days and then get back to playing.”
Perhaps this too will pass. But there are still plenty of younger Markus Perssons who are less jaded and more sensitive to what the next generation of kids wants. When asked about this, the creator of Minecraft replies that he feels quite good about being the author of a one-hit wonder. Such trump cards as insane wealth and the status of a person who has retired can cover the stress of responsibility for the population of the virtual world, which either reveres you or despises you.
“People began to see an ideal in Notch,” he argues, analyzing his two incarnations. - I remember how I met my own idols and realized that these were real people. And this discrepancy became very clear to me. I didn’t have the relationship with my fans that I imagined.”
As Persson's assistant leaves Rubberbrain's office, he gives him a note from one of his American fans. The letter, written in the rounded, studious hand of a fourth- or fifth-grade student, has a dollar bill pinned to it, and asks Persson to add a few new elements to Minecraft for him.
“We were bribed today,” Persson joked before he could read the note and frown.
Then he turned the dollar over in his hand: “Should I send it back?”
This game has recently attracted a huge number of players. Number of people who play this game, exceeds one hundred million people. We are talking about which consists of many small blocks.
During the gameplay, the hero, controlling his avatar, builds, mines and moves these blocks from place to place. In addition, the player fights mobs that attack his home at night.
This popular game, which has attracted enormous attention, has its legendary author, the man who is its creator. Who created Minecraft? This question is asked by many children who play this virtual constructor. From this article you will learn about who created Minecraft. The name of this person is also interesting to some adults.
Creator of the game "Minecraft"
The author's name is Markus Persson. Markus is a programmer from Sweden and also a game designer. He is much better known under his pseudonym Notch. He created his first game at just 9 years old on his home computer. As an adult, he became the owner of Mojang AB. In addition to him, the founders were also Karl Manneh and Jacob Porser. The company was founded in 2009.
Notch's office
The company currently employs more than 35 people. Marcus is one of Sweden's largest taxpayers. His company is valued at two billion dollars. The attitude towards employees in Notch's company is very loyal. Every Friday, Marcus allows the people who work for him to play games and also work on their own projects.
Quite remarkable. It is designed in a "hunting lodge" style. His office has a pool table, a room for showing a variety of films, a jukebox, and a pinball machine. In addition, there is even a wall with portraits of employees. These portraits are quite unusual. They painted in oil, people pose in the clothes of the 19th century aristocracy. If we look at the portrait of Notch, we will see that there he is in an evening suit and fedora sitting on a chair with an arrogant look. A large globe is located next to him as an essential piece of furniture.
Atmosphere at Persson's company
All this became possible thanks to his key project "Minecraft". The author of this game, which became the most unexpected breakthrough in this field in a decade, attracted a lot of attention. It's quite common for him to throw a party with stadium-level DJs. According to rumors, Britain's Prince Harry was also present at one of these parties.
In 2012, Notch even organized a pyrotechnics festival in one of the Parisian establishments. Musical accompaniment This action was provided by Skrillex. Marcus takes his employees and their families to Monaco. The photo album that lies on the conference table in his office contains several photographs of workers being brought in by a fleet of airplanes, also in these photographs of them driving around in Ferraris, having a party on a yacht, and riding in helicopters. Commenting on the photos, company co-owner Porser says, “We wanted to make Mojang a place where we would always want to work.”
The unexpected success of a strange game
Notch is the man who created Minecraft. Although there is no script or levels in this game (there isn't even an obvious goal), players can explore a virtually endless world. They can gather resources and build almost anything. Create entire worlds with your own attractions. This is what the faithful followers of Markus Persson do.
Well, now you know who created Minecraft. We wish you to get to know this great game and discover colorful endless worlds in everyday life.
It's seven o'clock in the evening in Stockholm, Monday. Markus Persson sits on the balcony of his nine-story office and savors a high-speed cocktail, where vodka is mixed with RedBull. Three hours ago, he said that he was not going to drink today, since he had not yet recovered from the alcoholic race of 12 cocktails on Thursday and an inflammation of the middle ear. But now he’s holding a glass with an impressive portion of Belvedere and carefully watching how workers work at their keyboards in the windows of neighboring office buildings. “There’s something wrong with this,” Persson says, pointing to a man in the building opposite who is rubbing his hands over his face and staring intently at a computer monitor.
After a few more seconds of watching this man, Persson apparently becomes uneasy and abruptly leaves the balcony. The 35-year-old Swede has spent the last five years doing just that: in front of a computer monitor, constantly worrying about his creation - Minecraft, the most popular computer game of all time. Although the word “game” does not sound very appropriate here. Minecraft, which has already been downloaded more than 100 million users, has become a real new space for creative expression. Players are thrown into an empty virtual space where they can use Lego-like bricks and building blocks to build anything they want, as long as others can interact with the creation. Most players are children who build ordinary houses or villages, and then throw parties there or fend off zombie attacks. But there are also obsessive adults who spend hundreds of hours building full-scale replicas of the Death Star, the Empire State Building or cities from Game of Thrones. The word "minecraft" has surpassed the Bible, Harry Potter and Justin Bieber in the number of searches on Google. This game has earned more than $700 million- mostly pure profit.
So what is Minecraft?
Playing in "survival mode" is quite simple: your character (also known as "Steve") finds himself in the middle of a simulated generated landscape. He needs to extract resources in order to make things necessary for survival from them. Approach a tree and “knock” it to obtain pieces of wood from which you can turn a shovel. Then use it to dig a hole or excavate a shaft in the mountain. Make tools from stones and then from iron. If you do not have time to build a shelter before nightfall, you will be threatened by various monsters. In “creative mode” you can build anything: Big Ben, a disco club, a mansion. The only difference between this modern version Lego is that you can interact with other players and different creatures.
“Minecraft should not be compared with other popular games, but with cult products that transcended the boundaries of one industry,- speaks Ian Bogost, professor at Georgia Tech, specializing in the video game industry. - It’s like Lego for a new generation, or even like the microprocessor of our time.”
In this virtual world, Persson, or more precisely, his sharp-tongued, eccentric Internet character named Notch, has become practically a deity for millions of gamers, setting the rules of the game with the authority of Zeus himself. But in real life, Persson is strikingly different from his character. In personal interactions, he is polite, speaks in simple terms and avoids questions about himself. Very rarely agrees to an interview. The need to meet the expectations of gamers, who required Notch to constantly pay attention to the development of the game, eventually led Persson to carefully choose his words in conversations with other people.
Three months ago, Persson decided to retire from everything and sold Minecraft to Microsoft Corporation for $2.5 billion in cash. Having received the money for a 71 percent share in the game company Mojang, he joined the ranks of the list of billionaires Forbes .
It turned out that a man who had not yet lived even half of his life managed to create an entire universe, become a real deity in it, and then anger its inhabitants and leave Olympus. Now he has to understand who he really is. So far it’s not going well: he’s being tossed from side to side. Deciding to buy a house in Beverly Hills, Persson posted $70 million for a huge mansion with an area of 7,000 square meters - the most expensive house in the most expensive area. Then it became known that Persson frequented Las Vegas nightclubs, where he left up to $180,000 per night. Together with the second founder of Mojang Jacob Porser he started a company called Rubberbrain, just in case they had an idea new game. But so far it hasn’t come to ideas.
His conversation with Forbes is Persson's first interview about the sale of Minecraft and the subsequent period in his life. Apparently, the only conclusion he came to was that it was time to find himself. Persson is confident that leaving Minecraft was the right thing to do. Commenting on his fateful decision, he quotes Leonardo da Vinci: “A work of art cannot be finished, you can simply stop doing it.”
The Minecraft saga began in the small Swedish town of Edsbyn, located in the forests, somewhere between Stockholm and the Arctic Circle. Most of the children there play football in the summer and sword hockey in the winter. But Persson, quiet and not very sociable, spent hours on end playing with Lego. When Marcus was seven, his father, who worked for the railroad company, brought home a Commodore 128 computer. By the age of eight, his son had already written his first computer program. Persson studied well, but it was not easy for him at school, especially when after the second grade his family moved to Stockholm. He had trouble making friends and spent even more time on the computer, where games such as the eight-bit puzzle game Boulder Dash and the action role-playing game The Bard's Tale were installed. In the book “Minecraft: The Incredible Story of Markus “Notch” Persson,” his mother Ritva recalls how her son would pretend to have a stomach ache to avoid going to school and spend the entire day on the computer.
Computer games became a way for Persson to escape from the reality in which his parents divorced when he was 12 years old. My father drank and then became addicted to amphetamines. Marcus's younger sister began experimenting with drugs and eventually left home.
When Persson failed to graduate from high school, his mother, a night shift nurse, forced him to take an online programming course. It turned out to be a great investment of time and money. His childhood hobby grew into a professional interest in game development, and in 2004, at the age of 24, he joined Midasplayer, later known as King.com, the developer of Candy Crush.
At work, Persson met Jacob Porser, an equally shy young programmer. “It was a great place to start a career,- says Porser. - We could develop Flash-based games and do everything ourselves, except for the graphics." The two developers began coming up with games, some of which became popular on independent gamer sites. But management didn't like it. “In our opinion, it is wrong for employees to simultaneously develop their own game production company while working for us,”- speaks Midasplayer co-founder Lars Markgren, who hired Persson.
How IT corporations can avoid taxation
By purchasing Minecraft, Microsoft was able to dispose of billions of dollars accumulated abroad (outside the reach of American taxpayers). Here's an overview of a few more companies suitable for such purposes. - R.M.
SPOTIFY
Grade: $4 billion
Investments received: $540 million
Potential Buyer: Google
Google has already made an attempt to buy the Stockholm-based music streaming service, but the price was too high. Spotify now plans to raise $500 million, which will increase the company's valuation to $6 billion.
P.O.W.A.
Grade: $2.7 billion
Investments: $176.7 million
Potential Buyer: Amazon
Having acquired rival Hong Kong-based MPayMe in June 2014, the British mobile payments app has grown in value to $2.7 billion. In November, Wellington Management invested another $80 million in Powa to help it enter the American market.
ADYEN
Grade: $1.5 billion
Investments received: $266 million
Potential Buyer: PayPal
The Amsterdam-based payment system handles $30 billion a year. Clients include Groupon, Spotify, Bookings.com and Facebook.
SHAZAM
Grade: $1 billion
Investment: more $125 million
Shazam's 100 million users generated more than $45 million in revenue for the company in 2013. But this ingeniously made application is not yet profitable. In January, the company received $30 million in investment from an undisclosed source.
TRANSFERWISE
Grade: $1 billion
Investments received: $90.4 million
Potential Buyer: Facebook
This summer, Richard Branson invested in a British startup that offers cheap international transfers.
SOUNDCLOUD
Grade: $700 million
Investments received: approx. $125 million
Potential Buyer: Apple
Last spring, Twitter began eyeing a German site that lets users share music files. Soundcloud is currently in talks to receive a $150 million investment, which would raise the company's value to $1.2 billion.
In 2009, Persson left Midasplayer to become a programmer at Jalbum, an online photo sharing service. There they did not pay attention to his second work. He devoted all his free time to his unconventional-looking creation, where players mined resources such as wood and stone in order to construct various things from them - from axes and shovels to houses and cities. Persson called this Minecraft game and posted an unfinished version of it online in May 2009, on the TIG Source website for independent gamers. The first users of the game were experienced and tech-savvy players who had to test all its errors, even creating an entire community to figure out how to play it. Minecraft wasn't the first sandbox game, nor was it the first interactive program, which invited players to obtain resources to survive in a hostile world. (In the original version, players could be attacked by exploding monsters at night). But the timing of this game’s release to the market turned out to be decisive: parents just began to give laptops, smartphones and tablets to children who had not yet grown up to Facebook and Instagram, but could already create content on the Internet.
By June 2010, sales of the game increased up to 400 per day, $6 per download. Persson and Porser left their day jobs, and the former even took his boss with him, Jalbum CEO Karl Manneh so that he would organize the business. The new company was named Mojang, which means “gadget” in Swedish.
Secret Minecraft weapon became the character Notch. It was not just a name, for Persson it was a way of communicating with the world. Through blogs, forums, and Twitter, he answered every fan question, be it about the game, development, or real-life issues. Each of his appearances on the Minecraft server was perceived by users as a phenomenon Elvis Presley in front of the fans. Notch became an inspiration for change for the players. His profile in a brimmed hat has become synonymous with the struggle of independent developers with large corporations. Persson's alter ego had an audience from more than 2 million Twitter users who hung on his every word about the “cynical bastards” from Electronic Arts releasing indie games under their brand, or the inventor of the Oculus VR virtual reality headset, who sold the rights to the invention to the “vile” Facebook.
Persson didn't spend a single crown on marketing - Minecraft's popularity grew due to viral spread. The pace accelerated after Mojang added Android and iOS versions, which remain among the top three most popular paid apps in the US to this day. In May 2012, Mojang released a version for Microsoft's Xbox 360, which sold over 1 million copies for the first week (as of today -
15 million). Then came the licensing agreements. Minecraft-themed clothing produced by San Diego-based J!NX has become a bestseller among young people, as have books about the creation and rules of the game. Egmont Publishing International, which produced several of these manuals, eventually sold 7.5 million copies in more than 60 countries. Last year, Warner Bros. bought the film rights from Mojang.
The company employs only about 30 employees, so Mojang's profits seem sky-high. In 2012 she received $230 million from sales, and profit before taxes amounted to more than $150 million. $101 Persson paid himself million of this amount in exchange for intellectual property rights. (He immediately bought the most expensive apartment in Stockholm).
Investors tirelessly circled the company. Manneh says that during that period he met with more than 100 venture funds, including the elite troops from Silicon Valley represented by Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners. But it didn’t come to investment, simply because Mojang didn’t need it. Then he came again billionaire Sean Parker, who took Persson, Porser and Manneh to London on his personal plane, where he gave them a wild party. But they still didn’t take the money from him.
“We flew on a private jet for the first time,”- recalls Manneh. But not the last. The company, which did not use investor funds, brought such profits to its owners that they commissioned oil portraits of employees in the style of the Italian Renaissance. To celebrate the 10 millionth download of the game, the entire staff of the company was taken to Monaco, where they drank champagne and rode yachts for three days. And although the company’s shares belong to the three founders, in 2012 Persson thanked employees with bonuses totaling $3 million.
The world was at his feet, but Persson increasingly felt as if he carried the entire burden of the world on his shoulders. After the official Minecraft launcher at the end of 2011, at the first MineCon in Las Vegas, he announced that he was leaving his post as chief developer in order to search for new ideas for games and devote more time to his fiancee, who became his wife that summer.
But this respite turned out to be temporary. Persson's father, who had unsuccessfully battled drug addiction and depression, committed suicide before Christmas. The death of his father was a blow to Marcus. He felt that he did not know what he wanted from life. He divorced his wife a year after the wedding. “From today I am “not married” #don’t know what to think,” - he wrote on Twitter. And when Persson returned to the office after a short break, it turned out that they were waiting for him to come up with an idea comparable in scale to the first hit.
At the same time, Persson continued to be the face of Minecraft. It didn't matter that he stepped away from development, Notch was still the one players turned to for all their requests for code improvements or bug fixes. Even small changes in the rules, for example those related to sending messages on a virtual forum, caused a flurry of complaints and barbs addressed to Notch, who had nothing to do with them. In replies to Persson's tweets or in the comments under any YouTube video in which Notch appears, you can find comments like "Notch always looks like a jerk" or "Notch is a fat freak."
“I can't understand why people on the Internet are so angry- says Persson. - When you see such comments, it seems that they are even written in a larger font.” The person who created the bright Internet character began to feel like a target of hostile opinions addressed to this character. So Persson began to think about quitting the game.
It all started with the most ordinary tweet. On June 16, 2014, Persson woke up with a runny nose and did not go to work. That day, Minecraft users went on the warpath because the company began demanding compliance user agreement, which prohibited players from charging others for certain features in the game, such as increasing weapon durability. The rate of negative comments on Twitter had already reached several hundred per hour when an irritated Persson, feverish, wrote a 129-letter post that changed his life forever.
“No one wants to buy my share of Mojang so I can live in peace?- he asked. - Otherwise, I’m tired of listening to insults for trying to do everything according to the rules.”
Mojang CEO Karl Manneh was at home with his family that day. He had just finished reading this tweet when the phone rang. One of the key Microsoft employees with whom Mojang negotiated and signed contracts wanted to know whether Persson was really ready to sell his stake in the company. “I don’t know, let me call you back,” Manneh said.
Persson said his tweet half-jokingly, but the idea of parting ways with Mojang had already taken root. The man who had once publicly vowed that he would never sell out to “evil corporations” now felt like his head was spinning. Over the next week, he received constant calls from Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard and others. Negotiations with Activision gradually fizzled out. Persson remains cryptically silent on EA, but mentions that Mojang immediately refused to consider potential buyers who "have a different approach to games." Microsoft apparently managed to pass this face control. An additional motivation for the megacorporation was that the deal allowed them to avoid paying part of the taxes. Microsoft at that time did not know what to do with the profits accumulated abroad in the amount of $93 billion, which the company did not want to import into the United States so as not to pay Uncle Sam his share.
Therefore, Manneh managed to impose his terms of the deal: all three founders could leave the company without any obligations to it. In addition, mindful of staff cuts after Microsoft bought Nokia, Manneh demanded that no employees be laid off. (Although with a staff of 47 people Such a question most likely would not have arisen.)
On Microsoft's part, negotiations were conducted head of X Box Phil Spencer, who communicated exclusively with Manneh. Persson and Porser avoided the negotiations, although Spencer met with them in an old Stockholm restaurant, where they argued over a glass of liqueur about the future of the gaming industry. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella never appeared in Scandinavia to monitor the progress of the largest deal in the history of his leadership of the company. He only called Manneh twice to speed up the resolution of issues.
On September 15, Microsoft announced that it was buying Mojang for $2.5 billion. Within a couple of hours of the announcement, Persson wrote his final blog on the site, explaining why he was leaving. "It's not about the money,- he emphasized. - I want to keep my sanity."
Looking back on that period, Persson says he expected a worse reaction from Minecraft fans. “The day we announced the deal, I was going to delete my Twitter account because I was afraid I couldn’t handle all the negativity,” he says. “But they took it quite calmly.” They read my explanations and wrote: “Well, we hope that you will solve your problems.” As for his claims that he would never sell out to a big corporation, Persson shrugs and says he will have to come to terms with this contradiction at a cost at $2.5 billion. “Of course, you need to be responsible for your words,” he says. “But I wouldn’t say that I’m so ashamed that I changed my mind.”
Mojang employees were much more sensitive to the dramatic change in wind in their sails. Although they all received bonuses from the deal (Porser - more than $300 million clean; Manneh - more than $100 million), many of them, according to an employee who wished to remain anonymous, felt “disappointed and empty.” Some still keep their distance and treat Persson with coldness.
“We spoiled them, their reaction really upset me,”- says Persson. However, he managed to cope with it. In November, when the deal finally closed, Persson, Porser, Manneh and Manneh's twin brother flew to Miami and St. Barts to celebrate the deal. Persson called their little vacation “a voyage of those who sold out.”
Nowadays, Persson pays much less attention to offensive posts on Twitter than to exchanging barbs on Whats App, where his close friends have united in a group with the vulgar name “Farts”. Freed from Minecraft, Persson regressed into adolescence. In the temporary office of his new company, Rubberbrain, there are constant jokes below the belt and uproarious laughter, followed by irritated knocking on the radiators of the neighbors above. Persson ignores this knock as well as the opinions of Internet trolls. He says his current favorite feature on Twitter is the "ignore" button, which allows users to block messages without notifying them.
Sometimes curiosity wins, he reads their posts and cannot resist replying. Particularly angry users are sent a still from the movie “Zombieland” with Woody Harrelson wiping away tears with a wad of money. "I know it's a little stupid," Persson shrugs. - But what can you do? He is equally frank with the people he likes. He sends them his photos from vacations and the cabins of private jets on Snapchat. And as for the girls... “I tried Tinder,” he says, - I didn’t like it. In Sweden it’s useless, there are like four people sitting there.” Hence the bills for $180,000 from nightclubs.
“I’m trying to catch up a little bit. When I was 20, all I did was program - he says. - Entertainment is not the healthiest way to spend money, but it is fun. When we were young, we didn't have any money, so I always knew that if I got rich, I wouldn't be one of those boring people who never spend money on anything."
His expenses now include the furnishings of his new office: he has long-held fantasies about a bar, a DJ booth (he's learning how to turn the turntables himself) and a secret room. And all this despite the fact that Rubberbrain is a company that still has nothing but a name.
The fact that inspiration does not come is quite understandable. In his new office, Persson spends time on Twitter and Reddit, while Porser reads fan forums for his childhood hockey team and plays simple online games where you score points by blowing up bugs or other creatures.
“We have a kindergarten for adults here,” says Persson. “Sometimes a concept is born, we discuss it for a couple of days, and then we start playing games again.” Maybe this period will end. But there are many other Markus Perssons around - younger and more active. When asked about this, the creator of Minecraft replies that he is quite happy with the role of the author of one hit. Great wealth and the premature depletion of creative resources are probably better than the stress of being responsible for a virtual nation that both idolizes and despises you.
“People began to perceive Notch as some kind of ideal,” he says about his character. - Sometimes I remember the first time I met my idols and thought: “Damn, this is an ordinary person.” So it is here. My relationship with fans was not what I thought it would be."
As he leaves Rubberbrain's office, Persson's assistant hands him a handwritten letter from a gamer in America. Pinned to the sheet of paper, filled with round letters as if written by the hand of a diligent fifth grader, is a dollar bill. The author of the letter asks Persson to add to Minecraft new function. “They sent us a bribe,- Persson jokes, reads what he has written and frowns. Then he points to the dollar: - Well, shall we send him back?”
The richest people in the computer games industry
|
Gave Newell Valve $1.3 billion One of the most respected figures in business. Newell owns more than 50% of Washington state-based software company Valve. Their development is gaming Steam platform- is the industry's leading online sales channel. |
Markus Persson Mojang $1.3 billion A game designer created the hit construction game Minecraft. In the company that controls it, Mojang, he owned a 71% stake. Mircosoft bought Mojang for $2.5 billion in cash. |
Mark Pincus Zynga $990 million The co-founder and former CEO of Zynga is now worth significantly less than he was during the heyday of FarmVille, when its shares were worth more than $14.50 a share. The price has now fallen to less than $3, but early investments in Napster, Twitter and Facebook keep Pincus comfortable. |
Melvin Morris King Digital $627 million Morris made his first fortune from the dating site Udate.com, and his second as the chairman and co-founder of a London-based studio that develops light games. They released the ever-popular game Candy Crush. Morris stepped down as King's chairman in November. |
Riccardo Zacconi King Digital $548 million Another Candy Crush author who became a millionaire. Italian Riccardo has led the company from its early days, but his fortune, like the other co-founders, has declined since it went public in March 2014. |
Palmer Lucky Oculus VR $500 million The inventor of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset was only 21 years old when he sold his company to Facebook for $2 billion. Luckey is the first person in history to become so rich at that age. He is now working on the first consumer version of the product, which is expected to hit the market towards the end of the year. |
Ilkka Paanen Supercell $400 million CEO and founder of the most popular Finnish game studio on the market. Few companies manage to create such a hit as Clashof Clans, Supercell's flagship game. And almost no one managed to repeat the success by releasing a second hit in a row, such as Boom Beach. |
Markus Alexey Persson
Game developer, owner and founder of Mojang
Elin Zetterstrand (2011-2012)
Biography
Persson was born on June 1, 1979, in Stockholm. At first he lived in Denmark, and then moved with his parents to Sweden. Began programming at age 7 on a Commodore 128 home computer. For four and a half years (until 2009) he worked at King.com as a game developer.
Also participated in the development of jAlbum and Wurm Online. Founded Mojang Specifications in May 2009.
On August 13, 2011, he married Elin Zetterstrand, but on August 15, 2012, Persson announced on Twitter that he is now single.
Personal life
Markus Persson lives in the city of Stockholm. He is a member of the Mensa organization and composes electronic music under the pseudonym "Markus Alexei". Criticizes large companies for their attitude towards piracy, is a member of the Swedish Pirate Party.
Games
Minecraft
Marcus's most popular sandbox game, which entered Beta on December 20, 2010. Even when it was still in Alpha, the game became very popular in the Internet environment. Jeb (since Marcus retired) develops Minecraft, improving and changing the game while it is still unfinished. At the beginning of 2011, Mojang AB sold 1 million copies of the game, and six months later another 2 million people bought the game.
Breaking the Tower
The game was created within 48 hours. The game takes place on a small island where the player must collect resources, construct buildings, and train soldiers in order to destroy a large tower on the island.
Metagun
Another game made in 48 hours as part of the Ludum Dare competition. A 2D platformer with an original idea, in which the main character's weapon shoots little people who shoot real bullets. Another feature of the game is the protagonist's hat, which gives him invulnerability from bullets while he is wearing it, and which flies off when hit by one bullet. Having caught the hat, the hero again becomes invulnerable. In some game areas you can also pick up additional hats, the number of which will be counted at the end of the game.
Scrolls
Markus and Jakob Porser came up with the idea for the game Scrolls. The game seeks to combine elements from traditional card games and traditional board games into the strategy genre. Marcus stated that he will not be actively involved in the development of the game, but Jakob will develop it.
0x10c
Markus's new project. The plot unfolds when they were launched spaceships with people, but there was a failure in the system and the number 0x0000 0000 0000 0001 changed to 0x0001 0000 0000 0000, and people began to wake up only in 281,474,976,712,644. A distinctive feature of the game is the need to program in assembler for the fictional DCPU-16 processor.
Links
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
- Palmeira, Marcos
- Prock, Marcus
See what “Persson, Markus” is in other dictionaries:
Persson- (Swedish: Persson) surname of Swedish origin, meaning “son of Per (Swedish form of the Christian name “Peter”).” Analogue in Denmark and Norway Pedersen. Known carriers: Persson, Axel (1888 1951) Swedish archaeologist and historian of antiquity. Persson ... Wikipedia
0x10c- This article describes a computer game currently in development. Following the release of the game, the information provided here may be incorrect and the content of the article may change significantly... Wikipedia
Unlimited Detail- This article or section of an article contains information about the planned or expected future software, which is currently under development. The contents of the article may change according to... Wikipedia
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IIHF World Championship 2012- 2012 IIHF World Championship Jääkiekon maailmanmestaruuskilpailut 2012 Världsmästerskapet i ishockey for herrar 2012 ... Wikipedia
Hockey at the 2010 Winter Olympics - Qualification (men)- Hockey at the 2010 Winter Olympics Tournaments Men ... Wikipedia
Books
- Minecraft. The incredible story of Markus "Notch" Persson and the game that changed the world, Larsson Linus, Daniel Goldberg. Minecraft is a mega-popular game that has won the hearts of millions of fans around the world. At the same time, it is not like any of the games that came out before it. What is the secret of her success? Like Swedish...