Markus Persson on Minecraft

Feature

Markus Persson, an indie game developer, is working on Minecraft, a sandbox building game which allows players to build constructions out of textured cubes in a 3D world. We discuss the game�s progress, challenges and more with him.

December 1st, 2010 by Josh Miller

Hooked Gamers: Minecraft is an online game, so does everyone build stuff on the same realm, and if not, are you able to join others peoples worlds and help them build? Also, are there any competitive elements to the game for example, can you wage war on another person and destroy his creations?

Markus Persson: Minecraft is primarely designed to be a fun single player experience, but it will feature full multiplayer. Multiplayer is done on smaller servers hosted by individual players, with 16-20 people or so per server.
You will be able to fight other players in the game.

Hooked Gamers: Are there any threats in the world of Minecraft that your character must defend himself from, and if so, how does one go about engaging these combatants?

Markus Persson: Yes, there are plenty of enemies. They tend to only appear in dark areas, so you can avoid the dark by placing a lot of torches or staying indoors during the nights, or you can craft a sword or a bow and fight them off.

Hooked Gamers: I know that since you have released Minecraft, hundreds of thousands of users have flocked to your game. With so people, you and your servers must be under a lot of stress. Since you created Minecraft by yourself, have you hired any others to assist you in maintaining the game?

Markus Persson: Yes, me and a couple of friends started a new company to continue develop minecraft and other future games, and we�ve also hired three people to help out.
We�ll be five people on December 1, with the sixth person joining us in January.

Hooked Gamers: Minecraft becoming the success that it is, you must have received a plethora of offers from other companies, asking you to join them. Since your still working on Minecraft as an independent developer, it can be assumed that you turned them down. So the real question is, why not join up with popular industries that already have plenty of experience and released products?

Markus Persson: Minecraft seems to be doing pretty good on its own. I see no need to learn from the old ways, it�s much more interesting to look ahead.

Hooked Gamers: Its common practice here at Hooked Gamers to give the developers a moment to comment on something that hasn�t been discussed, so is there anything in particular that you want the readers to know before we wrap this up?

Markus Persson: If you like Minecraft, you should look around for other indie games. There are a lot of really impressive games made by small development teams out there, but they usually lack the funding or timing needed to reach a large audience.

Hooked Gamers: Good to know, and for someone whose now interested in Minecraft like myself, where can a body find more info on and buy Minecraft, and how much would it cost them?

Markus Persson: If you go to www.minecraft.net, you can read more about the game, or buy it. If you buy it during alpha, you get it for 9,95 euro (13 dollar). The price will go up soon, so hurry!
You can also check out my blog at notch.tumblr.com, or follow me on twitter as @notch