Is he asking for nothing? Half of the post is about how Mojang got millions then billions and he got nothing. If he's not asking for what he considers to be his share of the pie, then I don't know what the whole post is about.
It's emblematic for his entire inability to talk about money. He didn't want to talk about money, but he also didn't want his agent to do it for him. He has some highly idealistic beliefs about how money is not important, but he struggles to pay rent.
I love his story, I sympathise, and I want Microsoft, or Notch, or Mojang, to just give him a million dollars. But I can also see that his financial struggles are mostly his own doing. And probably his own choice. He wants to live in a world that's not about money, but he also wants to be able to pay rent.
This is what does it for me. This was entirely of his own doing. He didn't want to negotiate, didn't want to get his agent involved for either no reason or a reason that he's not explaining, he managed to annoy the CEO of a three person company so much over email that Mojang's Carl lost his patience and told him to either take the deal or go away.
You're trying to ship a game. This writer keeps hitting your inbox with prose that I assume that is about as annoying to read as the original article. He's wasting your time and not getting to the point. You don't know what the guy's deal is and you stopped trying to figure out two emails ago. Compared to all the other things that you need to be doing to actually ship the game, this is incredibly minor and taking up your time daily. You finally tell him, "look, it's 20k or we go look elsewhere".
From that story, the only thing Mojang did wrong is that they didn't send him the contract straight away. We all know he would have signed whatever was on it back then, as he clearly didn't know what he wanted. Looks like someone regretted behaving completely irrationally when closing a deal, then regretted it some more than he never attempted to get more compensation even after the fact (he could have easily gotten something a couple of years later if he had tried, and once more the article completely omits as to why he didn't try to reach out through his agent or anyone that can behave as an adult after the launch) and is now screaming at the universe that he's not being showered with riches and glory when all of this was his own doing, even after he had multiple opportunities to come out winning.
Originally, they were just trying to release the official release version of the game. Stakes weren't so high then, and he already had trouble discussing their contract.
Of course when the Microsoft deal came along, stakes were much higher and patience for his reluctance a lot less.
To me the post is about how he wrote a story for a friend, that friend didn't treat him like a friend, and how he was hurt by that. It sounds like the post was about letting him vent his pain and frustration and reach some level of emotional catharsis, as well as officially releasing the story to the public domain.
I find some people don't draw strong distinctions between friends and acquaintances; they treat acquaintances like friends. After going through a collaborative purely creative journey, I could almost see that boundary being broken down further.
So yeah, they weren't friends. But he thought they were, between whatever interaction they had before the poem and the collaborative effort of creating the poem. So does that really make it a Flawed premise?
No, that's what he says. But someone who genuinely grew to understand he was wrong doesn't write blog posts like this, explaining how he was wrong, like that's a question in everyone's mind (honestly until now I'd never known there was an end to Minecraft)
No, this is a person who's burning with envy and finds telling yourself stories an outlet.
Or it's a person who burned with envy, is introspective enough to recall that feeling and write from that perspective in order for his readers to learn from his own shortcomings.
Or, it's a writer, who writes for a living, spinning a story to draw the reader in. He pitches his product at the end: he want's subscriptions to pay his rent and buy his socks.
I have no ire towards the author. I thoroughly enjoyed the post and found several aspects of it that helped me find some introspection to something I was talking about with my wife just the other day (regarding capitalism, career, compensation).
I think in the end that's what he's doing. It's an overly long winded way to say he wrote the poem. He's trying to wrestle that recognition for his work he thought Mojang was going to provide him and he's sharing a tale of one artist who wants to live above Intellectual Property law and create beautiful things while recognizing he has to eat and put a roof over his head.
I pass no judgment on the author. I might slip him a few bucks in the paypal link he gave because I acquired Minecraft during beta and continue to play it off and on today and consider his contribution to be a nice addition to the game. Perhaps I will buy his novel. I think he did a great job trying to market himself here.
Isn't the whole point that the author thinks he deserves more compensation than he got? He's quoting the compensation for various Mojang employees and comparing it to what he got. He seems quite jelaous and/or entitled.
20000€ would in most European countries be a pretty good compensation for about 3 months of work, after taxes. It doesn't seem unreasonable on the face of it.
> Early next year, Markus earned a three-million-dollar dividend on his shares in Mojang. But, as the actual value of his company, which he mostly owned, had gone up by many tens of millions, he figured he didn’t really need another three million on top. So he divided it between the twenty-five staff at Mojang, as a late Christmas bonus. That’s $120,000 each. Five or six times what I got for writing the actual ending.
(Since the author seems to have spent about a month or so working on the game, you could reason that his compensation is about on par with the employees who worked for a full year. But he doesn't seem to see it that way, or he thinks he should be compensated better than them? I don't know.)
Or he's upset that he didn't even hear from Notch at all at this point? That at the success of the game he felt forgotten for his contribution and was using this as an example of other contributors being kept in mind?
I'm speculating, but having known "artists", some of them think very differently to the average HN crowd.
Never before has the HN bubble been so clear to me before reading the comments of this post.
He outright says it in the article, about how it wasn't about the money. If it was, there are more effective ways of going about getting that compensation than putting the story into the public domain
To me, it seems clear that he was not a friend. The people, who slaved away for months or years as employees to build the game may have been friends. That would explain the outsized compensation they all got.
However, he was just a contractor found via twitter who wrote a few pages of text for the ending credits.
They really did not think of him as a friend, and when he was done with work they never contacted him again except for legal reasons.
But once again, why the focus on compensation? It's a pretty small section of the article that's after the frustration with Carl.
Once again speculating, but the author didn't want to be treated like "just a contractor", and nor did that seem like how the relationship started out. Even as a contractor, I personally feel Notch could have reached out with happy words at a minimum - instead the author got silence.
Notch probably dealt with tons of temporary contractors during the development of the game. He doesn’t have to keep life time commitments to all of them surely
Agreed, other companies/video games would have asked him for his stories on their games considering that he'd done it for one of the biggest video games.
It's the attitude espoused in the writing. The outcome was literally his way of not letting his own frustration consume him and only available to him after doing heavy doses of psychedelics. I'm glad he was able to let go because his attitude of being entitled to something when he was, in fact, not, is what has been causing him all the pain.
I think we all can empathize with the guy. He was close to massively successful people and he clearly contributed something soulful. It is the end jewel of the most successful game of all time! I feel for him and think this was a really nice outcome for everyone.
(I just wish the essay was edited down by 1/3, but that’s me)
