Who is Markus Persson?
Markus Persson, a Minecraft creator and Swedish video game developer, better known as “Notch”. Born in 1st June 1979.
Markus Person was born in Stockholm the capital of Sweden.
He started programming on his father’s commodore 128 home computer when he was 7 years old. Pretty young age right?
Having experience of many types of programs, Markus Persson made his first game when he was 8 years old. It was a text based game.
He also worked with King as a game developer for over 4 years, till 2009.
Outside of work, he has made 7 more games for competitions.
What is Markus Persson Net worth?
Markus Persson has the US $1.6 Billion net worth.
Markus Persson house?
Minecraft creator, Markus Persson has bought his house for the US $70 Million in Beverly Hills, California, U.S.
How did Markus Persson side project turn into $2.5 billion?
Today, Minecraft comes in one of the top games in the world.
So, you must be thinking how did a blocky game become so popular?
In this write up, we will go through how Markus Persson became the founder of the most sold game in history. Also, how he made over $2 billion in 2009.
Markus Persson passion, more known now, as much was working as a game developer for King. The maker of candy crush in Stockholm Sweden.
Markus had a big interest in programming and he would spend his spare time working on his new games.
King had a policy, where you can make your own game but you can not make a company out of it.
Markus Persson Quit his job from King
Markus, after playing around with his ideas, thought of going full time with his games. So, he quit his job at King.
And began working part-time, as a web developer for jAlbum. Even though, the new job made him a dub developer and not a game developer.
Markus figure out that it was better to spend a couple of hours a week not making games. In other words, having a lot more freedom to build his own games after work. He also really enjoyed his new boss called Manneh.
He was young, quick thinking and had already to 30 years, runing three companies.
Markus Persson aim to make more games made him even more interested. Like, asking questions about projects and giving some of his thoughts.
His new boss encouraged Markus Persson. Also, made sure that he had the time and opportunity to balance his job with what he wanted to do. In short, this was one of the best things for him at that time.
Markus Persson would spend most of his spare time playing around with indie games and talking to his friends at TIG Forums.
TIG Forums is a website for indie developers. But they can discuss other games stuff as well and get feedback.
Markus Person enjoyed playing Roller Coaster Tycoon, War Fortress and Dungeon Keeper.
He could spend hours building new roller coasters and exploring caves. In Dungeon Keeper, exploring the death and life of Dwarf Fortress.
An Idea to merge the cool stuff of all games
He had an idea of mixing thing from all of the games above into a new game. A game where you can feel like you’re a part of a real world.
Markus Persson Sketch an Endless Game
Markus Persson sketched a game world that was like many others stratagems view from above.
In Markus game the building and exploring would occur in a three-dimensional world.
A good deal.. right
More inviting and easy to understand than War fortress.
But the player would still control the action like a mighty God with a mouse. Rather than, seeing the world from the view of one’s avatar.
Later, like most evenings after work, Markus Persson was on his PC when he stumbled upon an indie game, Infiniminer.
Infiniminer
He had not tried it before. So, thought of giving it a try.
Markus downloaded the game, installed it, clicked into motion and then..
OH MY GOD!
He knew this is genius like Minecraft.
Infiniminer had digging and building in the game with only square blocks.
Every single block can be pick, loose and used into making something new.
Often, the ones deep in the ground have rare minerals as well.
But there is dirt and rock to be dig through in search for a treasure.
Re-coding of the Game by Markus Persson
After Markus Persson became familiar with this new mining game, He sat down and begin re-coding his own game.
First of all, he changed the third-person perspective to the first-person point of view.
And re-did the graphics to make them even more blockish.
It was just a step away from the traditional strategy game and towards a more adventure like setup.
After a couple of days of non-stop coding.
Markus Persson leaned back in his chair satisfied!
As he saw the puzzle pieces begin to fall into place.
Hence, building, digging and exploring took on new dimensions when players saw the world through the eyes of their avatars.
Youtube Clip for testing
That same year on May 13,
Markus Persson uploaded a YouTube clip of a very early version of Minecraft with the description.
“This is a very early test of an Infiniminer clone, I’m working on. It will have more resource management and materials, if I ever get around to finishing it”
He posted his new game to his friends on TIG Forums as well.
The response was very positive!
Markus Persson was convinced that he was on to something BIG after some discussion with his friends.
He decided to call the game Minecraft.
The name was a combination of the words.
Mine – for mining ore in shaft
Craft – as in a building or creating something
Markus Persson continued releasing updates often with new functions and bug fixes.
He posted updates to his blog and his friends at TIG Forums.
Certainly, with every update about Minecraft. He would encourage people to play and send feedback about the game.
Idea to charge money for Minecraft
Jacob was one of his friends who worked with Markus at King and their friendship had continued to grow.
He used to help Markus with Minecraft.
Finally, the two discussed the possibility to start charging money for Minecraft.
Markus Persson updated his blog with an explanation where it would charge
$13 doing the alpha phase. $20 when the game will hit Beta and $26 when the game will be fully done.
He said, the reason that I released the game so early was that I would never have been able to finish it otherwise.
Charging money was something, I knew that I would never feel that it was good enough to put a price tag on.
So, I charge from the start on June 12
And Minecraft open up. 24 hours later, the game has been sold 15 times.
Markus Persson had a hundred and fifty dollars in his PayPal account.
Initially, he thought their sales were decline after the hype of something new.
But every day the discussion threads about Minecraft would increase and the sales continue to grow day by day.
But then one day sitting at home in Sollentuna.
Markus Persson did a quick calculation. Like, if I can sell more than 20 games a day that’s enough for a decent seller. So, then I’ll quit my job and I’m doing this for full-time
In May of 2010, Minecraft had enough sales.
Quit Job for Full-time on Minecraft
Markus Persson call up his friend Jacob Porter and told him to quit his job.
Let’s do Minecraft full-time in June!
Markus Said
A year after they started, they had over 20,000 sales.
And they were joined by Business developer Daniel Kaplan and Markus old boss called Manneh together.
They continued to develop Minecraft and the hype of the game continued at a fast pace.
Finally, PC gaming magazine gave Minecraft the price of the Game of the year.
Minecraft came at a time where people started to share gameplay on YouTube.
Minecraft was perfect for these people to build cool things and to show them off to the world.
All of this became free advertisement. As a result, more people became aware of the game.
Gameplay videos went viral
Most of the Minecraft gameplay videos went viral.
With this Minecraft sales skyrocketed at the end of 2010. Minecraft came out of alpha and entered beta with this as promised.
Minecraft prices were raised to $14.
Markus Persson and his team, Mojang , would win best in the game in December of 2010.
And would continue to may be win Best Debut game or Best downloadable game. Finally, gain innovation spotlight at the GDC Award.
Minecraft had 10 Million accounts
By this time, the team at Mojang had increased quite a bit. The game now had over 10 million registered accounts, the market was losing interest.
Markus Persson loved building games. But Minecraft had become so much more and Markus Persson through his internet alias of notch had become the face of more junk and Minecraft.
At first, it was fun but with the success people also started making demands from him.
It was at this time the market started to think about leaving Minecraft.
So, he had the perfect person to replace him.
Jens Bergensten had started working at Minecraft a couple of months earlier and he was hitting the market with his ideas.
At first, Markus Persson was a bit afraid of letting other people make changes and come with ideas but then he thought we need to expand.
He and Markus had similar ideas on how to move the game forward. So, the day came when Markus decided to step down.
Jens was the perfect fit to fill his shoes. So, Jeb became head of development instead of Markus.
Markus Persson wasn’t working on Minecraft but he still had his office at Mojang he said:
“I wasn’t exactly sure how I fit into my company where people did actual work. But since people said I was important for the culture, I stayed”
Markus Persson
Releasing of Minecraft Pocket Edition
At the beginning of 2012
They released a Minecraft Pocket Edition for mobile and the Console edition at first for Xbox.
The Xbox version was an instant hit, selling over 1 million copies after 5 days.
In 2013, the agreement with Microsoft for the Console Edition expired and the game was released for PS3, PS4 and PS Vita.
In the meantime, Markus Persson have continued to develop his games but he wasn’t able to step away from Minecraft.
That’s the reason people still see him as the figurehead of the game and he would constantly get tweets and requests sent to him.
Minecraft became a Big Business
Hosting Minecraft servers had started to become a big business. Therefore, a lot of people made money selling access to the servers.
Interestingly,
Some players were using in-game currencies. This was not allow under there and users license agreement from Wooyoung.
Finally, when they said that they would enforce the rules and track down on those who were doing this.
It caused a lot of outrage!
and they got a lot of tweets and messages about these. Like people saying that the studio is worse. This outrage was enough for Markus Persson and on the 17th of June of 2014 he tweeted
Anyone wants to buy my share of Mojang. So, I can move on with my life getting hate for trying to do the right thing. it’s not my jig called Mannehs phone.
Markus tweeted
This lit up with inquiries as to whether Persson was serious or not. So, Carl decided to call Markus Persson and asked him are you serious?!
Do you want to sell market thought for a little bit and said Yeah.
Yeah, I do want to sell market, was tired of all of the tension I want to leave.
So, Carl got to work.
Activision Blizzard And EA each expressed an interest in picking up more chunk but the company’s prior relationship with Microsoft made them sell it to them.
Selling of Minecraft
So, a deal was made in late 2014.
Notch and company will sell Minecraft to Microsoft for $2.5 billion.
The completion of the deal on November 5th, 2014 marked the end of the founder’s involvement with the company.
Person, Porser and Carl Manneh departed million, under new leadership, for maintaining the same developer team.
Finally, the team that had driven it since start, sidestepped in 2011.
Mojang has sold over 176 million copies of Minecraft. So, the game continues to be a big draw on YouTube.
We don’t know how much bigger Minecraft can be but..
What we do know is, it’s still going strong.
One man’s idea and another man’s experiment has grown into something that has delighted an entire generation of kids!
And changed the way we think about games.
Minecraft isn’t a Graphical Masterpiece and it’s not by any stretch of the imagination a game with a AAA story-line.
However, It’s an experience that remains as relevant today as it did ten years ago.
If you liked this write up please comment down below.
Want to follow up with what’s going on in this world of Minecraft? For all the Minecraft news and updates check out Minecraft news.
And Lastly, want to know more About his $70 Million Mansion Check it here.
Someone who fell in love with gaming the very first time he picked up the controller at the age of 6 and hasn’t stopped since. My name is Hamza Zuberi and I have been gaming for the most part of my life and Minecraft is on the top of my most favorite games that I have ever played. And now I want everyone to know about Minecraft and that is why I am here, educating the mass so that Minecraft can keep on growing.
