[sledgehammers]

It does take tremendous talent and knowledge to build what he built, saying anything else is not just dishonest but weirdly cynical if not hateful. I think you grossly underestimate how difficult it is to build anything good. Not an easy thing to follow up all the expectations set after a massive global hit like that, a classic dilemma of a successful artist.

[Waterluvian]

There's a level of talent necessary to be a one-hit-wonder, yes. But I think what makes someone a one-hit-wonder and not a career star is that their success was driven by luck more than by talent. In this case "luck" is being in the right place at the right time: that nexus where cultural and technological timing is perfect for a phenomenon to appear and take hold.

[JumpCrisscross]

> a one-hit-wonder, yes

He’s had multiple hits as an savvy acquirer.

[rf15]

It really doesn't. We teach kids how to program basic games like minecraft. The real appeal was and always has been the fully destructible Lego-like world bundled with good-enough online multiplayer. I was there when it started and he posted his questions/progress on the forums I frequented back then. Those posts where the starting ramp and testing ground that got him his first few users which then snowballed.

There is neither knowledge nor talent here, he stumbled into it, and that's fine.