[joshfinnie]

This is super sad. I never want to read the following from a programmer:

    As soon as this deal is finalized, I will leave Mojang and go back to doing Ludum Dares and small web experiments. If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I’ll probably abandon it immediately.

I feel for anyone who has felt such stress to want to kill anything that they are working on that gains traction...

[xarien]

It's actually quite inspiring. He's essentially saying that he's chasing curiosity instead of profits. A lot of us would love to be able to do that. For many of us, it's why we got into programming or engineering in the first place...

[MadManE]

How is that inspiring? To me, it's incredibly depressing. It's basically saying that he will aim to make mediocre (or terrible) things now that he has more money than he needs.

This means that unless I win the lottery of life, I am condemned to doing what I'm doing and if I actually do succeed in what I'm doing, I'll never want to touch anything like it again.

Edit: Sorry that I inadvertently insulted one of your heroes.

I realize that I'm incredibly lucky already because I have food/water/shelter/etc. But "gaining perspective" seems like code to me for "I've given up, so you should too".

[stdgy]

You're performing some monumental gymnastics if your take away from his post is that he intends to intentionally go waste his time creating bad things.

He clearly states that he isn't comfortable with the responsibilities that come bundled with being part of the operations of a marvelously popular product. His love lies with creating, tinkering and exploring. And with the sale, he has finally extricated himself from the part of his life he disliked so that he can spend his time doing things he enjoys. If any of his side creations wind up blowing up again, he now knows to just leave them behind instead of going through the process of hurting himself, doing things he doesn't like to do.

I don't think it's exactly great that he feels the need to abandon his creations, but I'm happy that his experiences with Minecraft may lead him to make some different decisions in the future to keep himself sane, and enjoy life a bit more.

[xarien]

You're confusing audience with quality. You don't have to look very far to see that they are quite disjoint.

You've already won the lottery of life. If you are one of the lucky few who can afford to spend time on this forum, you can count yourself lucky. At the end of the day, it really comes down to perspective and that, unfortunately, takes quite a bit of time to acquire, if ever.

[Ygg2]

He said he'll do things he likes. I'm not getting mediocre out of that sentence.

Keep in mind Minecraft started similarly.

[arrrg]

Terrible or mediocre for whom? The audience? He clearly states he is doing this for himself, so let him be the judge of that.

[serve_yay]

Hmm, I think notch's life is interesting but I doubt the wisdom of trying to learn lessons from it. At any rate I dunno that he is necessarily aiming to make mediocre things so much as not explicitly aiming to make popular things. Good work can come out of such a mindset, he just won't be the one to steward it to popularity.