Markus Persson

Markus Alexej Persson, more commonly known as Notch, is the creator of Minecraft and the owner of Mojang AB.

Biography
Persson started programming at the age of seven, using his dad's Commodore 128. He produced his first game (a text-adventure) at the age of eight, with the help of type-in programs. Later he started working as a game developer for King.com, which he left after four years to work as a programmer over at Jalbum. During this time he also founded the MMORPG Wurm Online, although he no longer works on this. Outside of work he frequently takes part in competitions, including Ludum Dare, LD12 and the Java 4K Game Programming Contest. He lived in Denmark before he moved to Sweden with his parents and went to school there.

Notch has his own part of the Mojang website that can be found here. He has a lot of friends, including the others at Mojang AB and Megabuilder.

Games and other work
Notch has released much of his work, including, but not limited to:

Games:
 * MEG4kMAN, a Mega Man clone featuring old-school graphics.
 * Left 4k Dead, a zombie shooter game inspired by Left 4 Dead.
 * t4kns, a real time strategy game.
 * Miners4k, a game kinda inspired by lemmings and diggers.
 * Hunters4k, a first person shooter.
 * Dungeon4k, a dungeon exploration game.
 * Sonic Racer 4k, a racing game with stolen sprites.
 * Dachon4k, a gravity based shooter.
 * l4krits, a Luxor clone.
 * Blast Passage, an 8-Bit mashup between Bomberman and Gauntlet.
 * Bunny Press, a violent puzzle game.
 * Breaking the Tower, a slow-paced strategy game.
 * Infinite Mario Bros, a Super Mario clone featuring an endlessly-long level.
 * Metagun, a puzzle game Notch made in 48 hours for Ludum Dare 18.

2.5d Engines:
 * Legend of the Chambered
 * First person shooter prototype in flash
 * Flash doom level renderer
 * Dungeon master type game engine in java (flash version, uses static graphics)

Birthday
Today, the 1st of June, is Notch's 32nd birthday. Notch programmed the Minecraft splash screen to display "Happy Birthday Notch!" all day on the 1st of June.