Markus Persson

See also: Wikipedia: Markus Persson

	“	Imagine countless wiki editors all using each others work as basis for their own, reasoning what must be true from what they already assume is. Wouldn't that make for a weird reality?	„
		— Notch on January 6, 2020

Markus Persson

Real name	Markus Alexej Persson
Date of birth	June 1, 1979 (age 42)
Occupation	Game developer
Nationality	Swedish
Known for	Creating Minecraft, founder of Mojang Studios
Also known as	Notch
Reddit name	xNotch
Twitter name	@notch
Minecraft name	Notch

Markus Alexej Persson, more commonly known under the alias Notch, is the creator of Minecraft and one of the founders of Mojang Studios.

Biography

Persson started programming at the age of seven, using his father's Commodore 128. He produced his first game (a text-adventure) at the age of eight, with the help of type-in programs. In 2005 he started working as a game developer for King.com, which he left in 2009 to work as a programmer at Jalbum. He is also one of the founders of Wurm Online. After Minecraft sales grew he moved from full-time to part-time at Jalbum and then eventually left to focus full-time on Minecraft in June 2010; many of the original Mojang employees (including former CEO Carl Manneh) were also ex-Jalbum employees. After the full release of Minecraft (1.0.0), Persson transferred creative authority of the game's development to Jens Bergensten.

Persson sold Mojang and all of its assets to Microsoft on September 15, 2014. In a lengthy blog post, Notch states "I love games and I love to program, but I don't make games with the intention of them becoming huge hits, and I don't try to change the world." He then goes on to say that "I've become a symbol. I don't want to be a symbol, responsible for something huge that I don't understand, that I don't want to work on."

Persson left Mojang on November 5, 2014, along with the other founders. He wrote that "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."

Persson has not been involved with Minecraft since selling Mojang to Microsoft, and the company has since disassociated with him, with a spokesperson for Microsoft stating that "[Persson's] comments and opinions do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang and are not representative of 'Minecraft'."

Outside of work Persson frequently takes part in competitions, including Ludum Dare, LD12 and the Java 4K Game Programming Contest.

Persson engaged Ez during a vacation in Indonesia, and married her in August 2011. The two separated on August 15, 2012. Her brother, Kristoffer, is the artist whose paintings appear in the game.

Games and other work

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

Games:

• Wurm Online, an MMO featuring sandbox elements similar to Minecraft.
• MEG4kMAN, a Mega Man clone featuring old-school graphics.
• Left 4k Dead, a zombie shooter game inspired by Left 4 Dead. (Archived here)
• t4kns, a real time strategy game. (Archived here)
• Miners4k, a game kind of inspired by Lemmings and Diggers. (Archived here)
• Hunters4k, a first person shooter.
• Dungeon4k, a dungeon exploration game. (Archived here and here)
• Sonic Racer 4k, a racing game with stolen sprites. (Archived here)
• Dachon4k, a gravity based shooter. (Archived here)
• l4krits, a Luxor clone. (Archived here)
• Blast Passage, an 8-Bit mashup between Bomberman and Gauntlet. (Archived here)
• Bunny Press, a violent puzzle game made for Ludum Dare 14. (Archived here)
• Breaking the Tower, a slow-paced strategy game. (Archived here)
• The Europa Arcology Incident, an RPG-style game Notch made in 48 hours for Ludum Dare 16.
• Infinite Mario Bros, a Super Mario clone featuring an endlessly-long level. (Archived here)
• Metagun, a puzzle game Notch made in 48 hours for Ludum Dare 18.
• Minecraft 4k, Minecraft in less than 4 KB for a Java4K competition.
• Minicraft, a top-down Zelda-esque game with elements from Minecraft, made for Ludum Dare 22.
• Shambles, a hectic shooter greatly inspired by Doom.
• Cliffhorse, an open-ended game in which you play as a horse that can scale cliffs.
• Last Minute Christmas Chopping, in which you play as Santa collecting wood to build a sleigh.
• Drop, a typing game that increases in speed as you play.
• Drowning in Problems, a clicker game that gets progressively more complicated.

2.5d Engines:

• Legend of the Chambered, a dungeon crawler containing many textures that were reused in Minecraft.
• Prelude of the Chambered, an escape game Notch made in 48 hours for Ludum Dare 21.
• First person shooter prototype in flash (Archived here)
• Flash doom level renderer (Archived here)
• Dungeon master type game engine in Java (Flash version uses static graphics) (Archived here)

Notch also has a soundcloud page which includes 53 tracks in total. He would sometimes use his music on his old YouTube channel Nizzotch.

Unreleased

Information from this set of images, verified through this article:

Engines:

• 3D1, a free-roaming engine based on Wolfenstein.
• Ruby, a free-scrolling engine inspired by JRPGs.
• ISOM, an isometric renderer test which included a random terrain generator.

Games:

• Turbo, an "over-the top side scrolling shooter".
• IQ Ball 2, a sequel to IQ Ball, where the object of the game is to get a ball safely to the goal, and in which all balls are moved when a directional key is pressed.
• HEDE, a platformer that involved shooting slimes with a gun.
• HEDE 2, the sequel to HEDE, albeit top-down instead of a platformer.
• Rubylands x, a tile based roguelike.
• RUBYLAND, a "first person tile based dungeon crawler".
• Howl, "a Megaman-type game".
• STRAT, inspired by Dune 2.
• Minitale, a sequel to Minicraft.
• Santa vs Cthulhu, a real time strategy game where you play as either Santa or Cthulhu.
• RubyDung, a Dwarf Fortress-inspired game containing textures that were reused in Minecraft.
• Zombie Town, a GTA: Chinatown Wars-inspired game containing models that were reused in Minecraft.
• Brickcraft, a sandbox game developed in collaboration with the LEGO group.
• 0x10^c, a space sandbox game featuring programmable spacecraft.

Gallery

• 

  Notch on his phone.

• 

  Notch wearing his iconic black fedora.

• 

  Notch smiling.

• 

  Notch with his fans at MinecraftCon 2010.

• 

  Notch using his computer.

• 

  Notch (left) and Seananners (right) at the Machinima Realm Minecraft Interview; February 11, 2011.

• 

  Notch's skin in Minecraft.

• 

  Notch sneaking around in Minecraft.

• 

  Notch wearing his Mojang cape.

• 

  Notch unboxing his new hat.

• 

  Notch in a cartoon style.

• 

  Notch icon on Adweek's The Top 10 Technologists.

• 

  Notch's Xmas 2011 Twitter icon.

• 

  At MINECON 2011.

• 

  Notch at the 2016 Game Developers Conference.

• 

  Notch's one-of-a-kind hat in the game Team Fortress 2, given to him by the developers.

Birthday

• On June 1, 2011, Notch posted on Twitter that he was 2⁵ years old. 2⁵ is 32, which was his age at the time.
• Notch programmed the Minecraft splash screen to display "Happy Birthday, Notch!" all day on June 1. This was removed in Java Edition 1.8.5.

See also

• Kristoffer - Former brother-in-law
• The Word of Notch - Former blog

External links

• SoundCloud page