Markus Persson

Markus Persson

Real name	Markus Alexej Persson
Date of birth	June 1, 1979 (age 41)
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

	“	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 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 dad'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. 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 Mojang employees (including CEO Carl Manneh) are also ex-Jalbum employees. Outside of work he 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 in late 2012. Her brother, Kristoffer, is the artist whose paintings appear in the game.

Persson had his own part of the Mojang website that could be found at Mojang.com/notch. This subdirectory has since been removed.

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 writes "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 hasn’t been involved with Minecraft since selling Mojang to Microsoft, according to a Microsoft spokesperson's statement in April 2019. The spokesperson also said that “[Persson's] comments and opinions do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang and are not representative of 'Minecraft'.”

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^{[dead link]}, a Mega Man clone featuring old-school graphics.
• Left 4k Dead^{[dead link]}, a zombie shooter game inspired by Left 4 Dead. (Archived here)
• t4kns^{[dead link]}, a real time strategy game. (Archived here)
• Miners4k^{[dead link]}, a game kind of inspired by Lemmings and Diggers. (Archived here)
• Hunters4k, a first person shooter.
• Dungeon4k^{[dead link]}, a dungeon exploration game. (Archived here and here)
• Sonic Racer 4k^{[dead link]}, a racing game with stolen sprites. (Archived here)
• Dachon4k^{[dead link]}, a gravity based shooter. (Archived here)
• l4krits^{[dead link]}, a Luxor clone. (Archived here)
• Blast Passage^{[dead link]}, an 8-Bit mashup between Bomberman and Gauntlet. (Archived here)
• Bunny Press^{[dead link]}, a violent puzzle game made for Ludum Dare 14. (Archived here)
• Breaking the Tower^{[dead link]}, a slow-paced strategy game. (Archived here)
• The Europa Arcology Incident^{[dead link]}, an RPG-style game Notch made in 48 hours for Ludum Dare 16.
• Infinite Mario Bros^{[dead link]}, a Super Mario clone featuring an endlessly-long level. (Archived here)
• Metagun^{[dead link]}, a puzzle game Notch made in 48 hours for Ludum Dare 18.
• Minecraft 4k, Minecraft in less than 4 KB for a Java4K competition.
• Prelude of the Chambered, an escape game Notch made in 48 hours for Ludum Dare 21. (Archived here)
• MiniCraft^{[dead link]}, a top-down Zelda-esque game with elements from Minecraft, made for Ludum Dare 22. (Reuploaded here)
• 0x10c, a cancelled space sandbox game featuring programmable spacecraft.
• 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
• Drop
• Drowning in Problems

2.5d Engines:

• Legend of the Chambered^{[dead link]}
• First person shooter prototype in flash^{[dead link]}
• Flash doom level renderer^{[dead link]} (Archived here)
• Dungeon master type game engine in Java^{[dead link]} (flash version^{[dead link]}, 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.

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 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

External links

• SoundCloud page