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Notch Shelves Space Game 0x10c, Cites Pressure, Desire To Work On Small Projects 178

Posted by samzenpus from the not-gonna-do-it dept.
Sockatume writes "Marcus 'Notch' Persson of Minecraft fame has indefinitely postponed his planned space game, 0x10c. Taking time to chat during a streamed TF2 game, Notch explained that he didn't have the energy to keep up with the community's interest; fans had gone so far as to transcribe the source code from his development livestream. The game's development had been stalled since April this year, when Notch explained that it simply wasn't fun to play, but other staff at Mojang can resume the project if they wish. He intends to continue his pre-Minecraft habits and 'make small games and talk to other game developers about them'."
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Notch Shelves Space Game 0x10c, Cites Pressure, Desire To Work On Small Projects More

Notch Shelves Space Game 0x10c, Cites Pressure, Desire To Work On Small Projects

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  • ever going to finish anything Notch? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by X0563511 ( 793323 ) on Monday August 19, 2013 @09:00AM (#44606905) Homepage Journal

    minecraft - hands off in alpha
    0x10c, hands-off in planning phase

    It would be nice to see you see something through.

    • Have you done more or better? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Be nice to see you accomplish a fraction of what he has ("big talker/armchair qb" that you are by comparison).

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by X0563511 ( 793323 )

        I don't publicize what I can't finish. I don't take money for a product that I'll never finish.

        • Nothing is ever "finished". That said Minecraft is finished enough to have a huge fan base, and enough people content with it and willing to pay for it as it is.

          • IMHO Minecraft, in it's current state, isn't worth $27. I also believe Mojang shouldn't be charging for what is essentially a Beta.

            I did a blog post about Minecraft recently, on my Second Life centric blog, I only started playing it last year:

            http://ccslfashionista.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-critical-review-of-minecraft.html [blogspot.com]

        • Re:Have you done more or better? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by localman ( 111171 ) on Monday August 19, 2013 @12:39PM (#44609205) Homepage

          > I don't publicize what I can't finish.

          It's a really good thing the open source software movement did not abide by this thinking.

          • There's plenty of open source software that is far more "finished" than Minecraft, though the flaws of Minecraft and it's development do remind me of open-source software. You know how it is, some visionary starts a project and quits before it's done because starting something new is more "fun" than actually quashing bugs, and finishing and polishing a project.

      • When I take money for something, I can be expected to finish it!

    • Define "finished" (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tepples ( 727027 )
      It's been labeled 1.0 and even released on disc for a closed platform. This makes it "finished" by at least some objective standards. Was Quake III Arena for Mac and Windows not finished while it was still getting patches? Are Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games "not finished" while they're still getting DLC? Was Doki Doki Panic for Famicom Disk System "not finished" because Nintendo revised it into Super Mario Bros. 2: Mario Madness for NES, Super Mario All-Stars for Super NES, and Super Mario Advance for Gam

      • Re:Define "finished" (Score:4, Informative)

        by Sockatume ( 732728 ) on Monday August 19, 2013 @09:15AM (#44607051)

        That's not what X8675309 meant, but he was mistaken anyway; Notch handed over project management of Minecraft to Jeb, but not until after v1.0 was released.

        • Bring in a closer (Score:5, Insightful)

          by tepples ( 727027 ) <tepples.gmail@com> on Monday August 19, 2013 @09:32AM (#44607243) Homepage Journal
          If there's one thing I learned from the film Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, it's "delegate, delegate, delegate." If you know you're not the right kind of person to finish a project, then bring in someone else who is. Baseball likewise has a concept of a closing pitcher [wikipedia.org] who specializes in finishing games.

      • Yes. The average game today is not finished at release. At least it's not in a state that deserves the name "finished". Considering the amount of alcohole imbibed by some Finns I know, some of the games sure seem very Finnished, (joke works with polish, too, btw) but not finished by any stretch.

      • No, finished is finished. As in a game that makes good on things promised. ESPECIALLY when talking about a game such as minecraft, which was sold as a beta, on the promise of more things coming later. Half the shit in the game he got from community mods, such as grass, and half the shit promised isnt even in the game at all, such as lanterns. If they had a standard business model i wouldnt even care, as what you see is what you get. But since they presold the game promising new features and updates, alot wh

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jythie ( 914043 )
          Ahm... lanterns were dropped due to community feedback.

          They have had a steady stream of new features and updates the entire time I have been playing, which is close to 4 years now. Any particular feature might not make it in, but that is hardly breaking their promise for adding new stuff.
    • If we consider Notch as a game designer, he doesn't have to finish the implementation to have done he job well. How was Minecraft harmed by his going hands off while it was in alpha? Do we really expect his next project to be as successful as the Minecraft phenomenon?

      • After we're done with this thread, we should take Shigeru Miyamoto to task for getting other people to finish his games too.

        • No, we should slap Nintendo silly for ever letting Shiggy near a controller design team. Blame him for that absolute piece of crap that is the N64 controller.

          Nintendo also needs to have someone, say an Anglophone, stand around Shiggy and say "No." to his stupider design ideas since apparently the Japanese game development community has no one to tell them NO.

          Navi? NO

          Tingle NO.

          Not providing any sort of in-game hints to specific features (the white block trick in SMB3). NO.

    • Is this a crossover from the game devs getting abuse from fans topic?

  • Not a big deal. Well, except the community part. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Monday August 19, 2013 @09:04AM (#44606949)

    It's cool that he is handing it off to the community, but other than that -- there isn't much of a story here. Developers -- especially game developers -- prototype ideas and work on them for months all the time. Ultimately, they often result in nothing. Things don't work. Technology isn't there yet. The userbase shows no interest. Or, probably most often, the developer just loses their passion for that project/prototype and moves on to something else. Notch could go through twenty of these before he finally lands on something that he feels passionate about for the long-haul.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      well.. we're going to get the new elite anyways.

      honestly, I didn't think many ideas in this new game were going to work anyways, least the bits I saw discussed.

  • Gaming. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rod Beauvex ( 832040 ) on Monday August 19, 2013 @09:11AM (#44607017)
    Taking time to chat during a streamed TF2 game...

    Well there's the problem right there.

    It kills me how people complain about how in a hurry they are and how they never have the time to do anything, and they never connect it with the fact that they're always gaming.

    Karma going down in 3...2...1...


    Fortune: System going down in 5 minutes. :D

    • Market research (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tepples ( 727027 ) <tepples.gmail@com> on Monday August 19, 2013 @09:14AM (#44607043) Homepage Journal
      Except that when your own company develops video games, gaming is more like researching a competitor's product or service.

      • Im not gaming, Im developing my typing skills!

      • Re:Market research (Score:5, Insightful)

        by discord5 ( 798235 ) on Monday August 19, 2013 @10:25AM (#44607775)

        Except that when your own company develops video games, gaming is more like researching a competitor's product or service.

        Nah, in Notches case it's just a lack of attention span. Don't get me wrong, he's an okay guy, but just follow his twitter account for a month or two. He hops from idea to idea, would rather be working on something else once he starts, drops everything for a 7-day FPS competition, etc. The old joke used to be that notch codes a few lines in between his vacations.

        I think his attention span problem comes from a lack of incentive to work on something from start to finish. With minecraft his incentive was that it was making him a millionaire, but then at some point (when it went from "ludicrously popular" to "proposterously popular") he delegated that to someone else.

        Having said that, he got lucky and he seems a guy with a right mindset at times. So he failed this time, as do many. They just don't have a billion followers wolfing down every word they utter.

        • Yes, but why is that? I mean, there are people who are famous for one reason or another, maybe they did something right ONCE, maybe they got lucky, maybe they just happened to be hyped to the top by someone who makes money off them, and suddenly everyone cares about their opinion about ... well, EVERYTHING.

          Yes, he made a game, one that a lot of people enjoy, as do I (ok, no more, but I have spent my time playing it). It has its charm. But that doesn't mean that his opinion on gaming matters any more than an

          • No, he wasnt the first to have the idea nor implement it. Pretty sure Roblox was out way before MC. He just got lucky his version got popular.

            • I have no race in this horse (never played Minecraft or Roblox), but why do you assume it was luck that let Minecraft take the lead over Roblox, as opposed to it being better?

              And I'm not looking for some subjective response like "Roblox has way better XYZ!" I'm wondering why people flocked to Minecraft. There must be a reason. If the answer is "luck" that probably just means Minecraft is better in ways that are hard to quantify.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by jythie ( 914043 )
                Well, it was a bit of both. Minecraft was one of a whole class of games, but a combination of how it was made, community, and luck of getting noticed by some high profile people are what did it. Luck was not the only factor, but it was a big one.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jandrese ( 485 )
          Notch loves doing demos and one-offs. He's also really good at it, which is why you'll see him at every "Code something over the weekend for Charity!" type events. He's got millions of euros now that says he can do that if he wants.

        • I think his attention span problem comes from a lack of incentive to work on something from start to finish.

          I think part of that goes with being a European developer that seems to be common among them, the lack of ability or desire to do the "final finishing and polishing". Of course it just might be the "indie mindset". If you're non-indie you've got "somebody" who can say NO or give an order. "By god, you put necessary game information IN THE GAME, stop adding new features and do the final polish or heads will roll."

    • I would like to point out Notch has his own, one-of-a-kind hat in TF2.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 )

      It kills me how people complain about how in a hurry they are and how they never have the time to do anything, and they never connect it with the fact that they're always gaming.

      Haven't you heard? Gamifying a thing always makes it better.

    • It kills me how people complain about how in a hurry they are and how they never have the time to do anything, and they never connect it with the fact that they're always gaming.

      How dare he not work all his waking hours on a single project! The lazy bastard!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Raenex ( 947668 )

      Karma going down in 3...2...1...

      Stop karma whoring.

  • Strange Guy. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bill, Shooter of Bul ( 629286 ) on Monday August 19, 2013 @09:13AM (#44607033) Journal

    He heavily promotes a new project, even live streams his coding of it, then quits because people are paying too much attention to it. WTF. If you don't want anyone paying any attention to your projects, don't live stream the coding of it. Just don't talk about it, and release it when its done.

    • Re:Strange Guy. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by spiffydudex ( 1458363 ) on Monday August 19, 2013 @09:23AM (#44607125)

      Seriously, Notch brought this upon himself. He asked for the attention and got it. Complaining about it isn't going to fix anything and this stunt will make the masses unhappy because he is a quitter.

      • I wonder if Notch doesn't take on big projects anymore has more to do with him affording not to deal with the stress and patience it takes to deliver a big project. I think it is the same problem that many in the post-success stage have. Look at some of the greatest bands in recent history. You don't see Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, Eagles etc creating at the same level they used to despite being the same creative people. Another example are actors like Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Harrison Ford. I just

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Nemyst ( 1383049 )
      I think it's just an excuse for a much more simple fact: there was no game behind this. All he had was an idea (just like Minecraft, really) which wasn't much of a game. Let's have space ships and programming and let's make it like Minecraft and Elite and whatever! Then, unlike Minecraft, he didn't manage to figure out how to make it into a game. It just ended up being a bunch of disparate systems which didn't work well together or just weren't fun to use.

      That's the way I see it anyway. Throughout the new

      • i don't doubt that he was feeling a lot of pressure to succede wildly again. But I do agree with you that it just didn't sound like much of a game. In fact I would have liked the idea of it a lot more as a straight up expansion or addon for Minecraft. Simply enabling the building of space ships. You could keep the computer programming and maybe add robots and such that you can build and program to do your bidding, whether that is flying your ship, gathering materials, automating mining and construction on l

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jythie ( 914043 )
        Though with any luck someone will pick up the idea and find a way to make it work. One thing that games like EvE have always really lacked was a good way to actually _build_ thing as opposed to just placing other people's art in space.
    • Software is on the list of stuff you don't want to watch being made along with sausages and laws. Seriously, it can be boring, exhausting, and tedious, and having hordes of outsiders playing armchair project manager only interrupts the process. It's a different story if you're working on a free software community project in an open forum, but even that needs an assigned project manager to field the input from people not in the inner circle.

    • I don't really feel sorry for him, but I do understand him. Few of us will ever know what it's like to have success on Notch's scale, but I'm sure plenty of us can relate even in some small way.

      Sometimes, usually by accident, you fall into a wildly successful project. And one day you catch yourself really, dreadfully bored of it, yet still fervently working on it. Maybe due to a sense of ownership -- not wanting others to screw it up --, or maybe just because a ton of people expect you to and it gives you a

  • Scrolls is currently Mac and PC only, it looks great https://scrolls.com/ [scrolls.com] There is a indication that it will be coming soon http://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/mojangs-scrolls-is-coming-to-linux-soon.2135 [gamingonlinux.com] although personally I am not holding my breath. Fortunately Linux isn't short of games anymore.

    • Fortunately Linux isn't short of games anymore.

      Ha ha ha ha ha, really? Citation Needed.

      (Yes I know there's games for Linux, I run Linux myself, but the numbers of Windows games dwarfs it by orders of magnitude)

      • Yes I know there's games for Linux, I run Linux myself

        Then you have been sleeping. The games revolution has already happened. Windows in now an afterthought. Its a new world.

        • Then you have been sleeping. The games revolution has already happened. Windows in now an afterthought. Its a new world.

          What fantasy world are you living in and what the hell are you smoking? Windows...an afterthought? Can I buy a Linux native version of:

          Civilization V
          Skyrim
          World of Warcraft
          Diablo 3
          The Sims 3
          League of Legends
          Starcraft 2
          The Elder Scrolls Online

  • Notch beaten to the punch (Score:5, Insightful)

    by StupidKatz ( 467476 ) on Monday August 19, 2013 @09:25AM (#44607163)
    There are quite a few games already well on their way to completion that are generally similar to the publicized ideas for 0x10c:

    Blockade Runner will feature "fully destructible, operational, crewable 'living' starships in a procedurally generated galaxy".
    https://blockaderunnergame.com/home.aspx [blockaderunnergame.com]

    Shores of Hazeron is a first-person 4X-style game featuring fully-customizable spacecraft, city building and management, exploration, trade, combat, and more. It's playable right now, though it's under heavy development.
    http://hazeron.com/ [hazeron.com]

    ... and then there's Star Citizen, of course; a cross between Freelancer and Wing Commander - but you'll need to wait a while.
    http://robertsspaceindustries.com/ [robertsspa...stries.com]

    • couple more....

      http://star-made.org/ [star-made.org] ... pretty much minecraft in space

      http://www.starforge.com/ [starforge.com] ... interesting mix of minecraft, halo graphics/combat, supposedly spaceships, though they have yet to ship that

    • Don't forget Rodina http://elliptic-games.com/ [elliptic-games.com]

    • Procedural-generated space game - nice. I was thinking a couple days ago about whether there's a Tradewars 2002 type of game with procedurally generated warps, resources, etc. Yeah, retro. :)

    • There's also Rawbots, a robot building game where you can design your own robot, program it, and battle against other robots in arenas that you can design yourself. Multiplayer isn't done yet, but they're working on it. The robot building/programming and level editing features already work and are quite fun.

      http://www.rawbots.net/ [rawbots.net]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jandrese ( 485 )
      It's also important to remember that of all of the projects announced, maybe 10% of them will make it to release. So working on something that someone else has announced interest in doesn't mean much. There are a bajillion minecraft clones out there that claim they will do it better, but I've yet to see one that works as well as the original. Often times they'll have a couple of features the developer really wanted, like realistic water physics, but utterly fall down in many other ways (no mobs, horrendo

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Pecisk ( 688001 )

      And of course sequel to the game who started it all - Elite: Dangerous, who is in development, and planned to be released in March next year.

      More information https://elite.frontier.co.uk/ [frontier.co.uk]

  • Open-source game "inspired by 0x10c: http://trillek.org/ [trillek.org]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Teancum ( 67324 )

      It will be interesting to see if anything happens with Trillek. At the moment it is a whole lot of talk and bruised egos with not much code, but I'm hoping that changes. They are still arguing about what compilers are going to be used, and almost universally they are moving away from Java.

      As a fan community which attracted a whole bunch of programmers, it isn't surprising that they are picking up their tools and making the game they wanted to play in the first place. I guess that will be a sort of legacy

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