Notch Shelves Space Game 0x10c, Cites Pressure, Desire To Work On Small Projects 178
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'."
Re:Define "finished" (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:the problem of finishing software projects (Score:5, Informative)
Something I see often about developers and most developers know for themselves.
The first 30% to 60% of a project - especially if you are not simply tying frameworks together but creating most things from scratch - are fun. People work overtime without even knowing it. As soon as the tiresome stuff starts, and the mostly painfull/dull last 5% to 10%, motivation drops.
Well, as someone who develops games, it's actually 9001% creating experimental things and prototyping new ideas. Coming up with the core mechanic(s), and proofing the in-game player interface, etc. That's the hard part. I'd say less than one out of ten ideas plan out. Coming up with tangential mechanics and adding a bit of depth that works is the first 30% to 60% of the actual project, and putting the polish on something and seeing through is the rest, but there was a ton of effort you never even see, possibly even entire games that never see the light of day. Even if you do make public the "in-progress" game/ideas most of the them won't be known to the general public leading up to a successful project.
So, what if someone came along and does most of the experimenting and prototyping and comes up with something playable and fun. What if instead of coming up with your own ideas you just take that? What if you add a bit of the tangential stuff to someone else's proven core mechanics and gameplay platform. If you do that you can avoid all that pre-production work. That's what Notch Did. [youtube.com]
So, if you got rich by co-opting someone else's ideas wholesale, and your own new ideas are bland and self admittedly devoid of fun... What would you do? Would you decide to go back to making procedural rip-offs of mario? Maybe hang out with some indie gamedevs since that's where you got your best idea from in the first place? Isn't that what Notch would do if he needed new ideas to execute before lesser funded folks could?
Oh, maybe not. Maybe Notch just needs less pressure, yeah, that's it... Let's ignore the whole "Creative Block" story that came out months ago: [polygon.com] "It's just some kind of weird creative block that's been going on for too long and [0x10c] is going to be put on ice until we can fix that."
Huh, a weird creative block, that's actually very odd. Odder still that this cancellation is news... You know, most game devs, especially indies, suffer from having so many damn ideas they have no time to try them all out. A common problem is having TOO MANY projects going on at once, and these are just a few folks with zero dollars... The games you get could have been 50 times better in most indie devs' minds, they just had to stop adding stuff at some point -- Or strip stuff out to streamline gameplay. How Strange.
FYI: If you hang out with Notch, keep your ideas to yourself, especially if it's kind of fun. Don't get Zynga'd. [wordpress.com] Don't be Notch's next Infiniminer.
Then it's a question of wether it's a private or semi-private project or something that HAS to be finished. Sadly, many (unexperienced) developers tend to give their timeframe projections during those first "proof-of-concept" days or weeks, and then become even more frustrated when they realize they can't hold the deadline and everything becomes even more painful. I think most of us have been there. And since 0x10c was a very "special" idea from the beginning, I am not as surprised as I though I would have been that the project is shelved. At least he admits that it simply wasn't fun...not an easy thing to do when you speak about your own pet-project.
Re:Have you done more or better? (Score:2, Informative)
I don't publicize what I can't finish. I don't take money for a product that I'll never finish.