Mojang Quotes

Mojang for letting me play in their sandbox.

retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the authors and publisher. This story is a work of fiction, pulled together from the imaginations of the Interactive Stories team. It has been created under the "Fair Use" doctrine pursuant to United States copyright law. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. Minecraft is a trademark of Mojang AB, Stockholm. The author and publisher of this book are not associated with the makers of Minecraft or Mojang AB or any of its subsidiaries. Nothing in this book is meant to imply that it is a Minecraft product for advertising or other commercial purposes.

Persson did not create Minecraft because he wanted to create a billion-dollar company; he loved video games and kept his day job while developing it. When the game soared in popularity, he started a company, Mojang, with some of the profits, but kept it small, with just 12 employees. Even with zero dollars spent on marketing and no user instructions, Minecraft grew exponentially, flying past the 100 million registered user mark in 2014 based largely on word of mouth.2 Players shared user-generated extras like modifications (“mods”) and custom maps with each other, and the game caught on not only with children but their parents and even educators. Still, Persson avoided the valuation game, refusing an investment offer from former Facebook president Sean Parker. Finally, he and his co-founders sold Mojang to Microsoft for $2.5 billion, a fortune built on one man’s focus on creating something that people loved.3 On the other end of the spectrum is Zynga, one of the fastest startups ever to reach a $1 billion valuation.4 The social game developer had its first hit in 2009 with FarmVille. Next came Zynga’s partnership with Facebook that turned into a growth engine. The company began trading on the NASDAQ in December 2011 and had 253 million active users per month as late as the first quarter of 2013.5 Then the relationship with Facebook ended and the wheels started coming off. Flush with IPO cash, Zynga started exhibiting all the symptoms of ego-driven, grow-at-any-cost syndrome. They moved into a $228 million headquarters in San Francisco. They began hastily acquiring companies like NaturalMotion, Newtoy, and Area/Code. They infuriated customers by launching new games without sufficient testing and filling them with scripts that signed players up for unwanted subscriptions and services. When customer outrage went viral, instead of focusing on building better products, Zynga hired a behavioral psychologist to try to trick customers into loving its games.6 In a 2009 speech at Startup@Berkeley, CEO Mark Pincus said, “I funded [Zynga] myself but I did every horrible thing in the book to just get revenues right away. I mean, we gave our users poker chips if they downloaded this Zwinky toolbar, which . . . I downloaded it once — I couldn’t get rid of it. We did anything possible just to just get revenues so that we could grow and be a real business.”7 By the spring of 2016, Zynga had laid off about 18 percent of its workforce and its share price had declined from $14.50 in 2012 to about $2.50.

authors and publisher. This story is a work of fiction, pulled together from the imaginations of the Interactive Stories team. It has been created under the "Fair Use" doctrine pursuant to United States copyright law. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. Minecraft is a trademark of Mojang AB, Stockholm. The author and publisher of this book are not associated with the makers of Minecraft or Mojang AB or any of its subsidiaries. Nothing in this book is meant to imply that it is a Minecraft product for advertising or other commercial purposes.

Zombies are mobs created by computer programmers at Mojang to make the game of Minecraft a more challenging and enjoyable experience.” Whenever my Mom uses big words, I know she’s hiding something...

However, on one point he is refreshingly clear: the true value in Minecraft is not in the game, its inventor, or anything that Markus or Mojang’s programmers have done. The real value lies in the enormous community of devoted players gathering around Minecraft and filling it daily with new content.

The games industry calls this “first-party content,” and it can be a serious investment. Over the years, Microsoft Xbox has taken this strategy to an extreme, buying a large number of studios and bringing them in-house. This isn’t a small outlay of cash—Microsoft now owns nearly a dozen video game studios, including Mojang, the maker of Minecraft, which they bought for $2.5 billion in 2014. It might seem expensive, but this is what’s needed to win in the video game console market. Sometimes, you just have to do it yourself. Reddit didn’t pursue this type of strategy, but it could have. There could have been a world where Reddit built many internal studios—one for their “cute” sub-Reddit community, another for sports, yet another for music—and hired full-time moderators as employees of those studios to create the necessary content. While this isn’t a common strategy for social networks, it’s also not crazy. In recent years, we’ve seen players like YouTube in video and Spotify in podcasts begin to license and create more first-party content to accelerate their services.

whether to rush me to the hospital or drop down on her knees and praise Mojang.

To the folks at Mojang, Lydia

22.  The “Minceraft” easter egg was a result of: a. Notch attempting to hide a secret in the game b. One of the new Mojang employees making a typo c. An inside joke amongst developers d. A reference to another game

Location, Location, Location Hit F3 to open the debug menu to see your coordinates of where you are.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the copyright owner and publisher of this book. Disclaimer This is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in fictitious manner.  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This unofficial Minecraft book is not authorized, endorsed or sponsored by Microsoft Corp., Mojang AB, Notch Development AB or any other person or entity owning or controlling the rights of the Minecraft name, trademark or copyrights. All characters, names, places and other aspects of the game described herein are trademarked and owned by their respective owners. Minecraft®/ /TM & ©20092016 Mojang/Notch.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the copyright owner and publisher of this book. Disclaimer This is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in fictitious manner.  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This unofficial Minecraft book is not authorized, endorsed or sponsored by Microsoft Corp., Mojang AB, Notch Development AB or any other person or entity owning or controlling the rights of the Minecraft name, trademark or copyrights. All characters, names, places and other aspects of the game described herein are trademarked and owned by their respective owners. Minecraft®/ /TM & ©2009-2016 Mojang/Notch.