The only thing he has learned for sure: He was right to walk away from Minecraft. It turns out that the most certain thing this windfall bought him was some heavy soul-searching. These conversations with FORBES represent Persson's only interview about the Minecraft deal and his life after. He and Mojang cofounder Jakob Porsér have started a company called Rubberbrain in case they think of a new game idea-but right now he can't focus much on any. He's become known for spending upwards of $180,000 a night at Las Vegas nightclubs. When Persson decided to buy a house in Beverly Hills, he went for a $70 million, 23,000-square-foot megamansion, the most expensive home ever in an enclave known for them. The results so far are unimpressive, as he's mostly acted like a dog chasing cars.
So with well over half his life ahead of him, the man who created an entire universe, whose persona was synonymous with it and who received the wrath of his community for abandoning it, must now figure out exactly who he is. His 71% stake in Mojang, the company behind Minecraft, made him a new, and particularly flush, member of the FORBES World's Billionaires list. So three months ago Persson pushed it all away, completing the sale of Minecraft to Microsoft for $2.5 billion in cash. (He rarely talks with the press.) Over time the demands and expectations of fans looking to Notch to keep the monster hit going turned him into a self-conscious wreck. Face-to-face he's polite, plainspoken and private. But Persson is anything but an opinionated extrovert. In this virtual world, Persson-or rather his Internet persona, a loudmouthed fedora-wearing crank named Notch-became a deity-like figure to millions of gamers, establishing and clarifying the rules with Zeus-like authority. Minecraft is basically this generation's Lego or even this generation's microcomputer." "It compares to other hit products that are much bigger than games. "It doesn't compare to other hit games," says Ian Bogost, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology who studies videogames. And this single game has grossed more than $700 million in its lifetime, the large majority of which is pure profit. The word "Minecraft" is Googled more often than the Bible, Harry Potter and Justin Bieber. Truly obsessed adults, though, have spent hundreds of hours creating full-scale replicas of the Death Star, the Empire State Building and cities from Game of Thrones. Most players are little kids who build basic houses or villages and then host parties in what they've constructed or dodge marauding zombies. Players start out in an empty virtual space where they use Lego-like blocks and bricks (which they can actually "mine") to build whatever they fancy, with the notable feature that other players can then interact with it. Minecraft became, with 100 million downloads and counting, a canvas for human expression. For the better part of the last five years the 35-year-old Swede was that guy, a man who constantly stressed about his creation, Minecraft, the bestselling computer game of all time. "He looks worried," says Persson, pointing to a man in a building across the street rubbing his face and staring blankly into a computer screen.Īfter a few more seconds of looking at the man, Persson seems bothered by the scene and darts inside.
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