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Do we have to worry about Notch?

bronk

Banned
Reading those tweets were sad. I hope he can find some peace in the crazy new world he's a part of.
 

Hostile_18

Banned
It is sad to see anyone with true depression (if that's what it is) but as some others have pointed out he has the money for access to the best psychologists/help that money can buy along with all the life advantages his wealth brings. It's a little harder to emphasise with someone who won't make the change needed to improve his life... and you would think if his depression was that bad he would do everything in his power to make those changes (I know I did, years ago). Complaining on Twitter etc while continuing his lifestyle just makes it seem more like a normal bad few days/weeks that everybody gets.
 

luchadork

Member
I think we've long since established that money doesn't buy, or equal, happiness. To think so is really kind of shallow. Depression can fuck with pretty much anyone, regardless of their socioeconomic status.

Yeh, but from what he's written, a lot of his problems are relationship problems due to the affects of money. Meanwhile, I'm trying to work out how I'm going to pay my rent next month and eat. I'm fucking poor as shit right now. I'm supposed to be sympathetic to him but he doesn't give two fucks about me. If he did he wouldn't rub his egregiously lavish lifestyle in my face and expect me to be cool with it.
 
Directly responding to the OP, I hope Notch realizes that he made probably the first and only real hit in educational games in decades since I don't know, Carmen Sandiego?, and I'd like for him to end up like Steve Wozniak did.

Just take the opportunity to teach children about computers in a local school and live a quieter life, figure out where you fit in the celebrity pantheon in due time. Keep it small, take a break from Twitter. Reconnect with people on a level that doesn't put your money front and center, and don't worry about spending it until you do some long term planning.

Maybe someday, find a life partner or a good friend who can figure out how to protect yourself from yourself.

There've been lives destroyed by sudden success with money, in software too, and I'd hate for Notch to be among them. He can have a lower profile and just make like Bill Murray... well, ok, not the sociable kind of fellow, but he can be a Woz instead and handle himself just fine, find a smaller purpose that way.
 

Roshin

Member
My advice, for what it's worth.

- Get a good therapist.
- Sell the dream house, move back to the real world, get a nice place.
- Re-connect with the fans and the kids who love Minecraft.
- Start working on something.
 

Dmented

Banned
My advice, for what it's worth.

- Get a good therapist.
- Sell the dream house, move back to the real world, get a nice place.
- Re-connect with the fans and the kids who love Minecraft.
- Start working on something.

Sadly, no matter what he does there will be people who want to mooch on him and not leave him alone. That's one of the problems he's going to face being a person who once (and still does to an extent) connected with people publicly. Now since it's been shown he's a billionaire people are always going to want something from him and bother him with their "investments", etc. He can never live a normal life unless he offloads a majority of his wealth.
 

Trojan

Member
Those tweets are concerning. Hope he gets grounded and finds some happiness.

I know people quickly jump on the offensive and balk at this because he's filthy rich, but this seems legitimately sad. Notch didn't step on people to get where he is, he earned what he walked away with. Unfortunately, he didn't seem happy developing the game in the late stages, when he sold the company, or now.
 

Daffy Duck

Member
I'll be your friend, im a run of the mill nobody just trundling along in life.

Feel sorry for the guy, must be tough when this kind of mood sets in, almost as if he regrets things that have lead him to this point.
 

Dmented

Banned
Those tweets are concerning. Hope he gets grounded and finds some happiness.

I know people quickly jump on the offensive and balk at this because he's filthy rich, but this seems legitimately sad. Notch didn't step on people to get where he is, he earned what he walked away with. Unfortunately, he didn't seem happy developing the game in the late stages, when he sold the company, or now.

It also seems he was coerced to sell the company. It looks like that wasn't his idea from the start.
 
At what income level do you lose empathy for another person?
Well he's at the level of income where he thinks its appropriate to say fuck you to his former employees, (who still work and make a contribution to society unlike him),he acts high and mighty for giving away money, (he mentions in a tweet 2 million kronor which is not a huge percentage for someone of his worth). He could have been forward about feeling depressed and talked about what he is doing about it, god forbid he tries to make himself relatable to other people that are depressed but instead he is basically asking for pity from probably millions of fans who might be going through worse things in their lives than him, that complaining about it to strangers online like they are friends or loved ones. Once you hit the level of income, people should not feel obligated to be empathic toward you. A lot of people argueing that people hating on notch don't understand how depression works but the truth is that depression is hard to identify and a few tweets is not proof that a person is actually medically depressed. I hope gets better for the sake of his health but he might need to try more than nothing.
 

loddite

Neo Member
I don't think anything we say here is going to be any less than pure speculation. I'm worried it will devolve into people saying he is not really so and so or what have you. This is a personal matter that we know nothing about and can do nothing about.
 

Dmented

Banned
Wait, why do the remaining employees at Mojang hate him? Does Microsoft treat them poorly or something?

It looks like they didn't really get much out of the deal when compared to the $2.5 billion it was sold for. They all got about $236,000 compered to the $1.whatever billion notch got out of the deal.

Yes they didn't exactly create Minecraft but when you compare that to $2.5 billion it doesn't seem like a lot at all does it? I guess I would be upset too. But in the end it is his creation and they are just employees. I suppose it boils down to being jealous of a person who you once had some sort of a relationship with and then all the sudden they're insanely rich and most likely hard to reach.
 

Viper3

Member
It's an interesting paradox that this thread is depressing as fuck to me.

A lot of you seem to think that money can solve literally all of your problems, and that being rich and depressed at the same time is some sort of oxymoron.

Not to mention the fact, that hating on Notch, just because he's rich, is childish and makes you guys look kinda pathetic.
 
It's an interesting paradox that this thread is depressing as fuck to me.

A lot of you seem to think that money can solve literally all of your problems, and that being rich and depressed at the same time is some sort of oxymoron.

Not to mention the fact, that hating on Notch, just because he's rich, is childish and makes you guys look kinda pathetic.

lmao
Was waiting for something like this.
 
Wait, why do the remaining employees at Mojang hate him? Does Microsoft treat them poorly or something?

He sold the company not too long after chiding Oculus for doing the exact thing, and then proceeded to give almost none of that money (aside from what was mandated in the contract to make sure the employees didn't leave [which is the 2 million kronor he was referring to]) to the actual employees, including Jeb, the person whom he had handed development of Minecraft to at that point and had been running the game for as long if not longer than he had at the time.

One particular horror story is Marc Watson, their head of support, who accepted a job with Mojang shortly before the Microsoft acquisition, unaware it was happening. He lived in Washington and took the job with Mojang, so he sold his house, packed up his family and all of his belongings, and moved halfway across the world, only to almost immediately be told that he needed to move back because his company had been bought by another one that was a 25 minute drive from his old house.

Mojang's acquisition screwed over a LOT of employees there, almost none of which anyone heard about because "can't hate the hustle hurr."

Let me make something clear: I want Notch to feel better. I hope he does soon and this is serious evidence that depression will utterly destroy you no matter how good you are at playing the numbers game of capitalism. But this is the natural endpoint of someone who got rich when he was young, and as a result was never forced to grow up. This is the dude who thought an acceptable alternative to legal battles was Quake matches. The failed marriage was the first warning sign. I am only saying this because I have been there.

It takes a lot of courage, gumption, and pain to admit that your friends aren't really your friends and you need to get back to doing things that make you happy in the long term. I hope he's able to do it.


This is a better game than Minecraft ever has been or ever will be.
 

JackDT

Member
He complains about empty relationships, why was it his goal to buy a giant tacky mansion in beverly hills and hang out with famous people? I can't imagine a less imaginative and more disappointing use of wealth by a once indie creator, and it's kind of depressing. (I don't normally speculate about peoples' lives and money, but he's tweeting about it, so clearly he expects a reaction)

He should found a studio and work on something great, or find something else important to do. If shallowness and empty relationships bother him, why does he run to the shallowness and empty relationships capitol of the world and surround himself with it?

This is how I felt when I first heard that was the house he decided to buy, and it looks like it's lived up to it.
 

Breads

Banned
One particular horror story is Marc Watson, their head of support, who accepted a job with Mojang shortly before the Microsoft acquisition, unaware it was happening. He lived in Washington and took the job with Mojang, so he sold his house, packed up his family and all of his belongings, and moved halfway across the world, only to almost immediately be told that he needed to move back because his company had been bought by another one that was a 25 minute drive from his old house.

Mojang's acquisition screwed over a LOT of employees there, almost none of which anyone heard about because "can't hate the hustle hurr."

Oh shit I remember that story. Didn't know it was about Mojang. That must have been revealed later.
 
Oh shit I remember that story. Didn't know it was about Mojang. That must have been revealed later.

It's a different one than that Kotaku article, if that's what you're thinking of. Marc's situation was pretty public to anyone who had been following him since he got hired by Mojang (which isn't many people, but this is the internet, so it doesn't take many for it to get remembered.)

vvv There was literally nothing to celebrate, unless you were one of the only three people the $2.5 billion got divided amongst.
 

Zelias

Banned
If he's depressed, then I wish him the best in dealing with it. Depression is a bitch no matter how rich you are.
 

luchadork

Member
It's an interesting paradox that this thread is depressing as fuck to me.

A lot of you seem to think that money can solve literally all of your problems, and that being rich and depressed at the same time is some sort of oxymoron.

Not to mention the fact, that hating on Notch, just because he's rich, is childish and makes you guys look kinda pathetic.

I'm not hating on him for being rich. Or for being depressed. But you can't flaunt your wealth in my face and tell me how good your life is on the outside. Then complain and look for sympathy because of how bad your life is on the inside.

Or maybe you can. I dunno. Its confusing. Life is confusing.
 

KJRS_1993

Member
You bellends who think that depression is less of an illness when you're rich - do me a favour and never have children. Fuck knows we need less of you turds crawling around.
Absolutely gross, I thought NeoGAF members were meant to have half a brain.

Anyone who is suffering from depression - It's not going to go away if you leave it, or start walking in the park, or evaluate your soul or whatever other people have said. That's a huge misunderstanding as to the nature of it.

It's an illness (like any other) that needs professional help. It can be solved and dealt with.
 

Nokterian

Member
That's what I would do. Just travel the world. See different places. Stuff like that uplifts me. But that's me, not Notch. Whatever process he's going through in his head is completely different.



He was working on multiple projects IIRC, but aside from Scrolls, slowly they've been canned because I think he's gotten backlash about it. Like, back when he was working on that space game I remember people would harass him to get back to work on Minecraft and everything. Scrolls...was a decent project, but it didn't captivate people. Notch is synonymous to Minecraft. And to a creator, that poisons the well so damn effectively, unfortunately.

With that amount of money i would also travel the world do stuff i would never do..like diving,base jumping,parachute jumping. That is still my biggest wish though seeing all the wonderful places in the world. Not just party in ibiza that place is shallow anyway.
 
It didn't take too long until the "press" chimes in. With a snarky article.
He obviously misses the days when he had his Sisyphean rock to roll up the hill.
[...]
A couple minutes later. Persson’s life sounds a little crazy. Even keeping a girlfriend is hard.
[...]
At 2:59 a.m. Uses “Musk” as a verb.
[...]
Then he gets stung by a Jellyfish.
[...]
Again, Persson suggests that he regrets selling his creation, Minecraft.

I probably shouldn’t make light of Persson’s problems. But there’s something superficial about a rich and relatively famous person spilling out his problems in 140-character blasts to all his fans and followers on Twitter. And sure enough, there were plenty of Twitter users to offer support.

There’s no doubting the fact that Persson made a huge contribution to the gaming world.

"He's a crybaby because he's rich, but he did something nice so I have to admit that we shouldn't make fun of him but we do." Yeah, no. Shame on you, VB.

http://venturebeat.com/2015/08/29/m...down-on-twitter-then-gets-stung-by-jellyfish/
 
This thread is hard to to say anything in, really. A lot of people criticizing Notch seem to be stuck on the idea of "how can you be sad when you're rich!? Go do [some dumb expensive activity]!" A lot of people supporting him seem to think that there's literally no reason to dislike him unless you're covetous of his wealth.

It seems to be really easy to ignore that, despite his reputation as a indie dreamchild pixie, Notch screwed over a lot of people to get where he is today, even if he doesn't realize it. This doesn't mean that the people who criticize him don't want him to feel better, or think he deserves the state he's in now.

Notch's problem is that the solutions to his issues are entirely anticapitalist, and it's hard to see that when you're that deep in the hole of cash ruling everything around you. Dolla dolla bill, y'aaaaaaaallllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll.
 

Metzhara

Member
Above 100k, you don't get any happier.

The amount of money Notch has can distract him for awhile, but it basically throws him into total isolation. Everything changes.

If having that amount of money throws a person into a depression, it's likely caused by A) the culture you accept has an unreasonable belief that money corrupts or B) the culture you accept put an unreasonable value on money as a cure-all.
I'm prone to believe Notch sits in the former category and should take a cue from Hollywood. It's not coincidental that they suddenly go head first into charities and suddenly become bleeding hearts for all sorts of causes.

I'm sure most of us don't outwardly believe money makes us happy but if you really stop and think about it, a ton of money is likely to do one of two things to the average public, make you feel guilty because you believe everyone just sees money or makes you get flash which makes have-nots bitter. Both are rather self-centered. There is no reason for this other than people seem to care more about what others have and think than they do about finding their baseline comfort level, which does have a bit of irony to it.
Nothing stops a millionaire from living like a hermit other than the culture he chose to accept.
Notch is no exception.
I'll tell you right now, MY friends know damn well they become my butlers when I become a billionaire... hopefully from converting Gamerscore to dollars. We'd all have a great time in Ibiza and not cry once.
That or he's just upset at how much was taken out in taxes.
 

daTRUballin

Member
It looks like they didn't really get much out of the deal when compared to the $2.5 billion it was sold for. They all got about $236,000 compered to the $1.whatever billion notch got out of the deal.

Yes they didn't exactly create Minecraft but when you compare that to $2.5 billion it doesn't seem like a lot at all does it? I guess I would be upset too. But in the end it is his creation and they are just employees. I suppose it boils down to being jealous of a person who you once had some sort of a relationship with and then all the sudden they're insanely rich and most likely hard to reach.

Wait, I thought Mojang as a whole created Minecraft, not just Notch? I thought he was just the founder of Mojang (and I always thought that Minecraft was mostly his idea), so that's why I thought he was considered more 'important' than the other employees.

He sold the company not too long after chiding Oculus for doing the exact thing, and then proceeded to give almost none of that money (aside from what was mandated in the contract to make sure the employees didn't leave [which is the 2 million kronor he was referring to]) to the actual employees, including Jeb, the person whom he had handed development of Minecraft to at that point and had been running the game for as long if not longer than he had at the time.

One particular horror story is Marc Watson, their head of support, who accepted a job with Mojang shortly before the Microsoft acquisition, unaware it was happening. He lived in Washington and took the job with Mojang, so he sold his house, packed up his family and all of his belongings, and moved halfway across the world, only to almost immediately be told that he needed to move back because his company had been bought by another one that was a 25 minute drive from his old house.

Mojang's acquisition screwed over a LOT of employees there, almost none of which anyone heard about because "can't hate the hustle hurr."

Let me make something clear: I want Notch to feel better. I hope he does soon and this is serious evidence that depression will utterly destroy you no matter how good you are at playing the numbers game of capitalism. But this is the natural endpoint of someone who got rich when he was young, and as a result was never forced to grow up. This is the dude who thought an acceptable alternative to legal battles was Quake matches. The failed marriage was the first warning sign. I am only saying this because I have been there.

It takes a lot of courage, gumption, and pain to admit that your friends aren't really your friends and you need to get back to doing things that make you happy in the long term. I hope he's able to do it.



This is a better game than Minecraft ever has been or ever will be.

Oh geez. That's very screwy. :/
 
Wait, I thought Mojang as a whole created Minecraft, not just Notch? I thought he was just the founder of Mojang (and I always thought that Minecraft was mostly his idea), so that's why I thought he was considered more 'important' than the other employees.

Notch initially made Minecraft himself in his basement. He sold the game as an unfinished alpha for the Swedish equivalent of around $15. I don't know what made it so popular when Notch himself will admit to you it was entirely a clone of Infiniminer, a game that already existed and wasn't in alpha, but it did, and he made so much money that he made Mojang to handle the problems of general unprofessionalism surrounding the development of Minecraft* - I mean, it did single-handedly destroy the common developer's definitions of "alpha and beta."

Judging by the fact that they hired their PR person based on the fact that they liked her Let's Plays, I'm not entirely sure that move really worked. In any case, Notch stepped down from Minecraft development a month after its "finished" "release" and handed lead development over to Jeb. Jeb saw nothing out of the $2.5 billion deal except for the contract mandated bonus where 2% of the money was distributed amongst the entirety of Mojang. At this point, he had been the lead developer on Minecraft for three years, and Notch was the lead developer for two and a half.

*At one point Minecraft had a free weekend not because of it being scheduled marketing, but because so many people were trying to buy the game that Notch's servers couldn't handle the authorization checks, so he threw the game up on Mediafire while he fixed the servers.
 

Donos

Member
I think this and the other thread would have been at least a little different without his 70 mill. mansion buy and all the pics of the posch party with the "celebs". That was very "look at this". Everything else has already been said.
Having two friends who have depressions (both girls), i know that this can be very very tough.

All the best to him.
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man

Replicant

Member
I sympathize with his situation but I hope he learns that when you pushed away your friends like that, they'd of course leave.

As hard as it is, he should try to reach out to them again and not throws temper tantrums when one of those friends actually reaching out to cheer him up like the one in the twitter (Patrick?).
 
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