PAX Prime: Interview with Notch (Mojang)

I got an oppurtunity to check out the Mojang booth and talk to the creator of Minecraft - Notch. Good times were had by all. (Note: the audio this transcript was taken from was not the best quality so the wording may not be 100% accurate).

Golgotron: This is Mr. Pharisee, I’m here with Markus Persson AKA Notch of Mojang.

Notch: Hi.

G: So, there’ve been a lot of mods made for Minecraft. How do you feel about the modding community taking a hold of a game that hasn’t quite been finished yet?

N: I think for me personally it’s been difficult because I want to finish the game and I feel like there’s like some sort of competition or… yeah, kind of like a competition going almost. But I think for the game it’s very good. I mean, look at what happened to like Doom and other games that the modding really took off, like Half-life, and it was very good for the game. Personally I don’t even look at it because I just get stressed out.

G: This is the most sucessful “beta” that’s ever happened. Have you collected a ton of data that’s helped you “craft” Minecraft?

N: No, not really. We’re not very good at collecting data. We’re mostly just trying to check twitter and forums and try to analyze that, but there’s not really a lot of hard data.

G: What features can we expect from the “final” game?

N: From the final game? Oh… I don’t have the schedule in front of me for what we’re adding but we’re gonna have towns and the new larger biodomes and a goal for the game so you can “win” the game. Those are the major features you can expect, and we’re going to update on that.

G: Okay, cool, thank you for your time.