science-fiction television series “Firefly” and the seminal 1984 British computer game Elite, is still in the early stages of development. Another, the unpronounceable 0x10c, a trading game set in space, influenced by the U.S. One, a complex virtual board game with card-game elements, dubbed Scrolls, is set for release later this year. Persson stopped working on Minecraft in December, 2011, in order to pursue new projects. It’s a harsh lesson but it establishes the rules.” They’re just not prepared for the danger. Usually, a new player to Minecraft doesn’t make it through the first night. “It’s much more fun when you have a limited tool set to use against the odds. “Infinite power just isn’t very interesting, no matter what game you’re playing,” Persson said. This disempowerment runs contrary to the ideas of most video games. However you choose to express your creativity, every night you must retreat into your creation to hide. Some players embark upon grand designs, recreating a famous piece of architecture or a monument using the game’s fundamental materials. Or you can dig down to the center of the Earth, searching for rare materials to fashion gleaming armor or indestructible pickaxes. The next morning, you can choose to turn your cave into a castle, venturing out to gather the necessary raw materials to laminate your new abode’s floor or to build a stove on which you can cook your meat. Now you are fighting for survival, digging a shelter with your bare hands, and cowering in the dark till the sun shoos your tormentors back into hiding. Then night falls and monsters rise: dead-eyed zombies, skeletons, and camouflaged creepers that pursue you with terrifying single-mindedness. Faced with this canvas, at first your task is mere exploration, charting the terrain around you. At first, you are deposited in a unique, procedurally generated world built from a palette of colored one-by-one square building blocks that comprise its mountains, valleys, lakes and clouds.
It is also willfully oblique, with no instruction manual and few explicit goals. For one, Minecraft looks nothing like the multi-million-dollar blockbusters that usually line GameStop’s shelves its graphics and sound effects are rudimentary. Persson and his game continue to confound the wisdom of video-game critics, consultants, and publishing mavens. “I’ve never run a company before and I don’t want to feel like a boss,” he said. He is, by his own admission, only a workmanlike coder, not a ruthless businessman. Persson-better known to his global army of teen-age followers by his Internet handle, Notch-has a raggedy, un-marketed charm. Last year, Persson earned over a hundred million dollars from the game and its merchandise. Since the game’s release, in 2009, Minecraft has sold in excess of twenty million copies, earned armfuls of prestigious awards, and secured merchandising deals with LEGO and other toymakers.