← Good Bad Billionaire
Good Bad Billionaire
Markus Persson: Minecraft maker
00:46:14
How did Markus Persson create Minecraft, the most successful computer game ever?
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- [00:00]
Simon Jack
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk.
- [00:06]
Ryan Seacrest
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest For Albertsons and Safeway. Spring is in full swing, so take some time for self care this spring now through April 22. Buy two self care items and save $2. Shop in store or online for self care essentials like Tom's Toothpaste Soft Soap, Liquid Hand Soap, Colgate Optic White Toothpaste and Colgate Total toothpaste and save $2 when you buy two participating items. Offer ends April 22. Promotions may vary. Restrictions apply. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.
- [00:36]
Target Advertisement
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- [01:07]
Simon Jack
It's May 2009. In a small flat in the Swedish capital, a stocky man sits hunched over his keyboard. The room is cluttered. There's empty coffee cups, paper scribbled with ideas, the bad ones crinkled up on the floor. It's dark outside. The only light is the blue glow of his computer monitor. He he's furiously typing code. It's JavaScript, gobbledygook to most, but practically his native language. On the other screen, a world begins to emerge. It's rough and blocky, grass, dirt and even a pixelated figure with blue eyes and a dark beard. He types more code, hits return, tugs at his beard as he watches his little avatar start digging up blocks on the screen outside, dawn is breaking of a Stockholm casting a weak light through the window. But now it's ready. His side project. His baby. In just a couple of weeks he'd walk into work and hand in his notice. Time to go independent, to go all in betting on himself. Because this stocky coder just wrote on his own in one week, the highest selling video game of all time. Its name? Minecraft.
- [02:19]
Zing Singh
Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. We pick a billionaire and we find out how they made their money.
- [02:26]
Simon Jack
Then we judge them. Are they good, bad or just another billionaire?
- [02:29]
Zing Singh
My name is Zing Singh and I'm a journalist, author and podcaster.
- [02:32]
Simon Jack
And my name is Simon Jack. I'm the BBC's business editor.
- [02:35]
Zing Singh
And on this episode we're profiling a man whom you may know of if you've got a child who is obsessed with this video game.
- [02:43]
Simon Jack
One of my colleagues said, oh, this is the guy who owns my 8 year old's brain.
- [02:46]
Zing Singh
And it is quite the game indeed. If you've never played Minecraft, it is essentially a world building game. So pretty much you've handed kids the keys to their own world.
- [02:55]
Simon Jack
It's creative, it frees the imagination, it's very rudimentary, literally building blocks to build a world, almost kind of like a virtual Lego. And that name comes from literally mine and craft. You dig the stuff up, you turn it into things. And it's sold over 300 million copies to date. More than half of those games are still played every month. That's the entire population of Canada and Japan together playing Minecraft every single month.
- [03:22]
Zing Singh
And now Minecraft has also hit Hollywood, so it is now a major movie starring Jack Black. And you know, it's incredible because usually these games are produced by huge studios with dozens of staff, tons of funding, big marketing pushes. But Minecraft really did all start with that one guy, a Swedish programmer named Markus Persson, who is currently worth $1.2 billion.
- [03:44]
Simon Jack
So how would this lone coder, if you like, become a billionaire? And how would he handle the pressure once he did? Let's find out. Markus Persson was born on the 1st of June, 1979 in a small Swedish town called Erdsbyn.
- [04:00]
Zing Singh
He loved exploring. So their home was surrounded by these snowy forests. And Markus used to say he just loved wandering around, or as he put it, just barely not getting lost. But what he loved even more was Lego. So for hours he would sit building these intricate structures and scenes out of those tiny plastic bricks that many of us know and love.
- [04:19]
Simon Jack
So, yeah, his dad was a railway worker, but Marcus says was also a really big nerd. When Marcus was seven, his dad bought home a computer, even built his own modem. And Marcus used to fake stomach aches to stay off school just so he could play with the computer. And he loved the pirated games his dad brought home.
- [04:37]
Zing Singh
And get this, by the age of eight, Marcus was already programming. I mean, that is quite something.
- [04:42]
Simon Jack
Yeah, we've had a few of these annoyingly precocious tech people, haven't we, in this series?
- [04:46]
Zing Singh
Exactly.
- [04:47]
Simon Jack
It's a passport to great opportunity. But he taught himself. He recruited, treated his younger sister Anna as a sort of secretary who would patiently read out lines of code from computer magazines. And Marcus would then Type out line by line. And that's when he figured out that if you didn't type exactly what the magazine said, you could make something totally different. He said that sense of power was intoxicating.
- [05:09]
Zing Singh
It's quite interesting, you know, this kind of time of the 80s, because I think there was a real fear then that gaming would hurt children or stunt their development or, you know, violent video games were going to ruin kids lives.
- [05:21]
Simon Jack
Yeah, it's been a very interesting trajectory. What did Marcus's mum think?
- [05:26]
Zing Singh
Well, she actually bought into all the scaremongering. She was worried that Marcus was becoming addicted to gaming. She would sneak into his room and put up posters of soccer stars to encourage him to play outside. Apparently one time she even dragged him to a local soccer club but he kept missing the ball when he tried to kick it. So the coach gently took her to one side and said, he's not going to be a soccer player.
- [05:47]
Simon Jack
But by 1988, the family had moved to Stockholm. Marcus had found a group of like minded friends at school. Nerds like him if you like, who loved gaming and pro programming. They'd set each other coding challenges. And one time Marcus coded something which was merely large tech that scrolled across the screen really quickly. He was proud of it. He saved it onto a floppy disk. He put it in his friend's mailbox with a note saying, look what I did.
- [06:09]
Zing Singh
So Marcus was really starting to find his footing socially. But things at home were beginning to unravel. So Marcus's dad had been struggling with depression. He turned to heavy drinking and then amphetamines. And then his parents divorced and Marcus said it was pretty bad. I lost contact with my dad for several years. My dad went to jail for bad stuff, robberies, break ins because he got stuck in substance abuse. So needless to say, it hit the kids hard.
- [06:33]
Simon Jack
Okay, tough home life then. And for a teenage Marcus, programming then became a sort of escape, a refuge where he had total control. He knew this is what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. And he said as much to his school counsellor. They laughed at him. Instead they suggested a career in graphic design, arguing that print media, unlike computer games, don't laugh. Had a bright future. So he dropped out of high school, taking an online programming course instead. The dropout story. It's not an unfamiliar one in this series.
- [07:02]
Zing Singh
No. We've had so many dropouts, especially in tech, who have just left behind formal education. Although actually when I think about it, most of them tend to leave university behind. They certainly don't drop off for high school that much.
- [07:14]
Simon Jack
No, that's true. I can just imagine if my kids said, you know, we're dropping out of this, dropping out of that, I would have mounted quite stiff opposition to that. Maybe my kids aren't going to be billionaires. Damn.
- [07:24]
Zing Singh
Understandably, however, there was a problem with dropping out of high school because Marcus then needed to find work. And it was 2001, the.com bubble had just burst.
- [07:34]
Simon Jack
Yes, that was a massive thing, the dot com boom. The dot com bubble was an extraordinary time when people who just had half an idea could raise tons of money because everyone knew that the Internet was going to be massive. It was going to change the way society, how we all worked and lived and everything. And everyone wanted to drive a stake into the ground to try and claim a bit of it for themselves. So you had companies which had, as I say, half an idea, a half baked idea, being able to attract loads of money. The valuations of these companies, when they first started, started rocketing. You knew there was a crash coming. Sure enough, that happened in 2001 and there was this massive culling of all of these embryonic companies, which meant there were a lot of people who could do stuff with computers milling around with not that much to do in 2001.
- [08:19]
Zing Singh
And pretty much, as you might expect, Marcus found it quite hard to get a job. He basically ended up spending days kind of at home, rarely stepping outside. He was entering these contests to develop games online, but basically ended up telling his mum, mum, I'm gonna live with you for my whole life.
- [08:36]
Simon Jack
Oh, gosh.
- [08:36]
Zing Singh
Not exactly what any parent wants to hear.
- [08:39]
Simon Jack
Nope. Well, luckily for Marcus, Mum, a few years later he managed to land a job in the games industry, first creating some prototypes to test gaming systems and then at a mobile games company called Midas, now known as King, which you might recognise from Candy Crush fame, if you like to crush those candies.
- [08:56]
Zing Singh
Yeah, that incredibly viral game. It felt like everyone in the world was playing it at one point.
- [09:01]
Simon Jack
I've got to confess, I sometimes still do.
- [09:03]
Zing Singh
Understandably, for a company that successful, they wanted people to give their everything to the job. So it was fast paced, it was demanding. Marcus actually enjoyed it. He was well known for inviting colleagues out for drinks after work or playing computer games during lunch.
- [09:18]
Simon Jack
So he's becoming a proper tech bro. And at King, Markus met Jakob Porsa, a programmer who quickly became a very close friend. Miakob described Marcus to Rolling Stone magazine as a lot of fun and slightly weird. He can be super happy or super down as well, there's normally not a lot of in between. Interesting.
- [09:35]
Zing Singh
And one day at work, a new programmer comes in for a job interview and she catches Marcus's eye. Her name is Ellen Zetterstrand. And soon they begin dating. So things are looking up for our guy Marcus. He's got a girlfriend, he's got a job, good friends, and he'd finally moved out of his mum's apartment into his own place, which must have been a relief for his mum.
- [09:54]
Simon Jack
Yes, a relief all round. But soon the corporate games world began to frustrate him because King had a high volume, quick turnaround approach to game design. Sometimes they'd spend just one or two months designing a game, and Marcus felt the quantity of a quality mindset was a bit stifling.
- [10:09]
Zing Singh
He actually spent most of his free time after work on a games forum called Take Source. Take Source was an online community for indie developers and fans. So, you know, people who weren't being hired by those big corporations, corporations like King, they would talk about games, they would build their own games, they play each other's games. And I mean, the guy really loved gaming. And honestly, this is really where you start to understand what drives Marcus Persson. The games being shared on Tig Source were raw. They were incredibly creative. They were nothing like those cookie cutter mobile games that he was being asked to churn out at work.
- [10:42]
Simon Jack
And those early ones didn't scream commercial success?
- [10:45]
Zing Singh
No, they didn't. So they could be, you know, these complex strategy games of simple graphics passion projects made by hardcore gamers. So they were very much driven by the personality of the people who were making them. And Marcus once said studios make games to make money. Indie gamers build games just to build games. So for the love of the craft.
- [11:04]
Simon Jack
And Marcus had already made some of his own games outside of work as well. He was really interested in games called MMORPGs. Decoded, that means massively multiplayer online role playing games. It means you play a character in a big virtual world alongside thousands of other players in real time. And even when you log off, the game world keeps going. I suppose World of Warcraft is probably the most famous example of that kind of game. They're very difficult to program, but Marcus had already managed to build one with just one other friend in his spare time.
- [11:34]
Zing Singh
Yeah, so he's clearly got a gift. And also he had a little bit of a bee in his bonnet about his day job. So it's actually quite rare for game designers to get recognition. So while we all might know the name of a famous musician or film director. Game designers actually often fade into the background. And while he was at King, Marcus knew that the company would get the credit for anything he ever created. And plus they took issue with him building games in his spare time, saying, we felt that we couldn't have someone working for us that at the same time was building his own gaming company. In fact, they actually asked him to adapt one of his personal projects for King's customers. But the game was a flop. So Marcus knew if he wanted to be a visionary, he couldn't remain as a cog in the big game machine. By 2008, he decided to leave King.
- [12:18]
Simon Jack
So at Marcus new job this time it's not in gaming. He insisted he be allowed to work on his own games in his free time. And his new boss was fully supportive.
- [12:27]
Zing Singh
So Marcus had to figure out what kind of game he actually wanted to create. So he left this first game behind, but he wanted to stick to the same multiplayer genre. And remember, Marcus had always loved exploring. So you know, as a kid he'd wander through those forests in his hometown with his friends. That mix of fear and excitement, the sense of adventure without kind of a clear boundary, you know, that was something he wanted to capture in his next game design.
- [12:51]
Simon Jack
Yeah. So he was thinking about the gameplay, as they call it, and he thought that too many games simply handed players a list of tasks to reach the next level. Go and collect this key, go and jump over that. Marcus had always gravitated, however, towards open ended games. Like for example, Rollercoaster Tycoon, where your game. Have you played it?
- [13:08]
Zing Singh
Yes.
- [13:08]
Simon Jack
Okay. There was a sudden burst of enthusiasm there from seeing about roller coaster. So what do you do?
- [13:14]
Zing Singh
You literally have to build roller coasters or expand it into a theme park, but there's no kind of mission for you to build a certain type of theme park. You do what you want.
- [13:22]
Simon Jack
I like it.
- [13:23]
Zing Singh
So you can kind of see the root of Minecraft in that got.
- [13:26]
Simon Jack
What drew Marcus to these games wasn't the goals, but the freedom they gave players to create an experiment. And he said it reminded him of playing with LEGO as a kid, being able to build anything he wanted out of basic blocks.
- [13:36]
Zing Singh
Yes. And that sense of kind of creativity became a cornerstone in his vision of this new game, the one that would ultimately change his life. And it's worth mentioning that sense of you're able to build and interact with something that other people have built that was quite new. So I think what Minecraft, as we'll talk about this, brought to the table, was a user Generated universe. So you're interacting with things that other people have built and talking to them, and that world continues on after you've logged off. So it's that sense of freedom, I think, that really draws a lot of people in. So, scrolling through Tigsaus, that indie gaming forum, he discovered a game called Infiniminer, which was made by an American designer named Zach Barth. So it was a sandbox game, which basically means that players can build freely in an open environment without those specific goals or quests or objectives. And Marcus exclaimed, my God, I realized that that was the game I wanted to do. So the premise of Infinimana was simple. You have to mine minerals. So Barth originally envisioned it as a competitive team game, but then he noticed that people were just mining stuff for fun. So the graphics were basic and those minerals appeared as blocky, mottled textures. And Marcus actually later admitted that these blocks directly inspired Minecraft's signature blocky look.
- [14:50]
Simon Jack
Which of course prompts the obvious question how much Barth, who made Infinimina, feel that Marcus ripped off his ideas. And he seems pretty cool about it because he says the act of borrowing ideas is integral to the creative process. There are games that came before Infinimina and there are games that will come after Minecraft. That's how it works. Very generous of spirit, I think.
- [15:10]
Zing Singh
But then I do think that most games are just variations on things that came before. I mean, when you think about the first Super Mario Brothers in 1985, you're controlling a character through a universe and you have to kill the baddies and get coins or whatever it is that you're kind of searching for. That basic premise has been refined and honed and adapted over dozens and dozens of games since.
- [15:31]
Simon Jack
So let's go back to where we started. Marcus is 30 years old. He's sitting in his apartment in Stockholm, the first light of dawn creeping in, and he's still there, glued to his computer, furiously coding away, and he finishes the first version of his new game, Minecraft.
- [15:46]
Zing Singh
So the idea was simple but brilliant. You could do anything. You can explore this massive world. You can mine the resources it holds and you can build. And those graphics were blocky on purpose. So in Minecraft, every single block you see, whether that's trees, dirt, rocks, they can be collected and turned into tools like pickaxes, swords and torches. And the gameplay was also simple. So one button for breaking blocks, another for placing them. But it's important to say the game wasn't completely open ended. So, yeah, you could do anything. But you have a limited set of tools and you only have one simple task to survive. Because when night falls, monsters like zombies, spiders, creepy crawlies, they come out. So essentially you've got to hustle your way around this universe, gather materials and then build a shelter to hunker down before the sun goes down.
- [16:32]
Simon Jack
And Marcus was pretty pleased with himself. He couldn't hide his excitement. He chatted non stop to his mum about the game. He even started thinking maybe he should quit his day job and go all in on this project. His mum smiled, happy to see his passion, but she didn't quite get it. So she suggested he take it slow. But Ellen, his gamer girlfriend, was totally on board. She was the first person to test the game. Marcus would listen to all her suggestions and reactions as she played and made changes based on her feedback. And his dad, remember, who was quite troubled, was also supportive. They were back in touch now. His dad gave him the feedback that the dark caves were too scary for him. But that was his only critique. Marcus said, when I decided I wanted to quit my day job and work on my own games, his dad was the only person who supported my decision. He was proud of me and made sure that I knew it.
- [17:18]
Zing Singh
And Marcus was also sharing everything he was up to on his blog. It's called the Word of Notch and it's still up today. So Notch is his nickname. It also became his online Persona. It gave Marcus the courage to open up, to talk to his fans directly and to share not just the game, but details of his life.
- [17:34]
Simon Jack
And it's about to make contact with the actor outside world, because on 17 May 2009, Marcus uploaded the first playable version of Minecraft to his beloved Tig source forum. He was eager to get feedback from the community he knew and liked. He wanted to know what they liked, what they didn't, any bugs they noticed, and most importantly, whether it could stand out from the tons of other games which are constantly getting uploaded there. It'd be his opportunity, the acid test, really, to find out whether there was any real interest.
- [18:01]
Zing Singh
And guess what? What? People loved it. So right away they were sharing screenshots of what they'd built. Everything from bridges and boats to, you know, a giant penis, as you would with any kind of game, if you give them the tools, they will build it. You know, these were the early days of let's play videos on YouTube, you know, where people were streaming and posting videos of themselves playing games and commenting. So Minecraft was launching right as this trend was exploding. So it found a ready audience.
- [18:29]
Simon Jack
And it wasn't just the YouTube community. It was everywhere. People were building a direct relationship with the game. They were sharing their latest creations or memes on forums like 4chan and Reddit. There was a real buzz about it.
- [18:41]
Zing Singh
And the press were noticing too. So early reviews said things like the graphics might be blocky, but Minecraft certainly has a charm about it. Looking out across the game's stunning landscapes is quite special. While the freedom to do anything you want is refreshing, people are absolutely right when they say it's blocky. It's kind of simple. But at the same time, there's something quite charmingly nostalgic about it. You know, it kind of feels like those games that people played when they were kids back in the 90s. And I can understand why the idea of being able to build something like this is so compelling.
- [19:13]
Simon Jack
But what's also cool about it is you can imagine spending time building in the knowledge that somebody else playing the game would come across it. And therefore you could take pride in something thinking that other people are gonna see that. That's kind of. Kind of cool.
- [19:26]
Zing Singh
Exactly. Especially if you're a kid.
- [19:28]
Simon Jack
But here was the real test. Would people pay for it? Marcus was bold enough to charge people right from the start. Now, that was pretty unusual. At most online games either had no payments or charged just a dollar for a game like Angry Birds. Remember, that money usually came from adverts?
- [19:44]
Zing Singh
Now, Marcus had made that early test version that people were raving over for free. But he told everyone the first real completed version of Minecraft would cost $26 when it was finished, or only $13 if they paid in advance.
- [19:56]
Simon Jack
That's quite a big bet. But it was a bet that paid off big time. Just 24 hours after announcing the price, $150 appeared in his PayPal account. He couldn't believe it. And he spent hours watching the sales numbers shoot up. Day turning into night and back again. His game was actually selling and it wasn't even out properly yet. And on June 1, 2010, his birthday, he gave himself the best gift he could think of. He quit his job to focus on Minecraft full time. Exactly one year after he'd first uploaded the game, he was going to make it as an indie game designer.
- [20:26]
Zing Singh
So a big moment for Marcus. By July 2010, he was pulling in over $5,000 a day in online sales. And the craziest part is that he hadn't spent a single cent on marketing, which is, when you think about it, absolutely wild.
- [20:42]
Simon Jack
Well, if you Think about the amount of money that goes into promoting things like PlayStation, Xbox. They get full Hollywood movie release treatment, trailers, trailers. They bring to bear all the celebrity star power, the celebrity wattage they can bring.
- [20:58]
Zing Singh
I mean, I think one of the reasons people like Minecraft is that there's also an underdog element to it, as you can see. You know, Marcus quit that big corporation king to go at it alone. It really is a kind of underdog story.
- [21:11]
Simon Jack
Yeah.
- [21:11]
Zing Singh
So By September of 2010, Minecraft had sold 300,000 copies. So it's worth noting that this is only a year after he'd posted that trial version of Minecraft on the forum. And at this point, there's so much money flooding into his PayPal account that they blocked his account, thinking he must be doing something illegal.
- [21:29]
Simon Jack
He sorted that out. He'd made $3.8 million. Just like that, he's officially a millionaire.
- [21:34]
Zing Singh
Yes. All from an unreleased game based on a trial he designed by himself in just a few weeks. So truly incredible. But come on, let's take him up to a billion because he's still a long way off.
- [21:55]
Ryan Seacrest
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- [22:27]
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Zing Singh
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- [24:33]
Simon Jack
So Marcus had been working on the paid version of Minecraft. He set the goal of releasing the game in November 2011. That's more than two years after he started the pre sale. But he realized this one man bad realized at this point he needed some help.
- [24:46]
Zing Singh
So he reached out to his old pal Jakob Poser, whom he'd worked with at King, the mobile games company. He asked if Jakob would quit his job and join him to help develop Minecraft. And his old friend didn't hesitate. He quit the very next day and Marcus officially registered their company name, Mojang ab. Mojang by the way, is an old Swedish word for gadget or thingamajig. Nicknack Duda.
- [25:09]
Simon Jack
Marcus didn't want to be the boss of his old friend, so they set up the company as partners. Marcus would keep the intellectual property rights to Minecraft, but the company would retain exclusive rights to develop and sell the game. And they brought in a chief executive to help Marcus's old supportive boss. And by December 2010, Mojang had hired.
- [25:27]
Zing Singh
A small team and they rent this tiny scruffy office in Stockholm where they work around the clock on finishing Minecraft. And in the meantime, sales kept creeping up. So by January 2020, 2011, Minecraft had surpassed a million copies sold. Just three months later, it doubled to 2 million.
- [25:46]
Simon Jack
Well naturally with that kind of success, with those kind of growth numbers, the big players started to take notice. And some Investors came knocking.
- [25:53]
Zing Singh
Enter Sean Parker. Fresh off the private jet. Dressed in a designer suit, he strolled into Mojang's offices in Stockholm. Now, you might remember Sean Parker as Justin Timberlake in the Social Network, but in the real world, he is the Napster guy. He made his fortune from Facebook and later invested heavily in companies like Spotify. And understandably, at first, the Mojang crew are thinking, we don't need an investment, we've got plenty of money, thank you very much. But Parker had another offer on the table. He invited the founders to join him at a cool party he was hosting in Soho. Yeah, and no, not Stockholm's hipster neighborhood Sodomalm, which is also known as Soho, but London Soho. And by the way, his private jet was waiting for them. So Marcus made a quick call to check with Ellen. Very sweet. She said it was fine. Darling, please go ahead. So the Mojang team hops onto the jet. Jet and takes off.
- [26:43]
Simon Jack
Hello, darling. Yes, I just need to get on a private jet to go to a party in London with a multi millionaire who has basically revolutionized the music business and is one of the biggest investors in technology in the world. Is that okay? Great. Okay. So when they land in London, they headed straight to the Box. I know you've been there.
- [27:02]
Zing Singh
I actually have not been to the box.
- [27:03]
Simon Jack
Have you not? Okay, so even I've been to the box.
- [27:06]
Zing Singh
Oh, wow. Well, you can explain what it is.
- [27:08]
Simon Jack
It's sort of, you know, it's a fancy members only kind of nightclub type place. And that that night, CeeLo Green was performing. Champagne's Flowing. The whole night was a blur of drunken glamour.
- [27:19]
Zing Singh
Ring any bells?
- [27:20]
Simon Jack
What? No, it wasn't like that when I was there. There was no ceelo Green, that's for sure. Anyway, around half past three in the morning, they stumbled out of the club into their luxury hotel suite, paid for, of course, by Sean Parker. Then it was back onto the private jet back to Stockholm, just in time for an interview with a new employee.
- [27:35]
Zing Singh
Marcus said of the night, I feel like James Bond. That was from his blog post entitled Weirdest Night of My Life. And he marveled at how amazing it was to realize, quote, there are people who actually do this all the time, flying around in private jets, having assistants who have their own assistance. And that moment would mark the beginning of Marcus's taste for the high life. Private jets, parties, all the perks, how.
- [28:00]
Simon Jack
The other half live. Meanwhile, the buzz around Minecraft just keeps growing. They strike a deal with Sony Ericsson to develop a mobile version of the game set to launch on their new phone in just three months time. And when Marcus Schwarzenegger showed up at the E3 Expo in Los Angeles, big electronics exhibition for the launch, he was mobbed by fans. He'd started wearing this interesting touch, this a black fedora, a hat, so he was easy to spot in the crowd. And this would be the last conference he attended without a bodyguard.
- [28:30]
Zing Singh
At the expo, Mojang signed a million dollar deal with Microsoft to create an Xbox version of Minecraft. But even without that deal, Mojang was already predicting a $50 million turnover for the year.
- [28:41]
Simon Jack
Yeah. And amid all this, Marcus found enough time to marry his girlfriend of four years, Ellen. Finally, the official release day had arrived. On November 18, 2011, two years after building his own company and landing multi million dollar deals, Marcus was ready to release the finished version of Minecraft.
- [28:58]
Zing Singh
So let's take a trip. In the middle of the Nevada desert, there is a place that never sleeps, where jackpots are won under flashing neon lights. Sin City. I'm talking, of course, about Las Vegas. And now, inside a convention center, thousands of people are stamping their feet and Chee. This is the first official minecon, a gaming convention for Minecraft fans. And thousands of fans roam the packed exhibition hall. Many of them wear big blocky heads dressed as their favorite characters. The oldest delegate is 77, and the youngest is just 4 years old.
- [29:32]
Simon Jack
So a man climbs onto the stage wearing a black fedora, smiling nervously, revealing his dimples, possibly a little tipsy from the shot of vodka we know he'd taken just before walking on stage. Bit nervous. It's almost as if he can't quite believe what's happening. And the crowd erupts, yelling his name. Notch. And gives him a standing ovation. He's blushing, quietly pleased, feeling awkward. Hard to tell. He's their unlikely hero. The man who created this indie game, which on that day brought 4,500 people from 24 countries to this convention, created a digital world eight times the size of Earth, played by millions.
- [30:07]
Zing Singh
A notch turns the crowd mike and hand, saying, it's very overwhelming. The reason I started working on Minecraft and kept working on it was because there were people playing it. The reason we started the company was because there were fans.
- [30:20]
Simon Jack
The music ramps up. Marcus, AKA Notch, yanks down a big lever to announce the complete version of Minecraft has officially been released. There's streamers exploding from the ceiling, showering the excited crowd.
- [30:31]
Zing Singh
And Marcus seems to be enjoying the party, although he's also finding the attention a little Bewildering and weird. So at one point, a fan even hands him her baby to sign.
- [30:41]
Simon Jack
He signed this baby. Okay, pretty weird.
- [30:44]
Zing Singh
But the best part, Marcus's family was there for the launch to witness his meteoric rise as a game developer. Now, years earlier, Marcus had promised them all a helicopter ride if he ever got rich. I mean, he can afford to promise a lot more, I think. But now he's had his chance to make good on his promise. In 2011, Mojang brought in over $78 million, 60 million of which went to Marcus's own company, company Notch Development. And the day after the launch, he ushered his family onto a private helicopter for a flight from Las Vegas over the Grand Canyon.
- [31:15]
Simon Jack
So literally, business wise, metaphorically, flying high. But then, shockingly, after that triumphant moment, he made the shock decision to step down as Minecraft's lead designer. He'd still be involved, but he said he planned to move on to new projects at Mojang. He said the last year had been a whirlwind. He'd created and launched a game, become a multi millionaire. He got married. So he took the rest of the year off to rest, play video games, of course, and reset after what he called the weirdest year of my life.
- [31:43]
Zing Singh
But just a few weeks after stepping down, on December 14, Marcus received a phone call. His father had died by suicide after struggling with substance abuse and alcoholism. Marcus had actually rented his father a flat in Stockholm, hoping that a change of scenery would help. And in a later interview with Rolling Stone, he said, it was shocking. It took me a while to even realize it was real.
- [32:05]
Simon Jack
So after all that success, it was a pretty bleak Christmas that year. His father's death prompted some deep soul searching. Marcus worried that his father's mental illness might be hereditary. So he made a point to resist self isolation, to surround himself with people and with work.
- [32:20]
Zing Singh
And so he turned his attention to the tricky second act, the notoriously difficult second album.
- [32:26]
Simon Jack
Exactly. What next? He started working on an ambitious new game called Ten to the Sea. Again, a sandbox game like Minecraft, where you build stuff out of nothing, but players would control a character, character aboard a spaceship. But he really starts feeling the pressure. He struggles with, I suppose, what you call writer's block. And now he was no longer this kind of lone guy coding in a basement. He was famous. He was Notch. You know, he's a folk hero in that community. And with fame comes out attention, and that's not always a good thing for the creative process. He told the New Yorker. There's a Conflict between the joy of being able to do whatever I want and the remarkable pressure of a watching world. I don't know how to switch off.
- [33:05]
Zing Singh
It's quite interesting because so many of the billionaires that we've talked about don't seem to feel this pressure when it comes to making money, because it's not a creative act that they're putting into the world. But when it's someone like Marcus Person or George Lucas, who was infamously criticized quite heavily for the Star wars sequels, you kind of get the sense that they do care, they do care about making people want to think their product is good.
- [33:28]
Simon Jack
When your entire success has rested on a single idea which came from deep within yourself, there's not an obvious second act there, is there?
- [33:38]
Zing Singh
Exactly. I think it's really hard for creative people who become rich to stay in touch with, I think, the childhood impulses that led them to become creative in the first place. And anyway, Marcus's life had completely changed. He's had more access to more money than he could have ever imagined. And understandably, he gets a taste for the millionaire lifestyle. Private jets, extravagant parties. He was a big EDM fan, so Marcus would throw this.
- [34:02]
Simon Jack
ELECTRONIC DANCE MUSIC thank you for clarifying.
- [34:04]
Zing Singh
Thank you for clarifying. So. So, you know, arena level talent would get booked into his players parties. You know, people like Avicii Skrillex. He was constantly posting about these parties on Twitter. One Mojang colleague even said Marcus loves getting wasted.
- [34:19]
Simon Jack
He himself said he was just making up for lost time. He admitted partying is not the smartest way to spend money. But it's fun. I like that approach. We didn't have much fun when we were younger, so I thought, if I get rich, I'm not going to become one of those boring, stuffy rich people who never spend money anything.
- [34:34]
Zing Singh
But that's not to say that extravagance came naturally to him as a person. Remember, he is Swedish. There's a strong cultural value in that country about being modest, about not sticking out. And Marcus admitted that early on, he struggled to spend the cash. He even said he'd worry that the game would stop selling. But eventually he embraced it. He came up with a rule. I am allowed to spend half of whatever I make. That way I'll never be broke. Is that good financial advice?
- [34:58]
Simon Jack
I suppose if you only spend half of everything that's coming in in any one year, you'll never go broke. If every year you spend half of everything you've got, then you can run out of money pretty quickly. But it wasn't all about him. He's very generous. In 2011, he gave away his 2.2 million pound Mojang dividend to his employees. And when Minecraft hit 10 million downloads, he treated the whole staff to a lavish trip to Monaco. Three days of luxury cars, yachts and non stop partying.
- [35:25]
Zing Singh
So quite the way to celebrate success. But it wasn't without cost. Figuratively speaking, his lifestyle actually took a toll on their marriage. A year after getting married, Marcus announced that he and Ellen had filed divorce and the couple had a daughter together.
- [35:39]
Simon Jack
And a year later, Marcus announced he'd shelved his next game. The pressure to match Minecraft had become too much of him and it zapped the fun out of the project. He said, I spent a lot of time thinking about if I even wanted to make games anymore.
- [35:52]
Zing Singh
Once Marcus was at home, wrapped up in blankets, feeling the effects of a nasty cold, and his phone kept pinging, flashing where it lay on the table. He picked it up and saw a torrent of abuse from his social media feeds. Notch, his nickname has always struck me as being a giant tool. Notch is a fat loser. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. Now Marcus was feeling miserable. Already he sank even lower and he thought to himself, didn't they realize everything he'd done was for them, the fans? So those nasty comments were looming large on his phone, dwarfing any positive ones. And the reaction was actually all about a change to Minecraft ruse. Mojang had just added a limit on what players could charge each other for. Like improved weapons. Now players were. They directed their fury at Marcus personally, even though he hadn't even been involved with the update. And he was fed up. He started furiously typing a new tweet. Anyone want to buy my share of Mojang so I can move on with my life?
- [36:50]
Simon Jack
A few minutes later, Karl Manor, Mojang's chief executive, gets a call. It was their contact at Microsoft. They'd seen Marcus tweet. Is he serious? Carl had just read it himself. I don't know. Let me find out. And a few days later, he asked Marcus if he was serious about selling the company. Because Microsoft had already made some offers, Marcus thought about it and said yes.
- [37:10]
Zing Singh
Now, in the past, Marcus had been adamant he would never sell out to big evil corporations, in his words, and that independence was actually integral to Minecraft's identity. But in the end, he admitted, people change their minds about things all the time and Microsoft would give him this clean break that he wanted. Mojang also stressed that none of their employees would be laid off. Now, despite this and the bonuses they got, staffers felt disappointed and empty, as they put it when they heard the news. And Marcus just didn't get it. So he said, we spoiled them and their reaction hurts me.
- [37:43]
Simon Jack
Many people were surprised by the sale, but maybe it's completely consistent with who Marcus or Notch has always been. He said himself, I'm not an entrepreneur. I'm not a CEO. I'm a nerdy computer programmer who likes to have opinions on Twitter. And he added, it's not about the money, it's about my sanity. Anyway, in September, Mojang was sold to Microsoft for $2.5 billion.
- [38:06]
Zing Singh
Yes, Marcus Kalmane and Jakob Poser all left the company. As a result, Marcus gave them equity in the deal, which is kind of big of him. So shortly after the founders jetted off to Miami and sent Bart to celebrate, Marcus called it the sellout trip.
- [38:20]
Simon Jack
The exact details of how much Marcus got from the deal weren't made public, but it made him a billionaire. In 2015 he hit the Forbes rich list. His net worth estimated at $1.3 billion.
- [38:38]
Zing Singh
He is officially a billionaire. And with that, the infamous indie game developer is semi retired at the ripe old age of 36.
- [38:47]
Simon Jack
He's got a new gaming company called Rubber Train which he co founded with Jakob Porse, but they spend more time playing games and scrolling through Twitter and Reddit. Markus has even called it daycare for adults. And at least he's pretty self aware saying the gaming world doesn't more under delivering visionaries. I like that.
- [39:03]
Zing Singh
Yeah, he's got quite a rise sense of humor you sense. Not long after the Microsoft sale in fact, Marcus made his flashiest purchase yet. He spent $70 million on a mansion in Beverly Hills. And get this, he even outbit Jay Z, one of our billionaires and Beyonce for it. But don't worry, they weren't too upset about it. Later on they attended parties that Marcus hosted alongside other guests like Selena Gomez, also a newly minted billionaire, and pro skater Tony Hawk.
- [39:29]
Simon Jack
I'm just struggling to imagine Marcus person when he was a kid in his Stockholm flat saying I'll just get Jay Z and Beyonce to come over for a bit of a bash. I mean they don't have much in common apart from what, several million? Well at least that he's a billionaire. Jay Z's a billionaire, so they've got that in common. Birds of a feather as they say.
- [39:48]
Zing Singh
And also, 70 million on a house gets you quite a lot of things.
- [39:52]
Simon Jack
Yes, according to the property listing. It's an overwhelming sensory experience. Experience. Among the essentials, towers of M and M, vodka and tequila bars, a movie theater, and a car elevator that takes your guests cars to underground storage. You know, it's not what I would want saying can't buy you happiness. Or can it? I almost never know about this.
- [40:11]
Zing Singh
Well, I mean. In the summer of 2015, Marcus started tweeting about how lonely he was. He wrote, the problem with getting everything is you run out of reasons to keep trying and human interaction becomes impossible due to imbalance. Hanging out in Ibiza with a bunch of friends and partying with famous people. Able to do whatever I want. And I've never felt more isolated.
- [40:31]
Simon Jack
Poor Marcus.
- [40:33]
Zing Singh
Get out. The world's tiniest violin.
- [40:36]
Simon Jack
At least he showed some self awareness. And I've liked this about him throughout this story. He apologized the next day, tweeting to people out there with real problems. I'm sorry, the whining of a newly wealthy programmer gets more attention than yours. Stay strong.
- [40:48]
Zing Singh
But Marcus was about to get into serious trouble. Now in 2017, he was condemned for tweeting racist and homophobic comments. Comments. These were really nasty, aggressive comments. Like anyone who opposed Heterosexual Pride Day should be shot in his words. And then in 2019, he caused even more upset with transphobic comments and an endorsement of QAnon, the conspiracy theory that ran rampant in the United States.
- [41:12]
Simon Jack
Well, by this point, Microsoft had had enough. They scrubbed all references to Marcus's alter ego Notch from the game and didn't include him in any of the Minecraft 10 Year Anniversary Celebration celebrations.
- [41:23]
Zing Singh
So what's the semi retired gamer up to now? Not much, it seems. Since the game was sold to Microsoft, Marcus has posted about starting various new projects, plus a new company, Bit Shift Entertainment. But there has been no actual release of any new games.
- [41:38]
Simon Jack
Marcus still seems excited about the Minecraft film, though. He even shared on X for a movie about a game with literally zero plot. It looks surprisingly fun.
- [41:46]
Zing Singh
And Marcus earlier this year actually hinted he might make Minecraft 2, which caused, as you can imagine, quite a lot of excitement among his followers. But of course, since he sold the rights to Microsoft, he can't actually use the name, so it would be more of a spiritual successor kind of nudge, nudge, wink, wink. We all know what this is, so.
- [42:03]
Simon Jack
Watch this space, this block. And now we have to cast our eye over Marcus Persson and judge him. So let us start with wealth.
- [42:17]
Zing Singh
Well, Marcus's wealth hasn't actually changed that much since he became a Billy Billionaire, right? So he's definitely not in the billionaire big leagues.
- [42:24]
Simon Jack
For me, he's showed no ambition to go beyond. You compare that to the Bezos of this world and the Zuckerbergs of this world. You know, a billion was literally in the foothills of their ambition.
- [42:37]
Zing Singh
I will say that in the plus column for his wealth, he definitely likes to spend money. So aside from that $70 million house in Beverly Hills that Beyonce and Jay Z lost out to, he owns the most expensive apartment in Stockholm which cost 2.6 million DOL dollars.
- [42:53]
Simon Jack
That's remarkable in itself. He loves renting private jets and he once bought. I like this one. A rare Apex Twin vinyl record for $46,000. It was called Caustic Window. UNFX Twin Fan.
- [43:06]
Zing Singh
I know one or two songs, but I have to say the music is very caustic. Too caustic for me.
- [43:12]
Simon Jack
Yeah. Anyway, Marcus says he grew up in a relatively poor family and commented frequently how overwhelmed he was by his fortune as he got richer. He did seem to like, I can't believe how much money money I've got.
- [43:22]
Zing Singh
Yeah. I actually feel like Marcus comes off as more of a regular person around this wealth than a lot of the billionaires. We've.
- [43:28]
Simon Jack
Exactly. You take some of the billionaires and you take away their money and they would be quite a different person. I think you kick Marcus person with or without the money. I think he's kind of the same guy.
- [43:39]
Zing Singh
It doesn't seem to have changed him that much.
- [43:41]
Simon Jack
No. So okay, on wealth, we got to give him a score between 1 to 10. Obviously in terms of actual numbers, he's only just entry level in billionaires status. He's also, it feels like he kind of like he's one of those bumpkin billionaires who basically finds it hard to spend the money. He's like, I'm, I'm throwing as many parties as I can. I'm getting as many private jets as I can. I'm having, as you know, and yet doesn't seem to be able to sort of fritter it away. So he's trying, but it doesn't come naturally to him. So I'm going to give him a very low. I'm going to give him a two for wealth.
- [44:12]
Zing Singh
Well, I, I think I'm going to go slightly higher and give him a four. There's something about buying a rare Aphex Twin vinyl that I think just edges him up for me.
- [44:20]
Simon Jack
Okay, two for me, four for you. Villainy. What has he done on the way to get to that? How who's he done over? How has he, has he. How ruthless has he been?
- [44:30]
Zing Singh
I mean, he gave his old partners equity when he sold out. Right.
- [44:33]
Simon Jack
Which didn't have to. And he gave dividends, 2.2 million in dividends to his employees.
- [44:38]
Zing Singh
And we know plenty of billionaires who kept dividends for themselves.
- [44:41]
Simon Jack
Yeah, but he hasn't officially apologized for those offensive tweets. He deleted his Twitter account in 2020, but it's back up and running. So, you know, who knows, maybe he had some kind of, you know, tirade when he was, you know, by his own admission, partying too hard. But those things don't come out of nowhere.
- [45:01]
Zing Singh
Bearing in mind we are judging him in the pantheon of our billionaires, which also includes literal arms dealers and drug dealers. And drug dealers.
- [45:08]
Simon Jack
Yeah, I think that he's, you know, offensive tweets are side. He's pretty harmless.
- [45:15]
Zing Singh
Yeah, I would give him a pretty low three out of ten. Two out of ten.
- [45:18]
Simon Jack
I'm going to go two as well. We've already touched on it. But giving back philanthropy, he's talked about it before.
- [45:25]
Zing Singh
Yes, he actually said, I think the right way to use money like this is to set a decent portion aside to make sure my family's comfortable. Spend some on living out your dreams and then try to put the rest towards making society a better place. For me, this includes charities to help children, charities that help promote freedoms I think are vital in the coming dozens of of years, such as eff, which by the way is Electronic Frontier Foundation. It's a San Francisco based nonprofit that protects digital privacy, free speech and innovation. But having said that, we don't really have the numbers for how much he's donated to these causes.
- [45:58]
Simon Jack
Yeah, protecting digital free speech can be a double edged sword, as we found.
- [46:02]
Zing Singh
As we found in recent years.
- [46:04]
Simon Jack
In recent years, weeks and months, giving back. I'm going to give him, I mean, I just don't know. So I'm going to either give him nothing at all because I just na. Or I'll give him two.
- [46:14]
Zing Singh
Yeah, I think to be honest, even two might be generous given we don't have any figures at all. I'm just gonna give him a one tbc.
- [46:20]
Simon Jack
Fine. All right, one and two Power. He's not your typical billionaire trying to wield power, curry favour with politicians, that kind of stuff.
- [46:30]
Zing Singh
No, he really isn't. Even though arguably he could do a lot. I mean, Minecraft is essentially its own social platform in addition to being a gaming platform.
- [46:39]
Simon Jack
That's true. There is some power for good in this quite A lot of parents of autist children have talked about how Minecraft the game is helpful to help communicate with autistic children. They can find methods of self expression in that. I can believe that.
- [46:53]
Zing Singh
Yeah. Guardian journalist Keith Stewart said that Minecraft actually helped his relationship with his autistic son. He said Minecraft seemed to have given him both a vocabulary and the confidence to use it. It created a safe and creative space for a lot of children who may struggle to find those spaces elsewhere.
- [47:08]
Simon Jack
Yeah. And I think it is pretty widely used in schools as well. So lots of positive applications in terms of power. I mean, he's maybe within the video gaming. He's more of a folk hero than a power player, isn't he?
- [47:20]
Zing Singh
Yeah, he had a really great story in the sense that he started out, he's thumbed his nose at the big corporate gaming world. Like King went off and did his own thing and then he kind of almost ruined it for himself by selling out to Microsoft again.
- [47:34]
Simon Jack
You know, I don't think he'd want to have too much power. So he will not be upset if I give him him a 2?
- [47:38]
Zing Singh
Yeah, I would give him a 2 out of 10 as well.
- [47:40]
Simon Jack
Okay.
- [47:41]
Zing Singh
I think he's perfectly happy just being the gaming guy.
- [47:44]
Simon Jack
Yeah. So is he good, bad or just another billionaire?
- [47:48]
Zing Singh
Oh, I feel like I'm edging towards him being a good billionaire. Well, I do have a problem with those tweets that he posted. I do think they are harmful. But, you know, we talked earlier about how game developers like Marcus Person aren't as famous as musicians or film directors. You know, you could be a Minecraft addict for years and never know the name Marcus Person. And maybe because of that, their work isn't associated with them as much as it is with films and music and books are associated with the people who created those works of art. So for me, the negative things that Marcus Pearson has done in a dark corner of the Internet, they haven't really sullied this positive thing that he built with Minecraft. When you think about it, how many games have encouraged that level of creativity in children, particularly young children? You know, I think it's quite special. I think if we were looking at the person who invented Lego and we would ask ourselves, was he a force for good in the world? And I do think Minecraft is actually just the digital version of Lego.
- [48:45]
Simon Jack
That's a very, very powerful argument. Once again, you have dragged me into your camp. Because you're right, because if it is the digital version of Lego and if I think about my own experiences as a child with Lego and watching other children with Lego, and this is the modern version of that. You'd be hard pressed to say that's anything other than good.
- [49:01]
Zing Singh
Marcus Person, you're officially a good billionaire.
- [49:03]
Simon Jack
Well done, Marcus.
- [49:05]
Zing Singh
So who do we have on the next episode?
- [49:07]
Simon Jack
We have wrestling masterminds. Mr. Vince McMahon.
- [49:12]
Zing Singh
That's right, the former owner of WWE World Wrestling Entertainment.
- [49:16]
Simon Jack
It's come a long way since I was watching Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks in the 1980s. Now a multi billion dollar enterprise with its heroes and villains and its big stories and its spandex.
- [49:28]
Zing Singh
Of course, that's Vince McMahon. Next on Good Bad Billionaire.
- [49:32]
Simon Jack
Good Bad Billionaire is a BBC World Service podcast. It's produced by Louise Morris and Mark Ward with additional production by Tamsen Curry and Sarah Joyner. Paul Smith is the editor and it's a BBC Studios audio production for the BBC World Service.
- [49:46]
Zing Singh
The senior podcast producer is Kat Collins and the commissioning editor is John Minnell. And if you enjoyed it, do tell a friend.
- [50:00]
Ryan Seacrest
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