I don't play Minecraft but my kids do, and I don't think they know Minecraft has an ending? I certainly didn't. I always thought Minecraft was this unlimited platform where you build things with no specific purpose, for the pleasure of building, like an infinite Lego set.
That said, the rant, while much too long is interesting and explains well the misunderstanding between business people and artists. Some artists are good at business (Picasso) but most aren't because they speak a different language, and because, like this guy, they cultivate and probably enjoy ambiguity, or the protection and shadows it brings.
If he wanted more than $20k he should have asked for it then, but I think the appeal of putting your writing in front of over a hundred million people and a $20,000 check was "enough" compensation for the work, at the time. But resentment grew as the game continued to succeed.
To me this feels like it was written after seeing the Doom music story...which is entirely different as the music of the first (new) doom game was a huge part of its success. This is literally the opposite as the text was tacked on after the game was already successful (Just not yet at its peak success.) And in some ways feels like it is inviting MS lawyers to intervene, but he has much less of a standing.
There is no real ending in Minecraft. "The End" is just the name of another dimension - where of course you have to battle the big bad dragon and get the "end credits" afterwards and so on. But the dimension is literally just called "The End" and is indeed just a pun - you can mine, build, explore, and play there just like in the Overworld or in the Nether, and go back & forth between the three at any time.
In fact, most of us consider visiting The End as the real beginning of the game - exploring it gives you access to two items (shulker boxes and the Elytra), that we consider about as fundamental and essential to the game as the pickaxe or the crafting table.
"Wait what? You can craft a pickaxe? I've been punching rocks all this time!"
You probably know what The Nether is, that hellish looking place you access by making a portal. Reaching The Nether is progress, by getting there you get access to stuff you didn't have before, sure you can do whatever you feel like in Minecraft, but by getting there you can do more stuff than before because you have access to more stuff.
By defeating the Ender Dragon you are free to roam The End (which is the name of the whole place) and thus you finally gain access to everything the game has to offer.
To the extent these have a definite ending, it's not the ending intended for Minecraft.
Take Star Factory, you're not going to kill monsters and build up until you can take on a dragon, you're building a factory to make stars. You start with basic materials like an unlimited supply of wood and gold and you've reached the end of the game once your systems are just making stars automatically from your materials.
The modern game actually has a bunch of stuff "after" the ending when played straight up.
But she straight up does not UNDERSTAND a game like Sim city, or rim world. Why would anybody "play" that, is her perspective. It doesn't have a sufficiently, singularly clear narrative, flow, goal, beginning and an end. We talked about such games a few times and I have not really succeeded in moving the needle - not in her being interested in such games, but even remotely comprehending their existence or allure.
I guess it was my wife's friends that felt minecraft really needed an ending :-)
Now, you can start with a toy (like The Sims or a regulation basketball or a pencil, paper, and dice) and create a game around it by applying rules, goals, and objectives. They may be defined by others or you may be creating the game in your own mind -- either way the toy is a piece of equipment used to play the game, it is not in and of itself a game.
Your wife may not enjoy electronic toys like Sim City or Rim World, but perhaps you could pique her interest by working together to come up with games that the two of you could play using those toys?
We engage in many other "pointless" pursuits: beauty, love, culture, civilization, and indeed, life itself. Everyone "plays" for a different reason, and that makes us human.
The entire post reads like really sour grapes from someone who believes his contribution is way more important than it is. He thinks he deserves a significant higher chunk than what he was paid.
He also acts like he has a leg to stand on and is magnanimously deciding not to bring the hammer down. No. He's going to get laughed out of the lawyer's office. It's not even going to sniff a court. I can imagine what happened.
Markus and Carl were talking with their lawyers about what was needed to facilitate the Microsoft deal. Mojang's lawyers notified them to cases like this, where there's an unsigned contract floating about. They said, get that signed so Microsoft doesn't potentially pull the deal over potential issues. Microsoft, in their due diligence, also had their lawyers combing over Mojang's contracts, assets, and liabilities. Microsoft came across this contract, meetings were had, they found out about the email chain, etc. And Microsoft's lawyers decided this was not an issue. So at that point, Mojang didn't care. Because they didn't have to.
Markus and Carl didn't tell this guy about the deal because it wasn't his business. He was an artist contracted for a bit of poetry. For all intents and purposes, everyone at Mojang considered their business with him over.
But I don't believe this would stand up in court. There was a verbal agreement before he signed a contract. He was paid for his one-off contribution; I don't know how much work he delivered or how many hours he put into it, but 20K is half a year's income for some people, not to be sniffed at.
This has come up recently as well in some drama about voice acting on the one hand, and video game soundtracks on the other. Normally you get paid for the time spent, or the amount of your contributions used. But in the case of the voice actor, they decided the normal amount - or as it turned out later, a chunk well above the normal amount - wasn't enough and they threw it onto the internet.
But in the end, I think this is just a business transaction - one part of one part of the game, paid for with a five figure sum. The author neglected to do his due diligence and neglected to review and sign the contract in a timely fashion. Mojang and Microsoft may be susceptible to a lawsuit because the author never surrendered the rights to his work until now, but his unwillingness to cooperate while accepting payment for work delivered won't work in his favor.
And while he gave the text up into the public domain, I don't know if this holds up in court; iirc, copyright law only applies if you defend your copyright. Which means that if the author's copyright is voided, then Microsoft's copyright for Minecraft and all it contains might take over, and they might sue him instead. I'm not a lawyer or versed in copyright law, so this is just fantasizing.
iirc, copyright law only applies if you defend your copyright.
Copyright always applies and is automatically assigned at the time of creation. Belongs to the author by default unless created in the context of some other agreement (e.g. work for hire)
The same can certainly be said for everyone else involved in this. Notch made off with 1.7 billion dollars for a few years of work - that's a disproportionate reward for the level of effort.
But if the poetry author wanted a disproportionate reward for their level of effort, they should have asked for it. It's business at the end of the day - they didn't write it for art's sake, they wrote it for a contract job. And it's not a particularly great poem that will be featured on poetry.com, IMO
I inherited a server hosting and came across the ending by accident. It was a moment of "What? I can win Minecraft?". Kids were "Yeah. Winning is boring."
I know basically nothing about the life of artists in general, but this interests me. Where can I read about this? Would appreciate a link that deals with the business side more than a general biography. Thanks.