Inside The Post-Minecraft Life Of Billionaire Gamer God Markus Persson

[n2doc]

By Ryan Mac, David M. Ewalt and Max Jedeur-Palmgren

It’s 7 p.m. on a Monday in Stockholm, and Markus Persson sits on the terrace of his ninth-story office, sipping the speedball of alcoholic beverages, a vodka Red Bull. Three hours ago he committed to not drinking today, still in recovery from a 12-drink Thursday bender while nursing an ear infection. Yet here we are, embracing heavy-handed pours of Belvedere while surveying the workers in adjacent high-rises hacking away at their keyboards.

“He looks worried,” says Persson, pointing to a man in a building across the street rubbing his face and staring blankly into a computer screen.

After a few more seconds of looking at the man, Persson seems bothered by the scene and darts inside. For the better part of the last five years the 35-year-old Swede was that guy, a man who constantly stressed about his creation, Minecraft, the bestselling computer game of all time. Even calling it a game is too limiting. Minecraft became, with 100 million downloads and counting, a canvas for human expression. Players start out in an empty virtual space where they use Lego-like blocks and bricks (which they can actually “mine”) to build whatever they fancy, with the notable feature that other players can then interact with it. Most players are little kids who build basic houses or villages and then host parties in what they’ve constructed or dodge marauding zombies.

Truly obsessed adults, though, have spent hundreds of hours creating full-scale replicas of the Death Star, the Empire State Building and cities from Game of Thrones. The word “Minecraft” is Googled more often than the Bible, Harry Potter and Justin Bieber. And this single game has grossed more than $700 million in its lifetime, the large majority of which is pure profit.

“It doesn’t compare to other hit games,” says Ian Bogost, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology who studies videogames. “It compares to other hit products that are much bigger than games. Minecraft is basically this generation’s Lego or even this generation’s microcomputer.”

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http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2015/03/03/minecraft-markus-persson-life-after-microsoft-sale/

[brett_jv]

2. Really don't see how the heck that was a 'good' investment by MS ...

Games simply do NOT stay 'hot' for very long.

The market is very much prone to 'fads', then they tend to burn out ... and dramatically, usually.

Considering they didn't even 'buy' the founder/creators of the actual game, just the rights to the existing game, and the fact that the game is 5 years old and has 'only' grossed $700M yet they spent $2,500M to buy the rights and the studio and it's programmers (who I'm guessing are not esp. talented, this 'game' is more about the 'idea' than any real technical programming accomplishments), I have a hard time seeing how MS makes back their $2.5B from the deal.