Markus “Notch” Persson
I chose Markus Persson because he is responsible for creating one of my favorite childhood games that I still play today. Markus Persson, better known as Notch, is a famous Swedish video game designer responsible for the creation of Minecraft, a sand-box, free-roam game available to purchase on minecraft.net. Notch began video game design/developing in 2005 for king.com and left in 2009 to begin working as a programmer at Jalbum, a shareware cross-platform software for managing and creating digital photo galleries. While working here, he began a personal video game project called Minecraft, which he eventually released (unfinished) on May 17, 2009. Notch quit Jalbum following the game’s release to co-found Mojang AB, a Swedish video game developing company. After its release, the Minecraft steadily grew in popularity going into 2010, when it spiked up in 2011 after the game was fully released. Notch continued to develop the game alongside Jens “Jeb” Bergensten, releasing multiple versions of the game with new gameplay mechanics, characters, and game modes like multiplayer and and realms.
Minecraft Java Edition reached apporximately 15 million downloads in 2013, and continued to grow in popularity, reaching over 30 million downloads by 2016. In 2014, Notch sold all of the assets of Minecraft to Microsoft for $2.5 billion.
Minecraft, as described on the offical site, is “… a game about placing blocks and going on adventures. It’s set in infinitely-generated worlds of wide open terrain …” While the game design and description indicate that its audience is younger children, it is actually enjoyed by people of all ages. A current user of the game, 16 year old Joey Boyle, who started playing the game when he was just 9 years old, stated in an interview, “The game has simple mechanics for younger users and more complicated concepts for older users. It’s for serious and easy gameplay. It’s a sandbox that has everything for anyone.” He explained that the game has excellent usability; the basics can be learned in less than an hour, but you never stop learning more game mechanics as you explore more of the game’s world. In that respect, the game’s audience could be simplified to “gamers”, but that’s still fairly limited, as people who don’t play video games play Minecraft too. I am also a user of the game, who began playing in 2011, when the game first released as the “Bedrock” edition. The game changed fairly drastically from its first release, but became more user friendly over time. After Microsoft bought the game, it didn’t change, but was expanded upon similarly to how Notch released updates.
In summer of 2019, the game sudddenly spiked in popularity following its 10th anniversary. A famous Swedish YouTuber with over 100 million subscribers, 29 year-old Felix “Pewdiepie” Kjellberg, began playing the game as a joke, but suddenly found himself in love with it and the type of gameplay it provided, further reinforcing the fact that the game can be played/enjoyed by people of all ages. As of August 23rd, he has released 61 videos averaging 20 million views per video.
Regarding user-centered deisgn, a lot can be takaways can be learned from Notch. The biggest takeaway is that it’s possible to create a product enjoyed by people of all ages from all around the world. While it’s important to be aware of what audience you’re designing for, creating something for a specific audience regarding gender, age, ethnicity, etc., can make designers narrow-minded and exclude all sorts of possibilities.
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