Original Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson has announced his next project will be a spiritual successor to Minecraft, going as far as saying he “basically announced Minecraft 2.”
Just after the New Year, the Minecraft creator ran a poll asking for honest feedback on whether to continue his ongoing retro project – or shelve it for something more like a Minecraft successor.
At the time of writing that poll is overwhelmingly in favor of Notch making another game like Minecraft, with the “make minecraft 2 boomer” response dominating with nearly 79% over the 21% to continue his retro project.
For the past several years Notch has been working on a game that he described as a roguelike twist on classic first-person dungeon crawlers like Wizardry. Despite his passion for such games, he clearly started to wonder if he should do something else.
“I gots to thinking that maybe there are people who like my work but might not share my taste in retro nostalgia and would prefer for me to make a spiritual successor thing to Minecraft,” Notch said. “And I mean sure, I’d take that cash.”
A follow-up post from Notch confirmed the poll results have pushed him to “basically announce Minecraft 2,” though it obviously won’t be called that and it obviously can’t be too similar to his original creation he sold to Microsoft for over $2 billion.
While Notch said “spiritual successors are usually kind of… you know… washed up” and “tragic”, he’s going to push himself past his fears and “do the thing that people DO want and are willing to give me, somehow, even MORE cash for.”
“I also very much value being a man of my word,” Notch clarified. “I also intend to do this in a way that in no way tried to sneakily infringe on the incredible work the Mojang team is doing and that Microsoft is successfully doing the microsoft shittification about.”
That last bit is definitely interesting because it remains to be seen (and probably will forever remain that way) what Notch’s buyout terms were with Microsoft. As with most corporate buyouts there’s usually a noncompete clause.
Perhaps Notch wasn’t allowed to make another Minecraft-like game for ten years, a noncompete period that would have just ended in the fall of last year. The timing on Notch’s poll and switch-up to make a Minecraft-like game, coupled with his clear disdain for Microsoft’s handling of the IP, are interesting to say the least.
“I respect them for doing that,” Notch said. “It’s their job. And they, from what I understand, let the studio do things their way, which seems very fair to me.”
Mojang continues to support Minecraft to this day with regular updates and content releases and Microsoft is looking to grow the brand. A live-action Minecraft movie is set to premiere this spring – read more about that here.
