Replying to criticism, and a short summary
The vast majority of the emails and other direct communications I’ve gotten have been very positive, telling me to take my time. But when I turned on comments on here, I saw that a lot of people were less happy than I thought, so I thought I’d answer some of your concerns, in the form of a fake FAQ:
Q: I feel let down.
A: I’m sorry. But really, we’re talking about me taking a couple of weeks off..
Q: I paid for a pre-purchase, that means you owe me the finished game.
A: Yes, I agree. It’s coming, no matter
what happens. I promise.
Q: I paid you money, that means I get to tell you what to do.
A: No, it doesn’t. Not any more than you own your
landlord or the guy working in your local store.
Q: You got stressed from making money?
A: Yeah, I did. A lot of things changed at the same time in my life. I sold
my apartment, Minecraft was going really well, I moved in with Ez, and I quit my job. I don’t know WHY it stressed
me out so bad, but it did.
Q: Why are you playing games and blogging about it?
A: Because I love playing games, and I think it’s a good sign
that I’m starting to really enjoy it again. As for why I blog about it, people wanted me to post blog updates just
to show I was alive, so I blogged about whatever it was I was doing.
Speaking of which, Alan Wake is awesomely
well written, in its absurdity.
Q: Why is the break so long?
A: Because I start working full time on Minecraft on June 1, and this seemed like the
best way to make sure I really got to wind down. (And it’s not THAT long..)
Q: Are you still motivated?
A: About implementing multiplayer, no. But I’ll do that anyway.. See the next
question.
About the game, absolutely. I’ve gotten a few new monster ideas, and find the level saving an
interesting challenge (it needs to use less files), and I can’t wait to get my hands on the water code again. Also,
I got the applet loader code working, and know how to make the error messages much more readable and understandable,
and I think I can fix the bug that occasionally causes the game to totally break and require deletion of the cached
files.
Q: So when IS multiplayer coming?
A: I plan on doing some non-multiplayer stuff first to get started and show
myself that I actually can work on the game, but right after that I’ll get it done. The plan is to just plow through
it and release it as an alpha test even if it’s buggy, just to have something out there. Once there’s something out
there, the rest is just bugfixes.
And here’s a summary of what’s going on:
About 2.5 months ago, I gave three months notice at my day job. From June 1, I’ll start working full time on
Minecraft instead of just 60% like I have been up to now.
While working on multiplayer survival mode, I suddenly
lost momentum after a few minor technical setbacks. I realized I was stressed out, and decided to take a break until
June 1. This was about ten days ago or so.
So in two weeks and one day, I’ll probably be plenty well rested. I’ll start working full time on Minecraft. First I’ll release an update or two without multiplayer just to get back into things, then I’ll get multiplayer out as fast as possible even if it’s buggy. Then we’ll take things from there.
Thank you for reading this.
