作者：DAVID PEISNER

这是斯德哥尔摩一个下雨天的周一，通向Markus Persson的办公室的门紧闭着。他的助手跟我说，他现在正与同事，也就是该公司的联合创始人Jakob Porser开会。

40分钟后，我终于了解到为什么自己还是不能进去——Persson，作为瑞典最大的纳税人，同时也是一家估值20亿美元的公司的创始人，一直在 电脑前玩一款第一人称射击游戏，他带着耳机，手指不断点击着鼠标，眼睛更是时刻紧盯着屏幕。而坐在他旁边的Porser亦是在做着同样的事。

40分钟后，我终于了解到为什么自己还是不能进去——Persson，作为瑞典最大的纳税人，同时也是一家估值20亿美元的公司的创始人，一直在 电脑前玩一款第一人称射击游戏，他带着耳机，手指不断点击着鼠标，眼睛更是时刻紧盯着屏幕。而坐在他旁边的Porser亦是在做着同样的事。

notch(from rollingstone)

Persson转了下椅子站了起来。他是一个秃顶且体型庞大的人，留着蓬乱的棕色胡须，穿着一件深蓝色的polo衫和牛仔裤，嘴上还叼着一个烟草带。他亲切地和我打了招呼，然后便又回到游戏《Borderlands 2》中。这是一款高预算的游戏，从根本上看来与他们公司所创造的其它游戏并不同。但Persson表示他已经沉浸于这款游戏中好几周：“我觉得自己已经沉浸于其中。”

每个周五，Persson都会让员工玩电子游戏或致力于一些个人项目，但是你不会觉得一周中的其它时间对于他们来说很难熬。除了台球桌，弹球机，放映室和Wurlitzer点唱机外，这里还有一大面墙绘制着摆出19世纪贵族姿态的员工们的肖像：而在Persson的肖像中，他穿着晚礼服并带着软呢帽，骄傲地坐在椅子上，旁边还有一颗巨大的地球仪。

Persson，通常被称为Notch，是一个外表看来很热情，但通常表现的很沉默的一个人；他总是面带着微笑，就像一个神经痉挛者，当他在说话时，他会散发出某种低调的困惑感，就像他不断被生活的变化所娱乐着。他总是会举办一些聚会邀请如Avicii等DJ名人。在2011年，他雇佣了Deadmau5在维加斯举办的一个聚会上表演，根据报道Harry王子也参加了这次的聚会。2012年，他将巴黎的某一处变成了烟花和LED灯的聚集处，Skrillex和A-Trak更是到场参与了表演。去年，Persson带着所有员工和他们的家属去了摩纳哥。他们办公室会议桌上的一个相册便呈现了员工们乘坐私人飞机到达目的地，乘着法拉利兜风，并搭乘直升飞机以及在游艇上开party的场景。Porser说到：“我们希望Mojang成为一家员工始终都希望留在这里工作的公司。”

因为《我的世界》，所有的这一切都是有可能的：这原本只是Persson的一个次要项目，但却成为10年来看似最不可能的电子游戏的成功，吸引了大约1亿的玩家到游戏中建造并探索块状的乐高世界。《我的世界》中没有方向，没有前进的关卡也没有明显的目标。玩家可以探索一个近乎无尽的世界，收集资源，挖掘隧道并创造他们能够想象得到的任何内容（游戏邦注：小房子，著名的地标，完整的诚实，进取号星舰的模型等待），同时还需要避免各种危险（坠入悬崖，你死，僵尸的攻击等待）。《地下城守护者》的开发者Peter Molyneux说道：“一般情况下游戏规则是既定的，即关于教授玩家如何游戏，拥有明确的目标，角色和对手。但是《我的世界》却摒弃了这一切。”它可以被定制成任何可能的内容——这里有一个活跃的玩家社区，他们可以创造“mod”：包括可游戏的乐器，掉落的流星以及龙卷风等等。

这个世界的中心是Persson，一位独立程序员，现在还是一名主要的技术人员，而他似乎并不是很专注于跟进自己的第一次成功。在2011年，他将《我的世界》的控制权转交给首席开发者Jens Bergensten。现在Mojang的所有项目都不是真正在争取星星：它的新游戏《Scrolls》虽然是赚钱的，但与《我的世界》相比较真的是小巫见大巫；该公司的另外一个全新的创新之作便是Minecraft Realms，即为了让玩家群体更轻松地一起游戏的每月订阅式服务。

在3天时间内，Persson接受了我的采访并维持了1次10分钟的会面；几乎他的所有空闲时间都是在玩《Borderlands 2》。Persson说道，有好几周时间他全身心地专注于编程，但这款游戏并未包含在内。他宣称自己一开始错过了它。但在周末的时候，他和Porser带着家人到马尔代夫享受10天的假期。“所以此时并没有开始的点。”

Persson是在一个非常小的乡镇度过他的童年，也就是Edsbyn，距离斯德哥尔摩有3个小时的路程（游戏邦注：在其北部地区）；他的父亲在铁路公司上班，而他的母亲则是一名护士。在Persson对于自己的童年的描述中，你可以感受到《我的世界》里所呈现的荒野场景：“我们所居住的区域中只有两条紧邻着的环路。那里有森林和牧草。我记得自己经常在森林里穿梭着。”（现在他解释了游戏的场景是“基于瑞典人对于这些内容应该呈现出的样子的感知。”）

在Persson7岁的时候，他们全家搬到了斯德哥尔摩。在他12岁时，父母离婚了，他的父亲搬到了农村的一间小屋。在之后的几年里，他的父亲患上了抑郁症。Persson说道：“我的父亲因为滥用药物而做了一些错事，包括抢劫，非法侵入等等，并因此被关进了监狱。那时候我们真的经历了一段非常艰难的时期。”

Persson使用Commodore 128计算机自学了编程；他并未完成中学课程，但是在他18岁的时候便已经被一家网页设计公司聘请为专业的程序员了。在90年代末2000年代初期，他一直辗转于一些技术工作。

对于独立游戏来说，斯德哥尔摩就是家乡一般的存在；Porser是在一家名为King的游戏工作室与Persson相遇。Porser说道：“他非常有趣，并且有点与众不同，这正是我喜欢他的地方。他可以非常开心也可以非常沮丧。并且通常情况下都是处于这两种极端的状况。”

Persson的前妻Elin Zetterstrand曾这么形容他：“看起来很美好的一个人，非常聪明，有时候会有点低落。”这是在Persson于一家名为jAlbum的在线相册公司的休息时间，即那时他刚开始致力于《我的世界》。2009年，他独自在自己于斯德哥尔摩的公寓编写出了游戏的最初版本；这大概花了他一周的时间。那些简单的块状图像是导致Persson不想继续完成游戏的原因。他说道：“我只想创造一款能够为我赚到足够的钱去创造另外一款游戏的游戏。”

Molyneux说道：“有些人看不到这些未经加工的图像以外的内容。但这正是它最强大的地方。实际上你可以快速意识到自己可以将一个砖块置于另一个砖块上方意味着任何人都可以创建任何内容。”Porser便是那些未在一开始意识到它的人之一。他笑着说道：“我的想法就是，‘这很棒但是会让你一直处于忙碌状态。’”Persson的其他朋友也一直在提醒他要小心。（他说道：“这都是非常典型的瑞典人的表现。”）

在发行的第一年，《我的世界》的下载量大概是2万。在2010年末，它一天便可以卖出很多份。游戏社区持续壮大着：玩家提供了关于功能的视频教程，并指出了某些漏洞；YouTube还出现了针对于记录《我的世界》成绩的频道；涌现了许多论坛在讨论这款游戏；玩家开始在博客上描述自己的冒险。《我的世界》已经不再只是一款游戏—-它甚至变成了一个平台。Persson成为了游戏最大的功臣。他现在在Twitter上已经有160万名粉丝，在那里他所呈现出来的是一个诙谐，直率的形象。

与自己的大多数朋友不同的是，Persson拥有一个支持自己的父亲，在《我的世界》的早期阶段，他不断鼓励Persson独立门户。同时，他的父亲再次遭遇了病魔的袭击。Persson说道：“他开始服用抵抗抑郁症的药物，并开始滥用药物。然后又再次拿起了酒杯。”

在2011年12月14日，他的父亲选择了自杀。Persson说道：“他完全喝醉了，并拿起了枪支。这真的让我很震惊。我花了一段时间才意识到这是事实。”

Persson：“我是在葬礼上看到他尸体时才彻底崩溃。每个人都在问我；‘你是否需要一个独处的时间？’可能他们觉得我的反应太不寻常。于是在他们相继离开后，我彻底崩溃了。”

他继续说道：“没有比这个更痛苦了。我也担心自己会不会和他一样患上抑郁症。在创造游戏的过程中，我有过非常高产的时期也有过没有灵感的时候。我的情绪中也存在同样的因子。”

在他的父亲去世之后，Persson开始致力于一个新项目，它有着一个发不出音的名字——《0x10c》。只是一款充满野心的游戏，它的背景设在太空，很多人认为这自然是《我的世界》的后续之作。在创作过程中，Persson感受到了巨大的期待。他的每条Tumblr和Twitter更新都成为了游戏新闻网站的信息来源。所以压力便接踵而至。

2011年他与Zetterstrand结婚，但是这段婚姻很快便结束了。Persson承认他的成功是造成这段婚姻失败的元素之一。他说道：“我并未拥有一段充满乐趣的青少年时光，因为我一直是待在家里学习编程。随后的一切开始发生了变化。我获得了机会能够做我想做的人和事。我可以到纽约，在那里闲逛并进行探索。但是这也让事情变得更加复杂。”所以他与Zetterstrand最终选择了离婚。

2013年，他宣称放弃对于《0x10c》的开发。他遭遇了“创作阻塞”。8月的时候他在博客上表示，自己不再有尝试着创造“任何成功的内容”的感觉了。

现在Persson表示自己只想致力于那些能够带来乐趣的内容。他独自住在斯德哥尔摩一栋多层公寓的顶层房间，Persson笑着告诉我那是“有钱人所住的地方。”他的公寓非常质朴，伴随着几面基于不同角度的白色石墙，好像是将中世纪古堡雕刻在山上一般。在这间公寓里的一切，包括墙壁，固定装置和家具，除了白色就是黑色。一个看上去很少使用的开放式厨房中设有一个大酒窖。还有一个通向二层游戏阁楼的楼梯，并且能够继续通向第三层，那里只有一把椅子，一个搁脚凳，但是透过窗户能够俯瞰整个斯德哥尔摩的风景。我问他现在是否有女朋友时，Persson笑着说道：“我不会说是女朋友，但套用一个喜剧演员的话来说便是，‘如果我说我没有女朋友的话，那么有一个女人便会非常难过。’”

Persson表示该公寓并不实用。游戏层的平面电视设在电梯井的正上方，所以那些乘坐电梯的人都可以听到枪击声和爆炸声。虽然没人对此感到抱怨，但是当Persson发现这点时，他马上停止使用—-“因为我是非常传统的瑞典人，我并不想打扰到邻居。”Persson即将搬到另一个公寓，不过那栋公寓现在还处在修建阶段。他表示，一旦完工，那里将成为斯德哥尔摩每平方米最昂贵的住所。

在3月，Persson为了Electronic Frontier Foundation邀请了来自旧金山的DJ前来造势。Persson在评价自己关于开派对的行为时说道：“这真的是一种非常愚蠢的花钱方式。但有何不做的理由呢？人们会说‘你应该对此进行投资。’所以我可以获得更多钱而投在这里？至少如果你消费了，你便能够赚回这笔钱并做些其它事。”

同时，如果Persson并未想出《我的世界》的继承者，他仍未自己的员工制定了一个10年计划。他说道：“希望我们能够继续在Mojang中赚钱，但如果我们不能这么做也没关系。我们只需要拥有快乐的10年，然后在最后一年，我们会对员工们说，‘如果今年我们不能再赚钱了，Mojang可能就会破产了。所以也许你们可以开始寻找新工作了。’”

这听起来太容易了。但是当我问Persson如果所有的这些谈话内容只是一个前提，并且将压力从他身上移走，他会怎么做。他坦白道：“你说的没错。我认为我们可以创造某些有趣且成功的内容的唯一方法边上我并没有对它们报以期待。”

几周后，我收到了他的邮件，他写道：“我最终再次开始编程。可能不会取得怎样的成绩，但是我再次感受到了高产的工作效率。”

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

The Wizard of Minecraft

By DAVID PEISNER

It’s a wet monday morning in Stockholm, and the door to Markus Persson’s office is closed. The wooden blinds to the windows that look out at the 35 employees of his company, Mojang, are drawn; his assistant tells me that he is in a meeting with his officemate, company co-founder Jakob Porser.

Forty minutes later, I find out why I’ve been kept waiting: Persson – one of the biggest taxpayers in Sweden, the creator of an estimated $2 billion company – has been at a PC playing a first-person shooter, headphones around his neck, furiously clicking a mouse with his eyes fixed on the screen. Next to him sits Porser, doing the same.

Persson swivels around in his chair and stands. He is bald and bulky, with a brown, scraggly beard, wearing a navy polo shirt and jeans, with a small tobacco pouch shoved under his top lip. He greets me amiably – then returns to the game, Borderlands 2. It’s the kind of slick, big-budget game that’s radically different from anything his company makes, but Persson says he’s been obsessed with it for weeks: “I feel like it’s consuming me.”

Every Friday, Persson lets his staff play video games or work on personal projects, but you don’t get the sense that the rest of the week is terribly hard for them either. The décor is Silicon Valley-meets-ironic-fox-hunting-lodge. In addition to the pool table, pinball machine, cinema room and Wurlitzer jukebox, there’s a wall of oil portraits depicting the staff posing in the style of 19th-century aristocrats: In Persson’s portrait, he wears an evening suit and a fedora, sitting haughtily in a chair, next to a large globe.

Persson – who is publicly known by his gamer handle, Notch – is warm in person, but often seems like he’s holding something back; he smiles so frequently it’s almost like a nervous tic, and when he speaks, he radiates low-key bemusement, as if he’s endlessly entertained by how his life has turned out. He routinely throws parties featuring arena-level DJs such as Avicii. In 2011, he hired Deadmau5 to perform at a Vegas party that Prince Harry was reported creeping out of in the wee hours of the morning. In 2012, he turned a venue in Paris into an orgy of pyro and LED, with Skrillex and A-Trak playing. Last year, Persson took the whole staff and their plus-ones to Monaco. A photo album on the office’s meeting table shows employees arriving via a fleet of private jets, driving around in Ferraris, riding in helicopters and partying on a yacht. “We want Mojang to be the company we always wanted to work for,” says Porser.

All of this is possible because of Minecraft: a side project of Persson’s that has become the most unlikely video-game success of the decade, attracting an estimated 100 million players to build and explore blocky, Lego-style worlds. There are no directions in Minecraft, no levels to advance to and no obvious goal. Players can explore a nearly infinite world, collect resources, dig tunnels and build just about anything they can imagine (small houses, famous landmarks, entire cities, models of the Starship Enterprise), while avoiding various dangers (plunging off cliffs, drowning, zombie attacks). “There are game-design rules that are carved in stone – about teaching people to play, having objectives, a character, an adversary,” says Peter Molyneux, the developer behind Dungeon Keeper. “Minecraft threw all that away.” Minecraft can be customized almost endlessly – there is an active, rabid community of gamers who create “mods”: everything from playable musical instruments to falling meteors to tornadoes.

——————-

At the heart of this world is Persson, an indie coder who is now a major tech figure – and who seems deeply unconcerned about following up his first success. In 2011, he handed over control of Minecraft to lead developer Jens Bergensten. None of Mojang’s current projects are exactly shooting for the stars: Its new game, Scrolls – a passion project for Porser – is profitable but makes “peanuts” next to Minecraft, according to Persson; the company’s other new initiative is Minecraft Realms, a monthly subscription service designed to make it easier for groups of players to play together.

Over the course of three days, Persson conducts interviews with me and holds one 10-minute meeting; almost all of the rest of his time is spent playing Borderlands 2. There are weeks when, Persson says, he does nothing but programming, but this isn’t one of them. He claims he’s starting to miss it. But at the end of the week, he and Porser are taking their families on a 10-day vacation to the Maldives. “So there’s no point in starting now.”

Persson spent his early childhood in a small, rural town, Edsbyn, three hours north of Stockholm; his father worked for the railroad, and his mother was a nurse. You can hear echoes of Minecraft’s simple wilderness in Persson’s description of his youth: “We lived in this area that was basically two circular roads next to each other,” he says. “There were forests and pastures and stuff. I remember walking around the forest quite a bit.” (He now says that the game’s landscapes “are based on a very Swedish perception of what these things are supposed to look like.”)

The family moved to Stockholm when Persson was seven. When he was about 12, his parents divorced, and his father moved to a cabin in the countryside. In the years that followed, his father suffered from depression. “My dad went to jail for bad stuff – robberies, break-ins – because he got stuck in substance abuse,” Persson says. “We had a really shaky period.”

Persson had taught himself to program on a Commodore 128 computer; he never finished high school, but at age 18 was hired as a programmer at a web-design company. He cycled through tech jobs during the late Nineties and early 2000s.

Stockholm was home to an indie gaming scene; Porser met Persson when they worked together at a game studio called King. “He’s a lot of fun and slightly weird, which I enjoyed,” Porser says. “He can be superhappy or superdown as well. There’s normally not a lot of in-between.”

Elin Zetterstrand, whom Persson would later marry, said he “seemed nice, very bright and somewhat sad.” It was during Persson’s off-hours at an online-photo-album company called jAlbum that he began working on Minecraft. He wrote the original version of the game alone in his Stockholm apartment in 2009; it took him about a week. The simple, blocky graphics were a result of Persson’s impatience getting the game finished. “I just wanted to make a game that could make enough money to make another game,” he says.

“Some people can’t see beyond the rather crude graphics,” says Molyneux. “But those are its strongest point. The fact that you quickly get the idea that you can put a block on top of another block means anybody can build anything.” Porser was one of those who didn’t get it at first. “I was like, ‘It’s good you’re keeping busy,’” he says now with a laugh. Persson’s other friends also preached caution (“typically Swedish,” he says).

In its first year, Minecraft sold roughly 20,000 downloads. By the end of 2010, it was often selling that many in a day. The community around the game kept growing: Players offered video tutorials suggesting features, pointing out bugs; YouTube channels were devoted to chronicling Minecraft exploits; forums sprang up discussing the game; players started podcasts, narrating their adventures. Minecraft was more than a game – it was a platform. Persson became gaming’s biggest celebrity. He currently has 1.6 million followers on Twitter, where his persona is jokey and brash (recently he called 2014 “the year I go full Sheen”; he’s also called the gaming giant EA a “bunch of cynical bastards” who are “destroying” gaming).

Unlike most of his friends, Persson’s father was a staunch supporter, encouraging him to strike out on his own during Minecraft’s early days. At the same time, his father’s demons were resurfacing. “He had medication for depression or bipolar stuff and started abusing it,” Persson says. “Then he started drinking again.”

On December 14th, 2011, his father committed suicide. “He got really drunk and apparently had a handgun,” Persson says quietly. “It was shocking. It took me a while to even realize it was real.

“I didn’t break down until I had to view his body at the funeral,” says Persson. “Everyone asked me, ‘Do you want some alone time?’ Probably because they realized I hadn’t been reacting much. They left and I just crumbled.

“It doesn’t hurt as much anymore,” he continues, but occasionally he worries that the dark clouds that engulfed his father also follow him around. “The depression, I’m worried about. With the creative stuff, I have highs of being very productive and lows of being not productive. I have that in my moods as well.”

In the aftermath of his father’s death, Persson started on a new project with an unpronounceable name, 0x10c. It was an ambitious game, set in space, that many saw as the natural follow-up to Minecraft. But as he worked, Persson felt hounded by expectations. His every Tumblr or Twitter update became fodder for gaming news sites. The stress wore on him.

In 2011, he married Zetterstrand, but the marriage soon foundered. Persson admits that his success had something to do with the relationship’s failure. “I never really had the fun teens of exploring the world, because I was sitting at home, learning programming,” he says. “Then everything started changing. I got the opportunity to do all the things I wanted to do. I could go to New York, hang out there and explore things.” He pauses. “It got more complicated.” He and Zetterstrand eventually divorced.

In 2013, he announced he was abandoning work on 0x10c. He’d hit a “creative block.” In August, he posted on his blog that he no longer felt like attempting “anything big.”

Now Persson says he wants to only work on things for fun. He lives alone in a multi-level penthouse in ?stermalm, an area of Stockholm “where the rich people live,” Persson tells me with a grin. The apartment is stark, with white, craggy stone walls that slope at odd angles, giving the impression that the place is a medieval fortress carved into a mountain. Nearly everything in it – walls, fixtures, furniture – is either white or black. The open kitchen, which looks mostly unused, abuts a walk-in wine cellar. A staircase leads to a second-story gaming loft, then continues to a small third-level perch that features only a chair, an ottoman and a magnificent view of Stockholm out its windows. I ask him if he’s got a girlfriend now, and he laughs: “I wouldn’t call it a girlfriend, but to paraphrase a comedian, ‘There’s a woman who would be upset if I said I didn’t have a girlfriend.’”

Persson says the apartment isn’t practical. The flatscreen TV in the gaming loft is built right over the elevator shaft, so those riding the elevator can hear the blast of guns and explosions. Nobody has complained, but once Persson discovered this, he stopped using it – “because I’m very Swedish, and I didn’t want to upset my neighbors.” (“There’s a classic Swedish social fixture called Jantelagen,” says developer Martin Jonasson, “which means you’re not supposed to flaunt your success. It’s a little bit rude to be making that much money.”) Persson is moving to another penthouse, one still being built. When it’s finished, he says, it will be the most expensive, per square meter, in Stockholm.

In March, Persson put on a huge San Francisco DJ blowout to raise awareness and cash for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “It’s a very stupid way to spend money,” says Persson of all his party-throwing. “But why not? People say, ‘You should invest it.’ So I can get more money to put in a pile? At least if you spend it, it goes back and does something, maybe.”

In the meantime, if Persson doesn’t come up with a successor to Minecraft, he has a 10-year plan for his staff. “Hopefully, we are going to keep making money at Mojang, but if we don’t, that’s fine,” he says. “We just have 10 fun years, and then, the last year, we’d say to our employees, ‘If we don’t make any money this year, Mojang is going to be dead.? So you might want to look for new jobs.’”

It all sounds too easy. But when I ask Persson if all this casual talk is a front, to take the pressure off himself, he confesses. “You’re absolutely correct,” he says. “I think the only way I could make something fun and big is if I don’t expect it to be.”

A few weeks later, he e-mails with some news: “I’m finally programming again,” he writes, almost sheepishly. “Probably won’t lead anywhere, but I feel productive.”(source: rollingstone)