Given Notch's very obvious declining interest in Minecraft, it is better that he isn't making decisions about it. Jeb has already been doing most of the work, so it would seem to me that the main effect is that he now doesn't have to listen to someone who has to struggle to remain interested in the game's development. Should be an improvement overall.
Of course, I am still not sure how great at game design either one is. Minecraft has some good basics, but that doesn't indicate to me how good the long-term development will be (so far it hasn't been that great, imho).
Given Notch's very obvious declining interest in Minecraft, it is better that he isn't making decisions about it. Jeb has already been doing most of the work, so it would seem to me that the main effect is that he now doesn't have to listen to someone who has to struggle to remain interested in the game's development. Should be an improvement overall.
Of course, I am still not sure how great at game design either one is. Minecraft has some good basics, but that doesn't indicate to me how good the long-term development will be (so far it hasn't been that great, imho).
As to the work habits of notch and jeb i dont think any of us are in a position to assume anything.
However i do think your second point has some validity. However Mojang is a new company and will probably get better with time.
As to the work habits of notch and jeb i dont think any of us are in a position to assume anything.
Notch takes numerous breaks, works on other projects, makes a post on his blog about how he loses interest in things before they get finished, steps down from lead developer, etc, etc. I think we can certainly make comments regarding Notch's interest in a game he's been working on less and less after all that.
Granted, I don't know much about Jeb's feelings on programming Minecraft, but I think it seems fairly likely he's more interested in it than Notch at this point, given the above.
And the next pre-release will make wool re-grow. Jeb is like Minecraft's saviour, Minecraft was getting stuffed with things the community didn't want and things we did want were never added. Jeb is adding the things we want and making what we don't like better.
To be fair, bug fixes and ironing out blatant problems is very good, but it is quite different from designing new features. We really don't know much about how good Jeb is at doing that.
Notch is lazy, no doubt about it with all of his vacations and clear lack of interest the last 4-6 months. I have confidence that Jeb will do much much better, and actually finish the game finally instead of throwing some more half assed features in the game.
To be fair, bug fixes and ironing out blatant problems is very good, but it is quite different from designing new features. We really don't know much about how good Jeb is at doing that.
Considering there's a lot more bugs that still need to be fixed, and existing features that really need adjustment, than there are new features that need to be designed and added right now, I don't see a problem here.
My hope and expectations for Minecraft have increased dramatically with this news. Notch just didn't care about the game anymore, but now Jeb will hopefully make the game as great as it can be. The first snapshot already shows that things are moving in the right direction. How long have we had apples? Forever? And it took Jeb being in charge to finally put them where they make sense - Trees.
So it seems that Notch has stepped down as the lead designer of minecraft and handed development to jens.
what do you guys think?
here's a link to his oblog post.
Of course, I am still not sure how great at game design either one is. Minecraft has some good basics, but that doesn't indicate to me how good the long-term development will be (so far it hasn't been that great, imho).
As to the work habits of notch and jeb i dont think any of us are in a position to assume anything.
However i do think your second point has some validity. However Mojang is a new company and will probably get better with time.
Notch takes numerous breaks, works on other projects, makes a post on his blog about how he loses interest in things before they get finished, steps down from lead developer, etc, etc. I think we can certainly make comments regarding Notch's interest in a game he's been working on less and less after all that.
Granted, I don't know much about Jeb's feelings on programming Minecraft, but I think it seems fairly likely he's more interested in it than Notch at this point, given the above.
Oh god dont even joke about that.
To be fair, bug fixes and ironing out blatant problems is very good, but it is quite different from designing new features. We really don't know much about how good Jeb is at doing that.
I'm not very impressed with how Notch has handled things over the last year, to put it mildly.
This.
Considering there's a lot more bugs that still need to be fixed, and existing features that really need adjustment, than there are new features that need to be designed and added right now, I don't see a problem here.