That's an interesting observation, and a thoughtful one. So I'm having some trouble expressing my disagreement, but I'll try my best.

But Notch doesn't care that it exists. He's never taken any action against them besides saying "Eh, it's kinda ripoff-y" when asked that one time. And really, a game isn't better now because it will be better later. That's silly. Minecraft is very much its own thing at this point; it's not the Dwarf Fortress clone it…

HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO REMAIN CALM AT A TIME LIKE THIS!?

I would say that that's basic scientific fact, yes.

Is it...fate?

There's not a single living creature in that image that ISN'T just pumped out of its mind for adventure.

Don't forget the enemies of hubris, self-doubt, and misalloted skillpoints.

A quick google search gives me this: [twitter.com]

Following Notch on Twitter, G+, and his blog, he always seems super chill, and very gracious to his fans.

A vendetta, really? I've seen mostly disinterest from Notch on the issue. The only substantive thing I've ever seen him say about the game (except for tweeted reassurances of "we're not suing" and "they're totally legal") came from an Ars Technica look at Minecraft-like games:

[www.pastemagazine.com]

"I agree with you that pretension is never warranted, and is, in my mind, among the least acceptable character traits."

I'm really excited for this series. I loved the FFVII letters; they had a thoughtfulness that, at risk of sounding maudlin, shed light and beauty on a game that I hadn't considered for many years.

They actually discussed that in those letters. They seemed to agree that, yes, the graphics were technically speaking ugly as hell, but they were charmed in that the figures weren't intended to be realistic depictions; instead, they were an abstract sort of shorthand, drawn up with the expectation that the imagination…

I have almost zero opinions about whether or not people are pretentious dicks. They can do and act and take whatever tone they want, I don't care.

That's fair enough; I just don't think that he spends all that much time talking about his work. Certainly, there are many developers who talk much more about what they do than he does. And even if he DID talk all the time, should we consider it a failure of their work that devs don't develop 24 hours a day?

So "beating" is an entirely arbitrary metric?

You probably shouldn't feel so threatened by one dude with differing opinions.

I'm going to get slightly crotchety here for a moment. Apologies in advance.

"But I dislike the increasingly common narrative about the scrappy independent game developer, who's intellect can outshine teams of 300 professional game designers. It's a little ridiculous. "