The early days of 0x10c.
Over the weekend, news filtered out from US Gamer that the sandbox space project known as 0x010c would no longer be developed by Notch. That news post focused on the interesting efforts of a community subreddit to resurrect the game under the name Project Trillek. Notch had talked about 0x010c during a Team Fortress 2 livestream and indicated that the project was no longer being worked on.
Today, he’s published a blog post explaining some of the reasons behind that decision. Some of them are to do with him apparently being sick of the press reporting on his every move (while being fully aware of why this happens) so, um, sorry Notch.
Anyway, he explains that there was a lot of motivation to make 0x010c to begin with, but that began to wane over time. In part due to the pressure of now being an ‘established name’ following Minecraft’s huge success.
What I hadn’t considered was that a lot more people cared about my games now. People got incredibly excited, and the pressure of suddenly having people care if the game got made or not started zapping the fun out of the project. I spent a lot of time thinking about if I even wanted to make games any more.
He adds that he’s very happy to see the community work on Project Trillek:
Some people in the 0x10c community decided to work together to make their own version of their game, called Project Trillek. I find this absolutely amazing. I want to play this game so much, but I am not the right person to make it. Not any more. I’m convinced a new team with less public interest can make a vastly superior game than what I would make.
Reflecting on Shambles the recent game he made as part of the 7dfps event, he says this is the type of project he wants to pursue in future: “smaller games that can fail.” All very understandable, as there’s no point developing something you no longer feel much passion for.
