Maybe. On the other hand, people do things every day for the love of it that get little traction in the market place. It seems more likely this confluence is just a coincidence.

I wonder if it might be a requirement (or nearly) for run-away successes though, while obviously not sufficient for it.

Careful, you never know if Malcolm Gladwell is lurking here.

I'm not aware of that reference... care to enlighten me? The wikipedia entry didn't really answer it for me.

Malcolm Gladwell writes books about "success" where he uses many anecdotal (albeit fascinating) stories to come to a very vague conclusion of how people can be "successful". GP was referring to "qualities of success" (passion, writing something for yourself), which don't necessarily cause success.

It was tongue-in-cheek.

Thanks, well put, just what I meant.

If software done under these requirements, the world will see more compilers and far fewer ERP systems.

Not just coincidence. I've bought quite a lot of indie games the last few years but Minecraft is one of the few I recommend, no, urge my friends to buy.

It's genuine fun, different and has QWAN.

I agree, and I think that's a lot of it. Minecraft isn't a very typical game, nor a game that you would ever see out of a blockbuster publisher. It seems like its success is because of this, not despite it. Rather than be a formulaic FPS, RTS, RPG, etc, it's something (fairly) new that leaves it up to the player to have fun with. I've heard the comparison to Lego frequently, and I think it's an apt one. Most videogames today play more like movies, but sometimes it's nice to have a game that you can play with how you like.

(This post started out about being about being willing to ignore conventions, but drifted somewhat into the nature of gameplay, sorry.)

Survivorship bias.

Yep... after all, I can (anecdotally) point to a number of successful businesses in which the founders were simply trying to get rich.

He's also really awesome at coding. I had a similar idea several years ago after seeing how horrible all the MMORPG crafting engines were. In fact I may have even posted something to that effect on HN. I would have loved playing it, and even started sketching some designs. But I gave up pretty quickly, distracted by other things, and even if I had stuck with it, it probably wouldn't have ever been much more than a proof of concept to anyone but me.

I used to think that as well until I read about "Infiminer", the open sourced XNA Minecraft predecessor. Now I think he just saw an opportunity.

http://minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Infiniminer

Oh my god, I used to play Starcraft with Zach back in college.

This is the first time I've seen him referenced "in the wild"

It was actually created for a (for fun/ego) contest. People had such a positive reaction to the early version that he just continued to build onto it.

He also is responsible for Left 4k Dead (another contest entry) if you remember that from a year or so ago.