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this cat is cooler than i’ll ever be
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Hey, guess what, I have a BETTER ANSWER
The answer in question?
Zach Barth.
Zachary Barth is an indie game genius, and creator of plenty of amazing and original games that take a unique, ‘problem-solving’ approach to puzzle games. His games are usually distinguished by not having single set solution, despite being puzzle games - in fact, you can come up with better solutions that the creator has intended, and even compete with people online in seeing who finds the most efficient solutions.
His company’s (Zachtronics) probably best-known game is SpaceChem, but it is notable that some of his latest games bridge the gap between ‘puzzle games’ and ‘gamified engineering’, containing elements of microchip design and coding in Assembly language.
So what does this guy have to do with Minecraft? Well, once upon a time - long before anyone dreamed of Minecraft, before Zach was an indie star, he created a small game called Infinifrag.
It was a simple multiplayer shooter, but with a twist - players could build blocks to use as cover - making it probably the first ever ‘block game’.
Eventually, the game concept evolved - it turned out that players liked building much more than simple combat, so around 2008 Zach made a new game, more focused on these aspects - Infiniminer.
The players needed to mine resources to build structures, while there was also combat. You will notice that the pixel art aesthetic and all major mechanics of what would become Minecraft were already there. A lot more was planned for it, like different biomes (co-developers mention forests and volcaones etc).
And then… the source code leaked. For an online-focused game, especially a small one, this was a death sentence - this meant that people could cheat with impunity, however they wanted. Zach basically gave up on the game.
Enter… Markus Persson.
Markuss Person is a very average indie dev. If you look at the games he made, you will find that he has very few original ideas - most of his output is clones or remixes of other games - including his own, as he made several demakes of Minecraft. Outside that, his “4k” games, Infinite Mario Bros… He’s not the most original person around, suffice to say. Unsurprisingly, his love for remaking other people’s games with either lowered or increased scopes showed up again - he decided that since Zach Barth gave up on Infiniminer, it’d be alright to code a clone of it from scratch. He called the new game “Minecraft”.
And the rest is history.
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