Bonus: Good Bad Billionaire: Minecraft’s maker

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 27 April 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A bonus episode from Good Bad Billionaire - the award-winning podcast from the BBC World Service. You can find more episodes by searching for ‘Good Bad Billionaire’ wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Minecraft is the most successful computer game ever. It's sold 300 million copies, built an active community of fans and there's now even a Minecraft movie. So how did one man - Markus Persson - create it all by himself, before selling it for billions?

BBC business editor Simon Jack and journalist Zing Tsjeng find out how a high school dropout, obsessed with Lego and gaming, became a computer game hero. The Swedish programmer, known by the nickname Notch, built a virtual 3D world where, with the help of a pickaxe, players could harness their creativity to build almost anything, one block at a time. Persson founded the video game development company Mojang Studios, before selling it to Microsoft, but then came a spectacular downfall.

Good Bad Billionaire is the podcast exploring the lives of the super-rich and famous, tracking their wealth, philanthropy, business ethics and success. There are leaders who made their money in Silicon Valley, on Wall Street and in high street fashion. From iconic celebrities and CEOs to titans of technology, the podcast unravels tales of fortune, power, economics, ambition and moral responsibility, before inviting you to make up your own mind: are they good, bad or just another billionaire?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Simon Jack, the BBC's business editor.
0:03.2	And I'm Zing Singh, author, journalist and podcaster.
0:05.5	And we're here to introduce you to our podcast, Good, Bad Billionaire,
0:09.2	which as listeners of the documentary, we think you'll really like.
0:12.6	It's all about the minds, the motives and the money of some of the world's richest people.
0:16.8	Yeah, we look at their life stories, their wealth and how they made their billions,
0:20.5	but it's much more than that, isn't it?
0:22.4	It certainly is we look at things like their business ethics, their legacy,
0:26.6	and how many of their billions they gave away.
0:28.7	So we wanted to give you a little taster with one of our favorite recent episodes.
0:32.7	It's all about Marcus Person, the man who created Minecraft,
0:36.2	the most successful video game of all time.
0:38.9	We hope you enjoy it, and if you want to hear more episodes, just search for good, bad
0:42.6	billionaire, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
0:46.6	It's May 2009 in a small flat in the Swedish capital. A stocky man sits hunched over his
0:52.7	keyboard. The room is cluttered, there's empty coffee
0:55.5	cups, paper scribbled with ideas, the bad ones crinkled up on the floor. It's dark outside. The only
1:00.8	light is the blue glow of his computer monitor. He's furiously typing code. It's JavaScript.
1:06.9	Gobbledy gook to most, but practically his native language. On the other screen, a world begins to emerge.
1:13.5	It's rough and blocky, grass, dirt, and even a pixelated figure with blue eyes and a dark beard.
1:19.2	He types more code, hits return, tugs at his beard as he watches his little avatar start digging up blocks on the screen.
1:26.6	Outside, dawn is breaking over Stockholm,
	...

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