Onward and upward - that's basically what the outspoken developer Markus 'Notch' Persson is saying as he hands the reigns of Minecraft over to his colleague Jens Bergensten. With Jens Bergensten leading the development charge on Minecraft, Persson will be able to shift his attention to the company's newest project - which was not revealed.
"[It's a] scary move, but I feel strangely confident," Persson told Gamasutra. "I guess we've worked close enough for long enough for me to feel confident about it."
"He's exactly what Minecraft needs right now. He's a bit more mod friendly than I am, and we need to embrace mods more," he added.
Persson's move follows the game being officially released last month after two years of development. He admitted that turning over the game's continued and seemingly never-ending development duties to his colleague was a difficult decision to make.
"Yes, it was [tough]... not to hand it to him - he's the perfect match - but just reaching the decision. It's my baby, after all!"
Bergensten said that they had planned on doing this for quite some time but the timing seemed right.
"I'm not sure when the idea came up the first time (from Notch), but it has been a few months now," he told us. "We all knew that Notch was going to work on other things after release, so it kind of seemed natural for me to 'take over'".
Bergensten's first major challenge will be to create a mod API for Minecraft, a frequently requested feature from fans.
"Until January I will be the only developer on Minecraft, so things will have to be slow initially. But my absolute main priority now is to create a mod API, because there is no way in hell I will be able to add as much content as the whole internet can do," he said. "The game needs an API, so end users can obtain the mods without hassle.... I'm not going to do it all by myself though. We have a new programmer beginning in January, and we are talking to existing mod API teams, such as Bukkit, Minecraft Forge, and Minecraft Coder Pack."
Bergensten estimates that the API will be done no sooner than March 2012.
Source: Gamasutra
