> the author made little to no meaningful contributions to Minecraft's success
Any success exists because of the sum of its parts. I have never played Minecraft, but I've played Portal. The ending to Portal was emotional, it was the cherry on top of a great game. That song and the emotion that came with it is still ingrained in me and is part of why I still recommend Portal to people who haven't played it.
Would I have played the game without the song? Probably. Would it have made the same impact without it? I don't think so. Emotion is a large part of why people play games, so that poem might actually have an impact.
Does that mean he deserved more? I don't know, €20k seems reasonable. But I think you underestimate the impact something like a poem can have.
I'm not saying that all poems in video games or all endings to video games are as little impact as Minecraft's. Portal would be a great example of an ending that was a significantly greater part of the whole.
I'm specifically referring to Minecraft, where the poem is largely disconnected from the rest of the game and doesn't pertain to any narrative or story (Minecraft doesn't have a story, it's a sandbox game). It's a cool poem, but it isn't part of the important bits that made Minecraft the colossal success that it is.
I've played both and it's apples to oranges, dry rotten oranges. In portal the story slowly builds up into the grand finale and the ending is indeed emotional knot to tie up the story with a bow.
In minecraft you have a a long preparing to do before frustrating boss fight followed by some scrolling text you likely won't be bothered to read and skip thinking "Well, that was a waste of time." (Not by a fault of the poem but by a fault of game design.) Minecraft is a great sandbox and world exploration game. I see why they wanted to add an "ending" (to make it clear it's out of beta, (releasing on time)) but the ending doesn't make much sense game-wise.
Eh, the ending to Minecraft was very much an afterthought. A huge number of players have never even attempted it. And the poem at the end is... frequently skipped, even on the first go-around. It's nowhere near the level of the ending to Portal.
I'm not taking any side here but I don't think your comparison holds.
Portal is as much a story-driven game as it is about the mechanics. I know very few people who played Portal after they finished it, except maybe replaying it.
Contrast to Minecraft, where at least my peer group (adults already as of 2011), just spent hours, days, months building stuff on a map, completely ignoring the "story". I actually heard about this poem for the first time when I read this piece.
I've never finished Minecraft, but I guess I spent a few hundred hours building stuff and in my opinion, "played" it more than other games. But that doesn't mean I'm in any way stating an opinion about compensation or who did something wrong or how important anything is.
Any success exists because of the sum of its parts. I have never played Minecraft, but I've played Portal. The ending to Portal was emotional, it was the cherry on top of a great game. That song and the emotion that came with it is still ingrained in me and is part of why I still recommend Portal to people who haven't played it.
Would I have played the game without the song? Probably. Would it have made the same impact without it? I don't think so. Emotion is a large part of why people play games, so that poem might actually have an impact.
Does that mean he deserved more? I don't know, €20k seems reasonable. But I think you underestimate the impact something like a poem can have.