Minecraft's creator will always be a hero to me, he gave my autistic son a voice

A new interview with Markus 'Notch' Persson paints the multimillionaire creator of the Lego-like blockbuster as a playboy-slacker, but I don't care

The billionaire creator of Minecraft has a $70m mansion in Beverly Hills complete with iPad-controlled fountains and a 16-car garage. He wastes his days making silly jokes in an empty "office" and his nights burning through hundreds of thousands of dollars in Las Vegas casinos. He doesn't need to create anymore; he could spend the rest of his life throwing handfuls of cash off his balcony into the balmy LA night. He may sound like a self-indulgent one-hit wonder, but Markus "Notch" Persson is a hero of mine. Persson helped give my son a voice.

A new Forbes interview with the coder-turned-playboy-slacker, paints Sweden's most famous export since Abba in a weird light. For several years, Persson worked on Minecraft with a small team and no budget. It was just another creative sandbox game, a tiny indie project that not many people knew or cared about. But by the time it officially launched in November 2011, it had a large dedicated community of fans. This was a game that put you in a vast blocky world and let you do what you wanted, build what you wanted, and play how you wanted. Word kept spreading.

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