Galway novelist Julian Gough has scripted the ending for the multi-million selling computer game Minecraft, which was recently launched in Las Vegas.
Markus Persson, developer of Minecraft, urgently needed an ending for the game and he sent out a message to his half a million followers on Twitter looking for “a talented writer (famous is a plus ;D )”.
In response Twitter recommended Julian Gough, the Berlin based writer, former Galway resident, and author of the novels Juno & Juliet, Jude in Ireland, which was shortlisted for the Wodehouse Prize, and the recently published Jude in London.
“I was stunned to get an email from Markus Persson,” says Julian. “In computer game terms, it’s like getting an email from Christopher Nolan asking if you’d like to write the ending to his next movie. He gave me total freedom, too - he said he just wanted to be surprised.”
Minecraft was released as an alpha version in 2009 with a beta version in 2010. The official release took place at MineCon 2011, the launch event for the game, on November 18. It was attended by 4,500 people.
At the event, Julian’s story scrolled up the screen for nine minutes at the end of the game. Minecraft had already sold four million copies before the official launch, and has 16 million registered players, making it the most successful independent computer game of the past few years. The game also won the inaugural GameCity Prize, the Booker Prize of computer gaming.
Julian believes Twitter recommended him as his stories and computer games share certain similarities.
“I guess gamers like my books,” he says. “They’re literature, but they’re equally influenced by Star Wars. At the start of Jude in London I destroy the universe. I think game players like the scale my stories operate on – they tend to be bigger than the average short story; more like science fiction.”
Julian will not reveal the ending he wrote for Minecraft but he will provide hints:
“At the end of a quest, the hero traditionally gets a message from a higher power; some revelation of their place in the universe,” he says, “so I wrote the story longhand, looking for that message.
“It took me a while to find the voice but by the end I was watching my hand racing across the page. It was kind of eerie, like I was taking dictation from something that could think much faster than me. So maybe the story at the end of Minecraft really is a message to us from a higher power
