Notch plans Elite-meets-Firefly space trading sim

Minecraft creator Markus ‘Notch’ Persson is dreaming about making an Elite-ish sandbox space trading sim with first-person influences from Firefly, sharing ideas out loud. It’s very early days, but Persson says he has started working on it.

March 23, 2012 10:00 AM16

Minecraft creator Markus ‘Notch’ Persson is dreaming about making an Elite-ish sandbox space trading sim with Firefly-inspired on-ship fun, sharing his ideas out loud. It’s very early days, but Persson says he has started working on it.

“I want the space game that’s more like Firefly,” Persson told PC Gamer. “I want to run around on my ship and have to put out a fire. Like, oh crap, the cooling system failed, I have to put out the fire here.”

“The goal is to do it the same way I did Minecraft,” he explained. “Just basically have me work on it for a while, and then we’ll add people as needed, and try to charge as soon as possible, because it’s probably going to be open ended sandbox game as well, so it doesn’t need to be completed before people can play it.”

Ever the Tweety man, Persson’s confirming that he has indeed started making it. He also said that he fancies a “ship that feels like the one in Alien rather than Star Trek,” and a dream about a glowing warp core made him realise, “I need a fancy lighting engine.” He also commented that the genre “hasn’t been done right since” Elite.

Fingers crossed that work on this does continue merrily, as space is quite lovely. Or, if not, that someone else does. “If someone steals the idea before me, that’s totally fine,” Persson said. “I just want to play that game.