There’s only a handful of rounded game development personalities who can be slotted into the square hole of showbusiness. Cliffy B used to don his leather pants and do the rounds on American TV couches, and Rockstar sent Laslow to conduct radio interviews for GTA V. But Notch? Notch was the introvert hidden under a fedora – right up until he walked through Craig Ferguson’s stage door last night.
Persson appeared on the Late Late Show, just before the lead from CBS comedy 2 Broke Girls, and seemed quite at home in Ferguson’s artificial living-room-cum-oval-office.
The interview, pitched by Notch as “nine minutes of me trashing Mario Kart”, actually wound up quite sweet. Ferguson deftly informalised the whole affair with a bowl of chocolate coins, and the two shared a 10 minute chat in which Notch kept his answers clipped and his audience laughing with deadpan corrections.
Ferguson is a good host, playing his ignorance for laughs without ever resorting to diminishing Notch’s work or his medium.
The pair managed to cover the nature of Minecraft, somewhat vaguely, as well as the “bitchiness” (Craig’s word) of online games discussion, rubber-banding in Mario Kart, and how long Mojang can remain independent before they’re “absorbed by the Borg”:
Despite this quiet success, Notch is not about to become a proper TV personality – he reportedly agreed to the show only because he was a fan of Craig’s. Should he, though?Thanks, Kotaku.