Jens Bergensten, designer and main programmer of Minecraft, built his professional career on sheer talent and creative input he added to a major company called Mojang.
Jens Bergensten has been working in Mojang since 2009 in Stockholm (Sweden).
At that time, he had been hired to devote himself to the development of Scrolls. During a Christmas vacation, he stayed alone at the company’s offices and made several changes to Minecraft, modifications that had the approval of Notch, the original creator of the game.
In today’s text we will talk about his journey to the top, how he became as known as he is today and how much is this talented man actually worth.
Early Years
Jens Jeb Bergensten was born on May 18th 1979 in Sweden in a city called Orebro. By many characteristics, Jens was just a normal child, went to school and spend his childhood days like all the other kids. What set his apart from the others, was the fact that he stared programming when he was only 11 years old.
He used basic tools to create basic games and learned his skills slowly on his own.
When he reached age of 21, he started working as a modder and mapper in Quake III Arena.
His next job was as the C++ and as a Java programmer for a company called Korkeken Interactive Studios. This company later became the world famous company called Oblivion.
There isn’t much information about Jen’s private life and childhood years, because people are more focused on his work in the game development industry.
We know that he got his master’s degree from Malmo University in 2008 and after that decided to fully commit to his programming career.
Career path
Like we already mentioned, since he was very young, Jen was working as a programmer and started learning his skills on his own. His first job was at the Quake III Arena. He worked there hard and soon he transferred to a company called Korkeken Interactive Studio, that later became Oblivion.
He mostly worked on role playing games, the one he mentioned especially is the Whispers in Akarra. The game later “died” because the team wasn’t happy with the end results. After getting his masters degree in 2008, he managed to start his own game development company called Oxeye Game Studio together with Hammarber and Brynolf.
Their biggest success was the game Harvest: Massive Encounter. Until 2010 he worked for Planeto, an online knowledge community. Since 2010, he started working for a famous company called Mojang, where he worked as a developer for Scrolls. He was working on creating main parts for Minecraft, when Persson decided to give up this position. This was the moment that changed his career, and everything started from Minecraft.
According to his story, he made a crucial change to Minecraft game which completely changed the course of the game.
Video games have become during the last time one of the strongest industries in the entertainment area. Every day millions of people play different types of titles, be it from their cell phones, consoles or computers.
One game that has been highlighted in this sea of available releases is Minecraft, a title that was born from the indie world in 2011 but reached such a level of success that its parent company Mojang was acquired by Microsoft in 2014, for no less than US $ 2,500 million.
This title that imitates the 8-bit aesthetic of the reminiscent consoles of the 90s invites its players only to one task: to create constructions with cubes and blocks. It is precisely this feature that has allowed the game to sell up to 50 million copies, becoming the most popular independent title in history.
If you compare Minecraft with other construction “sandbox” games, I think it stands out for its graphics, and the block shapes that allow anyone to participate. Also, as the graphic resolution is simpler the playing field is somewhat level. On the other hand, I think that the fantasy world of Minecraft also draws attention to many players.
He often says that he still doesn’t fully understand how big Minecraft is, because they are in the middle of it. For us it is a job that we love and to which we return every day, and we hope that it stays that way for a long time.
A great impact that caused Minecraft and Notch (creator of the game) was to quickly reach the players. This game was released only after two weeks of development, and since then we have always had an open discussion with our fans about improvements and new releases. Minecraft created, even, a whole new genre in the construction titles of “game box” or sandbox.
Some say that Minecraft is more of a “children’s game” in Latin America than in other regions. Although many minors play this title, within the English-speaking audience it is much more open to other types of players.
One clear difference I can see is that we are now planning more and more and thinking about the future. In addition, there are many more people helping us so we no longer work with day-to-day planning.
They say they want to continue adding new tools. New items, new monsters, new blocks. They are also doing a great technological development, and we hope that “Minecraft: Pocket Edition” will begin to have access to our subscription service “Minecraft Realms”.
The Minecraft can only be classified as a phenomenon. The game that imitates the aesthetics of the 8 bits of the noventeras consoles – everything is pixelazo-, in which the users can create worlds with constructions with cubes and texture, has managed to captivate so many young people that holds the record of being the indie game most sold in history, with more than 50 million copies.
His legions of fans around the world have contributed to Minecraft, launched on the market in 2011 by Markus Persson – better known as Notch -, has achieved a series of milestones, among which is having the largest number of players recurring in a Minecraft world on a YouTube channel server Yogscast (2,622 people) or have an exact replica of a country in its universe: Denmark.
The fact is that the madness for this world of pixelated blocks reached such a level that, in 2014, Microsoft acquired its parent company Mojang for US $ 2,500 million. Thus, with this and other operations, it is estimated that Markus Persson has a fortune of more than US $ 1,300 million at 36 years.
Someone who could work closely in the creation of the entire Minecraft universe is the game designer Jens Bergensten, who came to work for the company in 2010 and who, after Persson’s resignation, became the main designer and developer of this game.
The development of a game, in general, is quite complex, so I would not say Minecraft is special, our challenge is always how to deal with performance and memory when everyone in the game is so big and dynamic.
The Minecraft project for the Microsoft HoloLens is really spectacular, with both the way the game is projected onto a wall and a window into another world, and a way in which the world is positioned as a miniature in a table in front of you, the project is very cool and we have a couple of ideas on how to use this in a game perspective, but HoloLens technology alone is not primarily intended for games.
Jen’s Bergensten’s net worth is estimated at around 10$ million. This number could be higher and it will definitely rise in future, since Jens is still working on new projects. He is still a part of the Majong Company that was bought by Microsoft. We can assume that his net worth is quite astonishing and that his talent is something that sets him apart from the others in this work.
Personal life
Jens spent most of his childhood and adult life in Sweden, where he was born. In 2013 he got married to Jenny Bergensten and so far the couple doesn’t have any children. In his, so far, astonishing career, Jens received many awards.
Like we already mentioned, Jen’s is a pretty private guy and we don’t have much information about his private and personal life.
In most of his interviews, he speaks about his job and Minecraft, so there is no way to find out how he spends his days off.
We can assume that he likes to play games and work more on developing his skills.
Even though he is a public figure, he manages to keep his private life very closed off from the public, which is an amazing thing to do in today’s world.
On his social media accounts, he mostly posts photos with his wife Jenny and often shares commercials for his new projects.
Quick summary
Full name: Jen Bergensten
Date of birth: May 18th 1979
Birthplace: Orebro, Sweden
Age: 40
Profession: Game designer, Programmer
Height: 1.85 m
Weight: 85
Net Worth: $50 million
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