I'm trying to compare this to my career to think of what I would do...
If I self-published a half-finished novel, and charged a small fee for it, as a way to get some feedback and gauge interest in the final product, and the sales of that half a novel exploded into millions of dollars, what would I do? How motivated would I be to continue to work on that novel? Especially after hundreds of impatient fans had already constructed their own endings, and no matter what I did with the rest of the novel, it would look like I was incorporating fan fiction, I might not care much about the project anymore.
I would probably start on a whole new novel, filled with the confidence that it will do well, no matter what I do with it.
Notch reminds me of the guy in this DirecTV commercial:
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If I self-published a half-finished novel, and charged a small fee for it, as a way to get some feedback and gauge interest in the final product, and the sales of that half a novel exploded into millions of dollars, what would I do? How motivated would I be to continue to work on that novel? Especially after hundreds of impatient fans had already constructed their own endings, and no matter what I did with the rest of the novel, it would look like I was incorporating fan fiction, I might not care much about the project anymore.
I would probably start on a whole new novel, filled with the confidence that it will do well, no matter what I do with it.
Point. Once you've got that kind of cash, everything you do becomes a hobby.
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