It was a programming experiment. I'll break it down nice and simply for you, because you seem to be projecting what you're actually doing onto me. Notch wanted to make a computer game. It was an experiment, because he hadn't made a computer game before, and he didn't know if he could make a game. He didn't know if he could make a computer game with Java, but he figured he probably could strongly enough that he attempted to make a computer game programmed in Java. In short, hypothesis: I can program a computer game in Java. Result: Hypothesis confirmed. Lessons learned: Maybe not Java next time.