Jens Bergensten

Jens Peder Bergensten (born 18 May 1979), also known as Jeb or Jeb_, is a Swedish video game programmer and designer. He is best known as the lead designer of Minecraft,[1][2][3] and currently serves as the Chief Creative Officer of Mojang Studios. In 2013, he, along with Minecraft creator Markus Persson, was named as one of Time's 100 most influential people in the world.[4] As an employee of Mojang Studios, he had been co-developing Minecraft with Persson since 2010, became the lead designer in 2011, and assumed full control in 2014, when Persson left the company after its acquisition.[5]

Jens Bergensten
Bergensten at Minecon in 2011
Born
Jens Peder Bergensten

(1979-05-18) 18 May 1979
Örebro, Sweden
NationalitySwedish
Other names
  • Jeb
  • Jeb_
Alma materLund University
Occupation(s)Video game programmer and designer
Known forBeing a lead developer of Minecraft
Spouse
Jenny Bergensten
​
(m. 2013)​
Children1

Personal life

Jens Peder Bergensten[6] was born on 18 May 1979[7][8] in Örebro, Sweden.[9]

On 11 May 2013, Bergensten married photographer Jenny Bergensten (née Thornell).[10] On 10 December 2015, Bergensten had a son, Björn.[11]

Career

Bergensten started programming his first games at 11 years old, using BASIC and Turbo Pascal.[12] By age 21, he was a mapper and modder for the first-person shooter game Quake III Arena.[13] He worked as a C++ and Java programmer for the game developer Korkeken Interactive Studio, which went bankrupt and became Oblivion Entertainment.[14] After the insolvency of Oblivion Entertainment, Bergensten moved to Malmö and earned a master's degree in computer science at Lund University in 2008.[12][15]

Early standalone projects

During his time working at Korkeken, Bergensten spent his free time leading the development for the online role-playing game Whispers in Akarra, which entertained a small playerbase of several hundred players. He later discontinued this project after straying from the team's original creative vision for the project.[16] Bergensten publicly released the world editors and source code for Akarra's server client in 2008.[17]

Afterwards he founded the indie game development company Oxeye Game Studio with Daniel Brynolf and Pontus Hammarber, who wanted to create a spiritual successor to Whispers in Akarra. The studio's first project was Dawn of Daria, a self-described "massively-multiplayer fantasy life simulator". After several public alpha tests, the project was discontinued like its predecessor, and Oxeye Games Studio switched their focus to various game jam project and tech demos. The company was soon known for the real-time strategy game Harvest: Massive Encounter and later the platform games Cobalt and Cobalt WASD.

Until 24 November 2010, Bergensten worked for the online knowledge community; Planeto.[18][19]

Mojang Studios

In November 2010, Bergensten was hired as Mojang's back-end developer for Scrolls (now known as Caller's Bane). He later began programming increasingly significant parts of Minecraft until he became its lead designer in December 2011, taking over from Markus Persson.[2] Bergensten was part of the team that developed Catacomb Snatch as part of Humble Bundle Mojam, a game jam. In recent years Bergensten has been featured in the teaser videos for Minecraft Live along with Agnes Larsson.

Currently, Bergensten serves as the Chief Creative Officer of Mojang Studios.[20]

Games developed

Awards and nominations
Year Nominated work Category Award Result Notes Ref
2011 Minecraft Best Debut Game, Innovation Award, Best Downloadable Game Game Developers Choice Awards Won [21]

References
  1. Tom Senior (2 December 2011). "Notch steps down as Minecraft lead designer, plans to start new projects". PC Gamer. Retrieved 6 January 2012.
  2. Markus Persson (2 December 2011). "Och med dom orden så passar jag micken". Archived from the original on 6 January 2015. Retrieved 6 January 2012.
  3. "Minecraft has just beaten Tetris as the best selling video game of all time". MSPoweruser. 17 May 2019. Retrieved 28 November 2019.
  4. Wright, Will. "The 2013 TIME 100". Time. ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved 28 November 2019.
  5. Goldberg, Daniel; Larsson, Linus (2 June 2015). "The Unlikely Story of Microsoft's Surprise Minecraft Buyout". Wired. Condé Nast. Archived from the original on 9 June 2020. Retrieved 15 July 2020.
  6. Locker, Melissa (16 September 2014). "Dear Microsoft: Please Don't Screw Up Minecraft. Sincerely, Parents". TIME.com. Retrieved 8 January 2017.
  7. Bergensten, Jens [@jeb_] (4 March 2013). "I will turn 34 in May" (Tweet). Retrieved 20 April 2014 – via Twitter.
  8. Bergensten, Jens [@jeb_] (4 March 2013). "18th!" (Tweet). Retrieved 20 April 2014 – via Twitter.
  9. Bergensten, Jens [@jeb_] (8 June 2011). "@Jacon_ I'm from Örebro originally, but I've lived in Malmö for 7 years" (Tweet). Retrieved 1 November 2022 – via Twitter.
  10. Bergensten, Jens [@jeb_] (11 November 2013). "So... For the record, I was married to photographer Jenny Bergensten (born Thornell) on May 11, 2013. Happy now, wikipedia?! :)" (Tweet). Retrieved 15 November 2013 – via Twitter.
  11. Scandinavian Traveler. "JENS BERGENSTEN – A CREATIVE MIND BEHIND MINECRAFT". Archived from the original on 4 August 2019. Retrieved 4 August 2019.
  12. Markus Persson (19 November 2010). "Introducing: Jens!". Archived from the original on 31 March 2012. Retrieved 7 March 2012.
  13. "Interview with Khaile (alias Jens Bergensten)". Archived from the original on 27 September 2013. Retrieved 7 March 2012.
  14. "Oblivion Entertainment - Moby Games". Retrieved 7 March 2012.
  15. Jens Bergensten. "LinkedIn Profile". LinkedIn. Retrieved 5 October 2019.
  16. "Whispers in Akarra". Archived from the original on 25 March 2004. Retrieved 12 April 2014.
  17. "Oxeye Game Studio » Blog Archive » Whispers in Akarra, Server Source". Retrieved 30 November 2021.
  18. "The Credits - planeto.com". Archived from the original on 19 January 2012. Retrieved 7 March 2012.
  19. Jens Bergensten (24 November 2010). "jeb_: Last day at #planeto". Twitter. Retrieved 7 March 2012.
  20. "Credits". Minecraft.net. Retrieved 9 June 2023.
  21. "Archive - 11th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards". Game Developers Choice Awards. 27 April 2021. Retrieved 12 October 2022.
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