Jens Peder Bergensten (born 18 May 1979), known professionally as Jeb, is a Swedish video game programmer and designer. He is best known as the lead designer of Minecraft,[1][2][3] and is the chief creative officer of Mojang Studios. In 2013, he, along with Minecraft creator Markus Persson, was named as one of Time's100 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]
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]
During his time working at Korkeken (meaning the cork oak), Bergensten spent his free time leading the development for the online role-playing gameWhispers 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.[citation needed] The studio's first project was Dawn of Daria, a self-described "massively-multiplayer fantasy life simulator".[citation needed] 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.[citation needed] The company was soon known for the real-time strategy game Harvest: Massive Encounter[citation needed] and later the platform gamesCobalt and Cobalt WASD.
Until 24 November 2010, Bergensten worked for the online knowledge community; Planeto.[18][19]