End Poem

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The end credits of the video game Minecraft include a written work by the Irish writer Julian Gough that is conventionally called the End Poem. It is the only narrative text in the mostly unstructured sandbox game. Minecraft's creator Markus "Notch" Persson did not have an ending to the game up until a month before launch, and following recommendation by Twitter followers, he invited Gough to create a narrative for the ending. The work, which debuted in Beta version 1.9 of the game and was included with the full release, takes the form of a 1,500-word dialogue between two unspecified entities who discuss what the player has done in the game. Gough conceived of the work as an overheard conversation which would compare the blurring of video games and real life to the space between dreaming and wakefulness, two forms of being "between two worlds". He experienced a phenomenon during writing where he felt he was not in control of his hand, and later said that "the universe" penned the latter...

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