It really does take a certain amount of ego and guts just to try to get into the indie game dev (or software period) industry. You have to be a decent coder and you have to have an incredibly thick skin because you don't have 5 layers of marketing and PR like EA where you could basically ignore the fact that you game sucked if your bonus didn't depend on the Metacritic scores. I read all this stuff all the time about how Phil Fish or Blow or whoever is such an asshole, and I just don't get what drives people to saying that stuff. There's a lot of people out there who I admire whose personality is sometimes grating or who is blinded by ego but that's in all walks of life. I don't need to be in love with someone to love their work. Plus I simply think it's too judgmental to call someone you don't know an asshole. You can say someone is being an asshole, but I don't think you can judge them personally by their persona online. It's the same with Linus, people think he's a jerk, and maybe he is sometimes but if he was really, I mean REALLY a huge jerk then the Linux kernel would never exist. He'd be programming weapons systems somewhere or something. It takes a certain kind.

Although I don't stalk Notch online except when he dips into Twitter, I mostly see that guy giving a ton of credit to other people at Mojang or at least often enough where it's my general impression of him.