Minecraft Essay

Explain what Minecraft is, give an outline of the game’s history and explain why it has been a commercial and critical success.

 

Minecraft was created and designed by Marcus “Notch” Perrson, a Swedish programmer in 2009 and fully developed and published by Mojang. It was first released to the public on 17 May 2009. After the game was released, Microsoft bought Mojang for $2.5 billion.

 

Minecraft is a game in a digital 3D world comprised of textured cubes. The genre of Minecraft is sandbox game which means it is a game in which minimal character limitations are placed on the gamer, it allows them to roam the virtual world in their way. Another genre for this game is survival, as in this game you can die and you are given certain resources in limitation r not. It is a game that involves following simple instructions in order to play it. There are various modes of play, the 2 leading modes are survival and creation. Survival is where you are given nothing at the beginning and you have to collect and create all your tools, weapons and armour from scratch. The second mode is creation, in this you are provided with an unlimited supply of resources from the beginning. Unlike survival mode, in creation, you can create and wear whatever you want all the time.

 

Minecraft’s success is driven by the ability to create and customise with the one limitation being the players imagination. It allows gamers to craft their own stories. Randomness of the game is also an important element because it means the game is so different for everyone and it creates very varied gameplay in which you can create anything you want due to any individuals’ imagination; it is very open to interpretation. Another reason for the success of Minecraft is that the target audience is so varied, different versions of the game were released to try and encourage a range of audiences, this universal appeal makes it easy for the game to sell and be popular. This can help with problem solving in subjects like maths and science. 121 million copies of the game sold in February 2017 and an estimated 55 million people play the game every month. It is the second best-selling game of all time after Tetris.  

 

Minecraft also has educational purposes, while playing Minecraft, children can develop and improve their visuospatial reasoning skills which in other words is there visual perception of objects. This can help with problem solving in subjects like maths and science. Minecraft also teaches children to set and finish goals, in the game you are rewarded when you complete certain tasks, this motivates them to complete it and also teaches them a lesson at the same time. Another positive aspect of Minecraft for children is that it is also a platform for social behaviour. If parents do not want their children to be on social media apps such as snapchat or Instagram then this is a safer option, it allows children to socialise with their friends under safe conditions with people you know or it might bring children together who are from different social groups. Having no violence emphasises the safeness of Minecraft, this is an example of a game which lacks graphic gore which makes other games popular.

 

After releasing the game, it won 5 awards at three conferences which included an Innovation Award, Best Debut Game, Best Downloadable Game, Audience Award and Seumass McNally Grand Prize. The fact that this game has received so many awards shows that this is critically acclaimed as well as commercially acclaimed which shows that it is all round a successful game.

 

Minecraft has been so popular because of social media. Minecraft has had video channels on YouTube which have had millions of views and have also helped publicise Minecraft. Data shows that about one-third of Minecraft players heard about the game via online videos. Minecraft also introduced a convention to invite their players to, this has taken place I Las Vegas, Disneyland Paris, California and London. Minecraft have had millions of dollars in merchandise revenue with products like tee-shirts and toys.

 

Minecraft has been so popular that clones of the game have now been created, the most famous example is Terraria, since 2017, it has had 20 million accounts created.