Minecraft Essay

Create an essay discussing the evolution of Minecraft as part of the essay you will discuss:
How the ownership of Minecraft has affected the evolution of the game?
How Minecraft is marketed to a variety of audiences?The development of the game through technological change?

Minecraft was first developed and released into the public by Markus "Notch" Persson - an (at the time) thirty-year-old Sweedish man - and was published by the company Mojang on May 17th 2009, which was followed by beta on December 20th 2010. Notch started creating the game in May of 2009 having been inspired by similar games such as Dwarf Fortress, a single player construction and management game; his goal is to produce a Role-Playing Game variation. Minecraft is a game where you dig (mine) and builds (craft) different kinds of 3D blocks within a large world of varying terrains and habitats to explore. Inside the world, the sun rises and sets as the players work, gather materials and make tools. It was created as an experimental game to test random creation for caves; it is inspired by Infiniminer (another game created by Zachary Barth). It is a Sandbox genre game (a game free of structure and constraint - players are free to roam and make choices about how they use available content), sandbox games are often described as having open world settings. Minecraft later created a hybrid genre with the story versions and is sometimes categorised as sandbox, survival, and adventure. Later on, in 2011, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten took creative control and released the full version of the game after gradual updates (which are still happening as the game is not at its full potential). Minecraft was originally created as a sandbox independent video game - part exploratory and part creative building - to which it has won many awards since 2011 including the Innovation Award, Best Debut Game Award and Best Downloadable Game. The game has been described as a virtual world of Lego that involves following simple instructions in order to play it. Since 2014, nearly 54 million copies of the game have been sold for all platforms. On September 2014, Microsoft bought Mojang for $2.5 billion, which granted the companies ownership of the games intellectual property. Being the second most successful video game of all time - behind Tetris - to date, Minecraft has sold over 121 million copies across all platforms, including 27 million PC copies of all time. The game is internationally successful - making 4 billion dollars in the UK, 24.4 billion dollars in China, and 32.6 billion dollars in America. 

Without commercial backing of a mainstream publisher, and no money spent on advertising revenue, the game relied on word of mouth between gamers and featured on sites such as the Penny Arcade webcomic to generate interest among gamers. By January 2011, the beta version had passed over one million purchases in just only a month, and by April 2011, Notch estimated that 33 million US dollars of revenue had been made. Minecraft was carefully marketed to audiences, as an online version of Lego and in doing so, aligned itself with one of the most iconic 'learning construction education products' in history. Lego sells Minecraft playsets so that gamers can physically build their Minecraft creations, and Lego Worlds will invite fans to do the same, but in reverse. Daniel Golberg, who wrote a Minecraft book about its growth said that he "was surprised that it has taken them so long". That "Minecraft is exactly what Lego should have done 10 years ago". Answering to the questions on Lego and Minecraft, Goldberg said that the "audience for Minecraft has proved itself to be quite big", however, he is "sure there will be room for both games". David Gram, Lego's marketing director, commented on Minecraft being the "digital lego" and that they "only wish [they] had invented it". In 2011, prior to the games official release, Minecraft had over 16 million registered and 4 million purchases. Due to its popularity, Minecraft was released over multiple platforms and became a viable franchise with increased interactivity. In particular, Minecraft: Pocket Edition was released on Sony Xperia Play, available on Sony Xperia smartphones. Minecraft also became available on Andriod and iOS devices shortly after. Soon after that, in 2012, Minecraft became available on Xbox 260 and Xbox Live. In 2014, Microsoft acquired Minecraft intellectual property for 2.5 billion dollars, and in 2015, 30 million copies had been sold. It is now able to be played cross-platforms and holds massive multiplayer servers. The team who work behind Minecraft and the team behind Oculus have teamed together to create a VR game of Minecraft. By doing this, it explores a range of new people who play this. Minecraft is the highest selling 3D game ever, so this brings in a new audience to Oculus as many Minecraft players would now be buying the product. People are more active when playing this as they are having to look around. By doing this, it would give the game designers a feeling that they are at the forefront of technology. The establishment of Minecraft Marketplace is a great example of the industry listening to their audience and allowing them to do many things such as trading different maps, textures and 'add-ons'. The nature of the game has allowed the audience to learn new skills, such as programming. On their website, it says "Minecraft players are using their amazing creative brains to conduct incredible new ways to play on mobile, Xbox One, Windows 10 PCs and Nintendo Switch. From community made skins and textures to hand-crafted worlds and epic adventures, you can find it all on the Minecraft Marketplace". The Minecraft Marketplace is a brand new store for the MCPE and Windows 10 versions of Minecraft that allows the community to sell in-game skins, textured and worlds. Content in the marketplace can be purchased through a new currency that is being introduced called Minecoins. Skins can be customised by the players on different websites. The original ones are Steve and Alex. However, if the players do not like these costumes, they can create their own ones and wear it if they want to. To use the marketplace, the players get Minecoins in the in-game store (which need to be purchased using real money), then they can explore the in-game store and exchange the Minecoins for the skins that the players want. In order to purchase user-created content on the Minecraft Marketplace, you need to purchase Minecoins with real currency. You can purchase Minecraft coins in denominations of 320 for $1.99, 840 for $4.99, and 1,720 for $9.99. Once you have the Minecoins in your account, you can make purchases from the in-game store. There will eventually be free content available in the store as well and it is possible some paid content will temporarily become free or discounted. Block by Block began in 2012 with the radical idea of integrating the computer game Minecraft into public space planning to get community members more involved. Minecraft is easy to use, and people of all ages, backgrounds, and education levels can pick it up quickly. It's a surprisingly effective way to visualise a three-dimensional environment, in a format designed for rapid iteration and idea sharing. Minecraft helps neighbourhood residents model their surroundings, visualise possibilities, express ideas, drive consensus, and accelerate progress. Minecraft helps teachers to teach their students through Computer Science, Engineering, Maths, Stem, Chemistry, Art and Design, and Creative problem solving (collaboration/teamwork). The ways that it teaches is through having videos of people using Minecraft to enlighten the students on how to do things - the students can be aged from 3 all the way up to 18+, with their ages in categories.

Budgets for games vary and Minecraft is a good example of a game that was made and developed using readily available open source software within the gaming community; by creating the original Minecraft using Java, it gave them the advantage of being able to create a cross-platform game (being able to be run on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux). Other mainstream games that require entire teams of programmers, artists and engineers to make video games that have budgets equal or proceeding that of mainstream films, for example, Call Of Duty. Minecraft has also been linked to non-profit projects such as the UN's Block by Block project, which encourages communities around the world to redesign their neighbourhoods using Minecraft. An educational version has also been created and developed in 2012 - MinecraftEdu - which has several applications to help teach the subject and develop a culture of computer programming amongst natives.

Versions of the game can be purchased over the internet using outlets the PlayStation Network or Xbox Live Arcade. Recent additions include the Nintendo platform which was excluded from the initial Minecraft releases; available to download from December 2015 with physical copies from June 2016 and most recently Nintendo Switch (May 2017, and Nintendo 3DS (downloadable from September 2017). It is worth considering how a simple PC Java game has become a globally successful phenomenon across all consoles and hand-held devices. In 2017, Minecraft had completely become a multi-platform game which is not only just for PC gamers, but for those who own smartphones, Microsoft consoles (Xbox); PlayStation 3, 4 and PS Vita; and more recently Nintendo consoles (Wii U) and hand-held devices (Nintendo Switch and Nintendo New 3DS, New 2DS XL and New 3DS XL). In 2009, the computer code (developed by Perssons/Mojang) was Java, it's simplicity of coding enabled the gaming community to modify and upgrade the game, consequently "users" were also involved in the production/evolution of the game through improving the code/removing bugs - from being people who tested the game and to see how smoothly it ran. In 2013, Microsoft purchased Mojang for 2.5 billion dollars which resulted in the further development of the game, using complex code (C++) the game could be multiplatform users - and the visual appearance became more sophisticated. This opened up the market for the game. Newer games, e.g. for smartphones were programmed in C++, newer games such as cross-platform plays are more complex and refined in their graphic content. Minecraft: Story Mode follows more of the recognisable institutional conventions of the game development including tutorials on how to play the game. Due to the original nature of the game, most players simply logged in to play Minecraft and didn't need a physical copy of the game. When the Xbox and PlayStation versions were created there was often a chance to offer digital versions of the same game across the Windows 10 operating system. Users were often encouraged to download the game through the cloud servers rather than a physical game which would incur in more of a cost for the institution. Physical copies of the game were released 6 months after the cloud versions to encourage online purchase and reduce the risk of piracy.

Minecraft has universal appeal. It is useful to explore how such a game can appeal to different ages, genders and audiences from different social and cultural backgrounds. The variety of different modes is certainly a contributing factor to the game's success, but also the way in which audience can control and shape their own worlds and create new identities through mods and altering textures, maps and craft skills. Of the people who play Minecraft, 20.59% are under 15, 43.70% are 15-21, 21.01% and 22-30, 8.12% are 31-40, 3.22% are 41-50, 0.70% are 51-60, 0.14% are 61-70, 0.14% are 71-80, and 2.38% are 81+. Overall, over 80% of the demographic is represented by under 15's through to 22-30's. Of the 80%, 50% are aged 15-21, each is under 15 and between 2-30. The introduction of Minecraft Realms (2013) has tried to give the producers more control over the distribution and circulation of the game since some customers were creating their own virtual spaces and hacks across illegitimate servers. Realms are intended for use by small groups of friends or as a family server. Minecraft Realms is a paid multiplayer hosting service, provided by Mojang, designed to be easily set up and used by the user and up to ten of their friends. Minecraft Realms is an official subscription-based server hosting service that allows players to create and manage their own private Minecraft servers. Hosted by Mojang, Realms provides an easy and fast way to create servers and allows the owner to manage them from inside the game, without prior knowledge of the concepts for hosting on the Internet. In Java Edition, Realms also allows players to choose from a list of minigames to play temporarily, as well as several pre-made world templates, adventure maps, experience maps, and inspiration maps. Maps are updated by Mojang approximately every two weeks. Realms are not intended for large public servers, but for groups of friends or as a family server. Minecraft: Story Mode is an episodic point-and-click narrative-driven graphic adventure video game based on the sandbox video game Minecraft, released in October 2015 across multiple platforms with a Windows 10 release on December 16, 2015, a Wii U release on January 21, 2016, a Apple TV release on August 24, 2016, and a Nintendo Switch release on August 22, 2017. The game was developed by Mojang AB, the developer of Minecraft, in collaboration with Telltale Games.- Minecraft: Story Mode is an episodic point-and-click narrative-driven graphic adventure video game based on the sandbox video game Minecraft, released in October 2015 across multiple platforms with a Windows 10 release on December 16, 2015, a Wii U release on January 21, 2016, a Apple TV release on August 24, 2016, and a Nintendo Switch release on August 22, 2017. The game was developed by Mojang AB, the developer of Minecraft, in collaboration with Telltale Games. It uses Minecraft YouTubers to voice over the cast. This introduces the young audience of the YouTubers. The YouTubers have played the play through in their game on their YouTube account to showcase the playthrough. Minecraft and subsequent versions and variations of the game offer familiar pleasures to existing fans (narrative features, open-world gameplay etc.) along with new elements to target a wider audience (e.g. Story Mode). The creation of Minecraft Realms was a well-considered way to attract and encourage audiences to use the game on dedicated servers. Before Realms, there were servers, this was for thousands of people to join servers - play community games, build together and roleplaying - with thousands of other people. This would obviously cost money to create as there is up to thousands of people who are playing on their server, to counteract this, the server owners would set up a way for the players to pay the owners to gain ranks and extras. For example, Hypixel (a server which can host up to 45,000 people playing and has been open since May 2015), is the most played server which has games such as Hunger Games, Bed Wars, Parkour and Skywars. To gain money, Hypixel has set up an online store that the players can buy ranks and money ranging from $6.99 to $44.99.

Minecraft inspired videos gained significant popularity on YouTube generating viral hype and talk-ability. Creating parody videos hits a different type of audience - younger and trendy. With free marketing and increasing the popularity of the game. YouTube, Facebook and online fan communities have enabled Minecraft’s audience to have an active voice in its ongoing production through detailed feedback and commentary on modifications and beta tests. There are several niche forums that should also be investigated across the internet. A few YouTubers who play Minecraft include TheDiamondMinecart (20.9 million subscribers), TheSyndicateProject (9.9 million subscribers), PrestonPlayz - Minecraft (8.1 million subscribers), UnspeakableGaming (2.1) million subscribers), StampyLondHead (9 million subscribers), and Bajan Canadian (5.9 million subscribers). SkyDoesMinecraft - now know as Sky Does Everything - has 11.6 million subscribers and has had over 3.7 billion views in all his years producing videos. He plays Minecraft, fortnite, and does every day vlogs. However, over a year ago, Sky decided to stop recording videos finding that it was no longer for him, and only just coming back into creating videos for his fans. TheDiamondMinecart - now known as DanTDM - has 20.9 million subscribers with 14.1 billion views. Dan plays many games such as Minecraft, Fortnite and small games such as Hello Neighbour. He gained a lot of money through sponsorships and taking part in voicing in films - including the Minecraft Game Play. LDShadowLady has 4.4 million subscribers with over 1.8 billion views. She creates videos such as Minecraft lets plays (One Life 2.0 being one of her most recent ones), Minecraft Mini-games, Sims 4 and small random games here and there.