Minecraft Essay

Minecraft

Minecraft is a sandbox computer game created and designed by Swedish programmer Marcus ‘Notch’ Perrson in 2009 and fully developed and published by Mojang. Perrson got the idea for the game from another procedurally generated game, named ‘Infiniminer’, in which platers would co-operate to tunnel through the earth in search of minerals. Minecraft was originally called ‘Cave Game’, but the name was dropped in favour of ‘Minecraft: Order of Stone’ when Perrson realised he wanted to create a game with Role-playing elements. Eventually, this was shortened to just ‘Minecraft’.

In Minecraft, a single world is built from millions and millions of cubes, each covered in a distinctively low-res texture. If each block were to be a single metre cubed, it would follow that each world is around eight times as big as planet earth. There are hundreds of different blocks to choose from, with more than 450 different variants and other items with which to fill your created worlds. The creative and building aspects of Minecraft allow players to build with a variety of different cubes in a 3D procedurally generated world. Other activities in the game include exploration, resource gathering, crafting, and combat. Multiple gameplay modes are available, including a survival mode where the player must acquire resources to build the world and maintain health, a creative mode where players have unlimited resources to build with and the ability to fly, an adventure mode where players can play custom maps created by other players, and a spectator mode where players can freely move throughout a world without being affected by gravity or collisions. The PC version of the game is noted for its modding scene, where users create new gameplay mechanics, items, and assets for the game.

The very first version of the game was created in just six days, between May 10^th and May 16^th 2009. This version was released the very next day, alongside an official forum where players could discuss it. The game reached 100,000 players in January 2010. The crafting system also came to be in early 2010, along with the crafting system and infinite maps. The game reached the 200,000-player mark in June 2010, and officially entered the alpha stage of its development and its price rose to $10. Just six months later, in the run up to Christmas 2010, the game entered the beta phase and rose in price further to $15. By July 2011, the game had more than 10 million registered players. In November 2011, the full version of the game was released for PC. It cost $20. In May 2012, the game was released for Xbox and sold nearly half a million copies in less than 24 hours. In November 2014, Microsoft stepped in and brought Mojang, the games developers, for an estimated $2.5 billion.

On the basis of conventional video game sales leader boards, Minecraft sold over 144 million copies across PC, mobile and console in the pocket, as of January 2018. Minecraft is now officially second only to that all-time, all-platforms, indefatigable puzzling juggernaut, Tetris. The Xbox 360 version of Minecraft became profitable within the first day of the game's release in 2012, when the game broke the Xbox Live sales records with 400,000 players online. Within a week of being on the Xbox Live Marketplace, Minecraft sold upwards of a million copies. GameSpot announced in December 2012 that Minecraft sold over 4.48 million copies since the game debuted on Xbox Live Arcade in May 2012. In 2012, Minecraft was the most purchased title on Xbox Live Arcade; it was also the fourth most played title on Xbox Live based on average unique users per day. In 2012, at the British Academy Video Games Awards, Minecraft was nominated in the GAME Award of 2011 category and Persson received The Special Award. In 2012, Minecraft XBLA was awarded a Golden Joystick Award in the Best Downloadable Game category, and a TIGA Games Industry Award in the Best Arcade Game category. In 2013 it was nominated as the family game of the year at the British Academy Video Games Awards. Minecraft Console Edition won the award for TIGA Game Of The Year in 2014. In 2015, the game placed 6th on Usgamer’s the 15 Best Games Since 2000 list. In 2016, Minecraft placed 6th on Time's The 50 Best Video Games of All Time list.