Minecraft
Encyclopedia
Minecraft is a sandbox
-building independent video game
written in Java originally by Swedish creator Markus "Notch" Persson
and now by his company, Mojang, formed from the proceeds of the game. It was released as an alpha on May 17, 2009, with a beta version on December 20, 2010. Official releases for iOS
and Android have been released and the full version of the PC game was released on November 18, 2011 at MineCon 2011. The Android release was temporarily exclusive to the Xperia Play
but is now available to the rest of the Android market. A version of the game for the Xbox 360
with Kinect support is under development by 4J Studios
and delayed until 2012.
Minecraft is focused on creativity and building, allowing players to build constructions out of textured cube
s in a 3D
world. Gameplay in its commercial release has two principal modes: Survival
, which requires players to acquire resources themselves and maintain their health
; and Creative, where the player has an unlimited supply of resources. A third gameplay mode, named Hardcore, ratchets up the difficulty of surviving. An outdated Classic version is also available for free, although it is no longer being developed. Creative Minecraft resembles Classic, but with many more features.
The gameplay is heavily inspired by Infiniminer by Zachtronics Industries,and Dwarf Fortress
by Bay 12 Games.
The game was officially released at MineCon on November 18, 2011. Minecraft was developed for about a week before its public release on May 17, 2009, on the TIGSource forums, where it gained a considerable level of popularity. It has been continually updated and patched since then, and while it was still in alpha release, it garnered several hundred thousand sales and received critical notice and acclaim from many reviewers. It passed a million units sold on January 12, 2011, less than a month after reaching Beta. By November 7, 2011, the game had sold 4 million units.
Minecraft has three currently available gameplay modes, Survival, Hardcore and Creative. Classic is the earliest free version and initially featured only creative game mode with only building (block placement and removal) aspects of the game and unlimited block supply. The game was then split into single-player survival mode (referred to as "Survival Mode Test"), which contained monsters and a much greater variety of blocks and items available, as well as requiring players to mine their own blocks.
The game starts by placing the player on the surface of a huge procedurally generated
game world. The player can walk across the terrain consisting of plains, mountains, caves, and various water bodies. The world is also divided into biome
s ranging from deserts to snowfields. The in-game time system
follows a day and night cycle. Throughout the course of the game the player encounters various non-human creatures, referred to as mobs. During the daytime, non-hostile animals spawn, which can be hunted for food and crafting materials. Hostile monsters, such as large spiders, skeletons, zombies and the dangerous exploding "creeper" will spawn in unlit areas, such as in caves or during the night.
Complex systems can be built using the in-game physics engine
with the use of primitive electrical circuits and logic gates. For example, a door can be opened or closed by pressing a connected button or stepping on a pressure plate. Similarly, larger and more complex systems can be produced, such as a working arithmetic logic unit
– as used in CPUs.
The game world is procedurally generated as the player explores it. Although limits exist on vertical movement both up and down, Minecraft allows for an infinitely large game world to be generated on the horizontal plane, only running into technical problems when extremely distant locations are reached.
In a blog post, Persson explains:
The game achieves this by splitting the game world data into smaller sections, called "chunks", only created or loaded into memory when the player is nearby.
which is depleted by attacks from monsters, falls, or environmental damage, such as drowning or falling into lava. The player also has a hunger bar, which must be periodically refilled by eating various food (porkchops, bread, etc.) in-game. Armor can help mitigate damage from mob attacks, while weapons can be used to kill enemies and other animals. Health replenishes when the player has a full hunger bar or by playing on the easiest difficulty, where the health bar regenerates by itself. Upon dying, items in the player's inventory are dropped and the player is respawned at current spawn point, which by default is where the player started, but can be set by "sleeping" in in-game beds. The items can be recovered if reached before they despawn.
The player can acquire different resources and craft tools, weapons, armor, food, and various other items. By acquiring better resources, the player can make more effective items. For example, tools such as axes, shovels, or pickaxes, can be used to chop down trees, dig soil, and mine ores respectively, and tools made out of better resources (such as iron in place of stone) perform their tasks more quickly and can be used more heavily before breaking. The game has an inventory system and the player is limited to the number of items they can carry, specifically, 36 spaces.
Upon beating the boss creature, the player is allowed to leave the dimension via a portal, which will cue the game's ending sequence and credits. The player is then teleported back to their original spawn point in the overworld, and, if certain criteria are met, will receive the exclusive achievement, "The End.".
aka Notch, had previously worked on games such as Wurm Online
and as a game developer for King.com
for over four years. Minecraft development began on May 10, 2009, soon after Persson had quit his job at King.com in order to concentrate more on independent development. Persson was inspired to create Minecraft by several other games such as Dwarf Fortress
, Infiniminer by Zachtronics Industries, and Dungeon Keeper
by Bullfrog Software. He was still working out the basics of gameplay when he discovered Infiniminer and played with others on the TIGSource.com forums. At the time, he had also been visualizing an isometric 3D building game that would be a cross between his inspirations and had made some early prototypes. After discovering Infiniminer, Notch declared "My god, I realized that that was the game I wanted to do". Infiniminer heavily influenced the style of gameplay that eventually resulted in Minecraft, including the first-person aspect of the game and the "blocky" visual style.
Minecraft was first released to the public on May 17, 2009, as a developmental "alpha" release. Although Persson maintained a day job with Jalbum.net at first, he later moved to working part time and has since quit in order to work on Minecraft full time as sales of the beta version of the game have expanded. Persson continues to update the game with releases distributed to users automatically. Persson plans to continue these updates after the release of the full game as long as there is still an active userbase. These updates have included features such as new items, new blocks, an alternate "Hell
" dimension (accessible through construction of a portal) that Persson terms "The Nether", tamable wolves that assist the player, and changes to the game's behavior (e.g., how water flows). Persson plans to eventually release the game as open-source after sales have dropped off and when he wants to move onto other projects.
In September 2010 Persson announced that he and a friend were starting a video game company, Mojang, with the money earned from Minecraft. This company was intended to back the development of Minecraft and an unrelated game, Scrolls
, which his friend would primarily work on. As part of creating the company, Persson has hired "an artist, a web site developer, and a business guy", additional programmers, and established an office in Stockholm
. Although Persson plans to spend the majority of his time working on Minecraft while his partner spends the majority of his time working on the other game, he says that "everyone working at the company will be involved in both projects to some degree". Persson said that part of his motivation behind hiring staff was that he felt he was spending too much time working on the website and reading emails rather than developing Minecraft. The four additional employees hired in 2010 were Jens Bergensten, a programmer; Daniel Kaplan, the "business guy"; Jakob Porser, who will be working on the other game for Mojang; and Markus "Junkboy" Toivonen, a pixel artist
. The plans for Persson's new company were delayed by weeks when his account with PayPal
, containing over US$
763,000 in proceeds from Minecraft sales, was frozen due to a "suspicious withdrawal or deposit". On October 20, 2010, the official Minecraft website suffered a prolonged DDoS attack
.
On December 11, 2010, Persson announced, via his personal blog, that Minecraft would be entering its beta testing phase on December 20, 2010, and that the price would increase to €14.95. He further stated that users who bought the game after this date would no longer be guaranteed to receive all future content free of charge as it "scared both the lawyers and the board." However, bug fixes and all updates leading up to and including the release would still be free. At the start of 2011 Mojang expanded to include Carl Manneh as a "managing director" and Tobias Möllstam as a programmer. On April 7, 2011, Persson made a post on his blog that Mojang has decided to move the game out of Beta on November 11, 2011; however this would not be the "finished product", as the game would be continuously updated before and after the release.
Minecraft.net provided online systems to authenticate logins and host the player's profile including its modifiable character skin pattern and the purchased gift codes. On January 18, 2011, Persson announced in a blog post that Minecrafts web servers would be switching to being hosted solely on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) content delivery network. Notch stated in his personal blog that their old web host was having trouble and that Mojang would be switching to using AWS as their host for both Minecraft.net and Minecrafts web functions such as logging in. This was followed by a tweet the next day confirming the migration and that Tobias would be the one to setup the new servers. Upon this hosting migration, both Minecraft.net and Minecraft game features experienced fluctuating down time. On February 21, Mojang hired Dan Frisk to oversee the servers and back end for both Minecraft and Scrolls.
On May 19, 2011, Persson announced via his Twitter account about an additional dimension which is currently being tested to add to the game. The "Sky Dimension" is similar to the Nether, however set above the sky with floating islands.
Currently, an official iOS
port of Minecraft is being developed by new Mojang employee Aron Nieminen for release later in the year 2011.
Minecraft 1.8, popularly referred to as the "Adventure Update", was leaked on September 9, 2011 by Jens Bergensten, a Mojang developer, and then subsequently released officially on September 14, 2011 after a long trial of testing and bugfixing.
On his Twitter account Jens Bergensten noted that the Pocket Edition of Minecraft is written in C++ and not Java, due to iOS not being able to support Java.
The game has been praised for the creative freedom it grants its players in-game, and for how dynamic the overall gameplay is. PC Gamer
listed Minecraft as the fourth-best game to play at work.
A review of the alpha version, by Scott Munro of the Daily Record
, called it "already something special" and urged readers to buy it. Jim Rossignol
of Rock, Paper, Shotgun
also recommended the alpha of the game, calling it "a kind of generative 8-bit Lego
Stalker
". On September 17, 2010, gaming webcomic
Penny Arcade
began a series of comics and news posts about the addictiveness of the game. Video game talk show Good Game
gave it a 7.5 and 9 out of 10, praising its creativity and customization, though they criticized its lack of a tutorial.
In December 2010, Good Game selected Minecraft as their choice for "Best Downloadable Game of 2010" title, Gamasutra
named it the eighth best game of the year as well as the eighth best indie game of the year, and Rock, Paper, Shotgun named it the game of the year. Indie DB awarded the game the 2010 "Indie of the Year" award as chosen by voters, in addition to two out of five Editor's Choice awards for "Most Innovative" and "Best Singleplayer Indie". It was also awarded "Game of the Year" by PC Gamer UK. The game was nominated for the "Seumas McNally Grand Prize", "Technical Excellence", and "Excellence in Design" awards at the March 2011 Independent Games Festival
and won the Grand Prize along with community-voted "Audience Award". At Game Developers Choice Awards
2011, Minecraft won the award for Best debut game, Best downloadable game and Most Innovative game award, winning every award for which it was nominated. It has also won GameCity
's videogame arts prize
On May 5, 2011, Minecraft was selected as one of the 80 games that will be displayed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum
as part of "The Art of Video Games
" exhibit that will open on March 16, 2012.
backing and has never been commercially advertised except through word of mouth
. By April 2011, Persson estimated that Minecraft had made €23 million (US$33 million) in revenue, with 800,000 sales of the alpha version of the game at €9.95, and over 1 million sales of the beta version at €14.95. On July 1, 2011 Minecraft passed the 10 million registered users mark. As of November 7, 2011, Minecraft had over 16 million registered users, and over 4 million purchases.
as Minecraft – Pocket Edition, and is set to be released on several other platforms, including the Xbox 360
. The Xbox 360 version of the game, developed by 4J Studios
, will support Kinect play and cross-platform playability with the PC version.
. It was opened up to the rest of the Android market as of the 8th of October. The first, and current, version of the software concentrates on the creative building aspect of the game, and allows for multiplay across a local wireless network. An iOS version of Minecraft was released on November 16th, 2011.
titled "MineCon 2011" would be held November 18–19 in Las Vegas
, in the United States
and on August 11, the MineCon website was launched.
The event included the official launch of Minecraft; keynote speeches, including one by Persson; building and costume contests; Minecraft-themed breakout classes; exhibits by leading gaming and Minecraft-related companies; commemorative merchandise; and autograph and picture times with Mojang employees and well-known contributors from the Minecraft community.
As well as this, free codes were given to every attendee of MineCon that unlock Alpha versions of Mojang's other upcoming game, Scrolls, as well as an additional non-Mojang game, Cobalt, which is being developed by Oxeye Game Studios.
MineCon sold all of its 4,500 tickets.
Open world
An open world is a type of video game level design where a player can roam freely through a virtual world and is given considerable freedom in choosing how to approach objectives...
-building independent video game
Indie game
Independent video game development is the process of creating video games without the financial support of a video game publisher. While large firms can create independent games, they are usually designed by an individual or a small team of as many as ten people, depending on the complexity of the...
written in Java originally by Swedish creator Markus "Notch" Persson
Markus Persson
Markus Alexej Persson is a Swedish indie game developer and founder of Mojang AB. He is best known for creating the sandbox building game Minecraft.- Biography :...
and now by his company, Mojang, formed from the proceeds of the game. It was released as an alpha on May 17, 2009, with a beta version on December 20, 2010. Official releases for iOS
IOS
iOS is an operating system for iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and Apple TV.IOS may also refer to:-Companies and organisations:* Illinois Ornithological Society, American state-based bird club...
and Android have been released and the full version of the PC game was released on November 18, 2011 at MineCon 2011. The Android release was temporarily exclusive to the Xperia Play
Sony Ericsson Xperia Play
The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, codenamed Zeus, is a handheld game console smartphone produced by Sony Ericsson. Under the Xperia smartphone brand running Android 2.3 Gingerbread, the device is the first device to be part of the PlayStation Certified program which means that it can play PlayStation...
but is now available to the rest of the Android market. A version of the game for the Xbox 360
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
with Kinect support is under development by 4J Studios
4J Studios
4J Studios is a video game developer based in Dundee, Scotland. The company has worked with a wide range of publishers including ZeniMax Media, Mojang AB, and Microsoft Game Studios...
and delayed until 2012.
Minecraft is focused on creativity and building, allowing players to build constructions out of textured cube
Cube
In geometry, a cube is a three-dimensional solid object bounded by six square faces, facets or sides, with three meeting at each vertex. The cube can also be called a regular hexahedron and is one of the five Platonic solids. It is a special kind of square prism, of rectangular parallelepiped and...
s in a 3D
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
world. Gameplay in its commercial release has two principal modes: Survival
Survival mode
Survival mode is a video game mode in which the player must survive by keeping their character alive or preventing the enemy from reaching a certain location for as long as possible, while the game sends waves of enemies to the player that become stronger with each subsequent wave. Another variant...
, which requires players to acquire resources themselves and maintain their health
Health (gaming)
Health is a game mechanic used in role-playing, computer and video games to give value to characters, enemies, NPCs, and related objects. This value can either be numerical, semi-numerical as in hit/health points, or arbitrary as in a life bar....
; and Creative, where the player has an unlimited supply of resources. A third gameplay mode, named Hardcore, ratchets up the difficulty of surviving. An outdated Classic version is also available for free, although it is no longer being developed. Creative Minecraft resembles Classic, but with many more features.
The gameplay is heavily inspired by Infiniminer by Zachtronics Industries,and Dwarf Fortress
Dwarf Fortress
Slaves to Armok: God of Blood, Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress, also called Slaves to Armok II: Dwarf Fortress, but most commonly known simply as Dwarf Fortress, is a freeware computer game by Bay 12 Games for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X set in a high fantasy universe that combines aspects of...
by Bay 12 Games.
The game was officially released at MineCon on November 18, 2011. Minecraft was developed for about a week before its public release on May 17, 2009, on the TIGSource forums, where it gained a considerable level of popularity. It has been continually updated and patched since then, and while it was still in alpha release, it garnered several hundred thousand sales and received critical notice and acclaim from many reviewers. It passed a million units sold on January 12, 2011, less than a month after reaching Beta. By November 7, 2011, the game had sold 4 million units.
Gameplay
The core gameplay revolves around construction. The game world is essentially made of cubical blocks arranged in a fixed grid pattern which represent different materials, such as dirt, stone, various ores, water, and tree trunks. While the players can move freely across the world, objects and items can only be placed at fixed locations relative to the grid. The player can gather these material "blocks" and place them elsewhere, thus potentially creating various constructions.Minecraft has three currently available gameplay modes, Survival, Hardcore and Creative. Classic is the earliest free version and initially featured only creative game mode with only building (block placement and removal) aspects of the game and unlimited block supply. The game was then split into single-player survival mode (referred to as "Survival Mode Test"), which contained monsters and a much greater variety of blocks and items available, as well as requiring players to mine their own blocks.
The game starts by placing the player on the surface of a huge procedurally generated
Procedural generation
Procedural generation is a widely used term in the production of media; it refers to content generated algorithmically rather than manually. Often, this means creating content on the fly rather than prior to distribution...
game world. The player can walk across the terrain consisting of plains, mountains, caves, and various water bodies. The world is also divided into biome
Biome
Biomes are climatically and geographically defined as similar climatic conditions on the Earth, such as communities of plants, animals, and soil organisms, and are often referred to as ecosystems. Some parts of the earth have more or less the same kind of abiotic and biotic factors spread over a...
s ranging from deserts to snowfields. The in-game time system
Time-keeping systems in games
In video and other games, the passage of time must be handled in a way that players find fair and easy to understand. This is usually done in one of two ways:-Real-time:...
follows a day and night cycle. Throughout the course of the game the player encounters various non-human creatures, referred to as mobs. During the daytime, non-hostile animals spawn, which can be hunted for food and crafting materials. Hostile monsters, such as large spiders, skeletons, zombies and the dangerous exploding "creeper" will spawn in unlit areas, such as in caves or during the night.
Complex systems can be built using the in-game physics engine
Physics engine
A physics engine is computer software that provides an approximate simulation of certain physical systems, such as rigid body dynamics , soft body dynamics, and fluid dynamics, of use in the domains of computer graphics, video games and film. Their main uses are in video games , in which case the...
with the use of primitive electrical circuits and logic gates. For example, a door can be opened or closed by pressing a connected button or stepping on a pressure plate. Similarly, larger and more complex systems can be produced, such as a working arithmetic logic unit
Arithmetic logic unit
In computing, an arithmetic logic unit is a digital circuit that performs arithmetic and logical operations.The ALU is a fundamental building block of the central processing unit of a computer, and even the simplest microprocessors contain one for purposes such as maintaining timers...
– as used in CPUs.
The game world is procedurally generated as the player explores it. Although limits exist on vertical movement both up and down, Minecraft allows for an infinitely large game world to be generated on the horizontal plane, only running into technical problems when extremely distant locations are reached.
In a blog post, Persson explains:
First of all, let me clarify some things about the "infinite" maps: They're not infinite, but there's no hard limit either. It'll just get buggier
Software bugA software bug is the common term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's...
and buggier the further out you are. Terrain is generated, saved and loaded, and (kind of) rendered in chunks of 16*16*128 blocks. These chunks have an offset value that is a 32 bit32-bitThe range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4,294,967,295. Hence, a processor with 32-bit memory addresses can directly access 4 GB of byte-addressable memory....
integerIntegerThe integers are formed by the natural numbers together with the negatives of the non-zero natural numbers .They are known as Positive and Negative Integers respectively...
roughly in the range negative two billion to positive two billion. If you go outside that range (about 25% of the distance from where you are now to the sun), loading and saving chunks will start overwriting old chunks. At a 16/th of that distance, things that use integers for block positions, such as using items and pathfinding, will start overflowingArithmetic overflowThe term arithmetic overflow or simply overflow has the following meanings.# In a computer, the condition that occurs when a calculation produces a result that is greater in magnitude than that which a given register or storage location can store or represent.# In a computer, the amount by which a...
and acting weird.
Those are the two "hard" limits.
The game achieves this by splitting the game world data into smaller sections, called "chunks", only created or loaded into memory when the player is nearby.
Survival
In this mode, the player has a health barHealth (gaming)
Health is a game mechanic used in role-playing, computer and video games to give value to characters, enemies, NPCs, and related objects. This value can either be numerical, semi-numerical as in hit/health points, or arbitrary as in a life bar....
which is depleted by attacks from monsters, falls, or environmental damage, such as drowning or falling into lava. The player also has a hunger bar, which must be periodically refilled by eating various food (porkchops, bread, etc.) in-game. Armor can help mitigate damage from mob attacks, while weapons can be used to kill enemies and other animals. Health replenishes when the player has a full hunger bar or by playing on the easiest difficulty, where the health bar regenerates by itself. Upon dying, items in the player's inventory are dropped and the player is respawned at current spawn point, which by default is where the player started, but can be set by "sleeping" in in-game beds. The items can be recovered if reached before they despawn.
The player can acquire different resources and craft tools, weapons, armor, food, and various other items. By acquiring better resources, the player can make more effective items. For example, tools such as axes, shovels, or pickaxes, can be used to chop down trees, dig soil, and mine ores respectively, and tools made out of better resources (such as iron in place of stone) perform their tasks more quickly and can be used more heavily before breaking. The game has an inventory system and the player is limited to the number of items they can carry, specifically, 36 spaces.
Creative
In creative mode, the player does not take environmental or mob damage, is not affected by hunger, and can fly freely around the game world. The player also has access to unlimited resources or items through the inventory menu, and can place or remove them instantly. All creatures in the game, including hostile ones, may still spawn under proper conditions, but they cannot damage the player.Classic
Older versions of Minecraft are also available for players. Unlike newer versions of Minecraft, Classic is free to play, though it is no longer updated. It functions much the same as Creative mode, allowing players to build and destroy any and all parts of the world either alone or in a multiplayer server. There are no computer creatures in this mode, and environmental hazards such as lava will not damage the player. However, some blocks function differently as their behavior was later changed during development. For example, in Classic mode, TNT will act like any other block and break when hit, but in newer versions it will detonate after its fuse is lit."Primary win condition"
Although Minecraft is mostly a sandbox game, it contains some adventure elements. And, with that, a "primary win condition", which is achieved by reaching an alternate dimension known as "The End" and defeating the deadly "Enderdragon" that flies around the map. This dimension is also home to the "Endermen", a race of seemingly-sentient beings that are rarely seen on the main world. To find "The End", one most locate underground ruins of an ancient civilization (referred to ingame as "Strongholds") which can be found on the main overworld.Upon beating the boss creature, the player is allowed to leave the dimension via a portal, which will cue the game's ending sequence and credits. The player is then teleported back to their original spawn point in the overworld, and, if certain criteria are met, will receive the exclusive achievement, "The End.".
Development
The developer of Minecraft, Markus PerssonMarkus Persson
Markus Alexej Persson is a Swedish indie game developer and founder of Mojang AB. He is best known for creating the sandbox building game Minecraft.- Biography :...
aka Notch, had previously worked on games such as Wurm Online
Wurm Online
Wurm Online is a 3D MMO produced by Code Club AB in Sweden that allows players to choose between a PvP game and a non-PvP game based on different servers. Development started in 2003 by friends Markus Persson , and Rolf Jannson.-Gameplay:...
and as a game developer for King.com
King.com
King.com is an online skill-based games company. King.com is available in nine languages and in 10 countries. King.com is an international company with 85 employees and offices in London, Los Angeles, Rome, Hamburg and Stockholm.-Operations:...
for over four years. Minecraft development began on May 10, 2009, soon after Persson had quit his job at King.com in order to concentrate more on independent development. Persson was inspired to create Minecraft by several other games such as Dwarf Fortress
Dwarf Fortress
Slaves to Armok: God of Blood, Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress, also called Slaves to Armok II: Dwarf Fortress, but most commonly known simply as Dwarf Fortress, is a freeware computer game by Bay 12 Games for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X set in a high fantasy universe that combines aspects of...
, Infiniminer by Zachtronics Industries, and Dungeon Keeper
Dungeon Keeper
Dungeon Keeper is a strategy video game released developed by Bullfrog Productions under Peter Molyneux and released by Electronic Arts in July 1997 for the PC in which the player attempts to build and manage a dungeon or lair while protecting it from 'hero' characters intent on stealing the...
by Bullfrog Software. He was still working out the basics of gameplay when he discovered Infiniminer and played with others on the TIGSource.com forums. At the time, he had also been visualizing an isometric 3D building game that would be a cross between his inspirations and had made some early prototypes. After discovering Infiniminer, Notch declared "My god, I realized that that was the game I wanted to do". Infiniminer heavily influenced the style of gameplay that eventually resulted in Minecraft, including the first-person aspect of the game and the "blocky" visual style.
Minecraft was first released to the public on May 17, 2009, as a developmental "alpha" release. Although Persson maintained a day job with Jalbum.net at first, he later moved to working part time and has since quit in order to work on Minecraft full time as sales of the beta version of the game have expanded. Persson continues to update the game with releases distributed to users automatically. Persson plans to continue these updates after the release of the full game as long as there is still an active userbase. These updates have included features such as new items, new blocks, an alternate "Hell
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
" dimension (accessible through construction of a portal) that Persson terms "The Nether", tamable wolves that assist the player, and changes to the game's behavior (e.g., how water flows). Persson plans to eventually release the game as open-source after sales have dropped off and when he wants to move onto other projects.
In September 2010 Persson announced that he and a friend were starting a video game company, Mojang, with the money earned from Minecraft. This company was intended to back the development of Minecraft and an unrelated game, Scrolls
Scrolls (video game)
Scrolls is an upcoming video game from Mojang. It will feature card collecting and board game elements. The game will be purchasable in the normal way, and will require no further payment for online play but will feature optional purchasable items....
, which his friend would primarily work on. As part of creating the company, Persson has hired "an artist, a web site developer, and a business guy", additional programmers, and established an office in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
. Although Persson plans to spend the majority of his time working on Minecraft while his partner spends the majority of his time working on the other game, he says that "everyone working at the company will be involved in both projects to some degree". Persson said that part of his motivation behind hiring staff was that he felt he was spending too much time working on the website and reading emails rather than developing Minecraft. The four additional employees hired in 2010 were Jens Bergensten, a programmer; Daniel Kaplan, the "business guy"; Jakob Porser, who will be working on the other game for Mojang; and Markus "Junkboy" Toivonen, a pixel artist
Pixel artist
A pixel artist is a graphic designer who specializes in computer art and can refer to a number of artistic and professional disciplines which focus on visual communication and presentation...
. The plans for Persson's new company were delayed by weeks when his account with PayPal
PayPal
PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....
, containing over US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
763,000 in proceeds from Minecraft sales, was frozen due to a "suspicious withdrawal or deposit". On October 20, 2010, the official Minecraft website suffered a prolonged DDoS attack
Denial-of-service attack
A denial-of-service attack or distributed denial-of-service attack is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users...
.
On December 11, 2010, Persson announced, via his personal blog, that Minecraft would be entering its beta testing phase on December 20, 2010, and that the price would increase to €14.95. He further stated that users who bought the game after this date would no longer be guaranteed to receive all future content free of charge as it "scared both the lawyers and the board." However, bug fixes and all updates leading up to and including the release would still be free. At the start of 2011 Mojang expanded to include Carl Manneh as a "managing director" and Tobias Möllstam as a programmer. On April 7, 2011, Persson made a post on his blog that Mojang has decided to move the game out of Beta on November 11, 2011; however this would not be the "finished product", as the game would be continuously updated before and after the release.
Minecraft.net provided online systems to authenticate logins and host the player's profile including its modifiable character skin pattern and the purchased gift codes. On January 18, 2011, Persson announced in a blog post that Minecrafts web servers would be switching to being hosted solely on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) content delivery network. Notch stated in his personal blog that their old web host was having trouble and that Mojang would be switching to using AWS as their host for both Minecraft.net and Minecrafts web functions such as logging in. This was followed by a tweet the next day confirming the migration and that Tobias would be the one to setup the new servers. Upon this hosting migration, both Minecraft.net and Minecraft game features experienced fluctuating down time. On February 21, Mojang hired Dan Frisk to oversee the servers and back end for both Minecraft and Scrolls.
On May 19, 2011, Persson announced via his Twitter account about an additional dimension which is currently being tested to add to the game. The "Sky Dimension" is similar to the Nether, however set above the sky with floating islands.
Currently, an official iOS
IOS
iOS is an operating system for iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and Apple TV.IOS may also refer to:-Companies and organisations:* Illinois Ornithological Society, American state-based bird club...
port of Minecraft is being developed by new Mojang employee Aron Nieminen for release later in the year 2011.
Minecraft 1.8, popularly referred to as the "Adventure Update", was leaked on September 9, 2011 by Jens Bergensten, a Mojang developer, and then subsequently released officially on September 14, 2011 after a long trial of testing and bugfixing.
On his Twitter account Jens Bergensten noted that the Pocket Edition of Minecraft is written in C++ and not Java, due to iOS not being able to support Java.
Reception
Minecraft has received favorable responses from critics, and has had notably large numbers of sales.The game has been praised for the creative freedom it grants its players in-game, and for how dynamic the overall gameplay is. PC Gamer
PC Gamer
PC Gamer is a magazine founded in Britain in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future Publishing. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games magazines in their respective countries...
listed Minecraft as the fourth-best game to play at work.
A review of the alpha version, by Scott Munro of the Daily Record
Daily Record (Scotland)
The Daily Record is a Scottish tabloid newspaper based in Glasgow. It had been the best-selling daily paper in Scotland for many years with a paid circulation in August 2011 of 307,794 . It is now outsold by its arch-rival the Scottish Sun which in September 2010 had a circulation of 339,586 in...
, called it "already something special" and urged readers to buy it. Jim Rossignol
Jim Rossignol
Jim Rossignol is a British computer games journalist and critic, as well as an author.-Journalism:Rossignol started his career a reporter on a finance newsletter. He says he was fired from the job due to obsession with a video game...
of Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Rock, Paper, Shotgun is a UK-based PC gaming blog written by Alec Meer, Jim Rossignol, John Walker, and previously Kieron Gillen and Quintin Smith. Rock, Paper, Shotgun launched in July 2007. In 2010 the website partnered with Eurogamer...
also recommended the alpha of the game, calling it "a kind of generative 8-bit Lego
Lego
Lego is a line of construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. The company's flagship product, Lego, consists of colorful interlocking plastic bricks and an accompanying array of gears, minifigures and various other parts...
Stalker
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl is a first-person shooter video game by the Ukrainian developer GSC Game World, published in 2007.It features an alternate reality theme, where a second nuclear disaster occurs at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Exclusion Zone in the near future and causes...
". On September 17, 2010, gaming webcomic
Webcomic
Webcomics, online comics, or Internet comics are comics published on a website. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers or often in self-published books....
Penny Arcade
Penny Arcade (webcomic)
Penny Arcade is a webcomic focused on video games and video game culture, written by Jerry Holkins and illustrated by Mike Krahulik. The comic debuted in 1998 on the website loonygames.com. Since then, Holkins and Krahulik have established their own site, which is typically updated with a new comic...
began a series of comics and news posts about the addictiveness of the game. Video game talk show Good Game
Good Game
Good Game is an Australian video gaming talk show television programme created by Janet Carr and Jeremy Ray currently on ABC2. It premiered on ABC on 19 September 2006...
gave it a 7.5 and 9 out of 10, praising its creativity and customization, though they criticized its lack of a tutorial.
In December 2010, Good Game selected Minecraft as their choice for "Best Downloadable Game of 2010" title, Gamasutra
Gamasutra
Gamasutra is a website founded in 1997 for video game developers. It is owned and operated by UBM TechWeb , a division of United Business Media, and acts as the online sister publication to the print magazine Game Developer...
named it the eighth best game of the year as well as the eighth best indie game of the year, and Rock, Paper, Shotgun named it the game of the year. Indie DB awarded the game the 2010 "Indie of the Year" award as chosen by voters, in addition to two out of five Editor's Choice awards for "Most Innovative" and "Best Singleplayer Indie". It was also awarded "Game of the Year" by PC Gamer UK. The game was nominated for the "Seumas McNally Grand Prize", "Technical Excellence", and "Excellence in Design" awards at the March 2011 Independent Games Festival
Independent Games Festival
The Independent Games Festival is an annual festival at the Game Developers Conference, the largest annual gathering of the indie video game industry. It was founded in 1998 to assist and inspire innovation in video game development and to recognize the best independent video game developers...
and won the Grand Prize along with community-voted "Audience Award". At Game Developers Choice Awards
Game Developers Choice Awards
The Game Developers Choice Awards are annually presented by the Game Developers Conference for outstanding game developers and games.Introduced in 2001, the Game Developers Choice Awards were preceded by the Spotlight Awards, which were presented from 1997 to 1999.The 2009 award presentation was...
2011, Minecraft won the award for Best debut game, Best downloadable game and Most Innovative game award, winning every award for which it was nominated. It has also won GameCity
Gamecity
GameCity is an independent, annual videogame festival in Nottingham, England. The festival is aimed at the general public, and many events allow members of the public to participate freely. The festival receives little funding from the commercial video game industry, and is concerned instead with...
's videogame arts prize
On May 5, 2011, Minecraft was selected as one of the 80 games that will be displayed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is a museum in Washington, D.C. with an extensive collection of American art.Part of the Smithsonian Institution, the museum has a broad variety of American art that covers all regions and art movements found in the United States...
as part of "The Art of Video Games
The Art of Video Games
The Art of Video Games is an upcoming exhibition to be displayed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum from March 16, 2012 through September 30, 2012. The exhibition is designed to highlight the evolution of art within the video game medium over its forty-year history...
" exhibit that will open on March 16, 2012.
Sales
In September 2010, after an impromptu "free to play" weekend, the game had a spike in sales of over 25,000 purchases in 24 hours. On January 12, 2011, Minecraft passed 1,000,000 purchases, less than a month after reaching Beta. At the same time, the game had no publisherVideo game publisher
A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that they have either developed internally or have had developed by a video game developer....
backing and has never been commercially advertised except through word of mouth
Word of mouth
Word of mouth, or viva voce, is the passing of information from person to person by oral communication. Storytelling is the oldest form of word-of-mouth communication where one person tells others of something, whether a real event or something made up. Oral tradition is cultural material and...
. By April 2011, Persson estimated that Minecraft had made €23 million (US$33 million) in revenue, with 800,000 sales of the alpha version of the game at €9.95, and over 1 million sales of the beta version at €14.95. On July 1, 2011 Minecraft passed the 10 million registered users mark. As of November 7, 2011, Minecraft had over 16 million registered users, and over 4 million purchases.
Ports
The game has been released so far on Android and iOSIOS
iOS is an operating system for iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and Apple TV.IOS may also refer to:-Companies and organisations:* Illinois Ornithological Society, American state-based bird club...
as Minecraft – Pocket Edition, and is set to be released on several other platforms, including the Xbox 360
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
. The Xbox 360 version of the game, developed by 4J Studios
4J Studios
4J Studios is a video game developer based in Dundee, Scotland. The company has worked with a wide range of publishers including ZeniMax Media, Mojang AB, and Microsoft Game Studios...
, will support Kinect play and cross-platform playability with the PC version.
Minecraft – Pocket Edition
On August 16, 2011, Minecraft – Pocket Edition was released for the Xperia PlaySony Ericsson Xperia Play
The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, codenamed Zeus, is a handheld game console smartphone produced by Sony Ericsson. Under the Xperia smartphone brand running Android 2.3 Gingerbread, the device is the first device to be part of the PlayStation Certified program which means that it can play PlayStation...
. It was opened up to the rest of the Android market as of the 8th of October. The first, and current, version of the software concentrates on the creative building aspect of the game, and allows for multiplay across a local wireless network. An iOS version of Minecraft was released on November 16th, 2011.
MineCon 2011
On May 11, 2011, Persson announced via his blog that an official Minecraft conventionFan convention
A fan convention, or con , is an event in which fans of a particular film, television series, comic book, actor, or an entire genre of entertainment such as science fiction or anime and manga, gather to participate and hold programs and other events, and to meet experts, famous personalities, and...
titled "MineCon 2011" would be held November 18–19 in Las Vegas
Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and is also the county seat of Clark County, Nevada. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous...
, in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and on August 11, the MineCon website was launched.
The event included the official launch of Minecraft; keynote speeches, including one by Persson; building and costume contests; Minecraft-themed breakout classes; exhibits by leading gaming and Minecraft-related companies; commemorative merchandise; and autograph and picture times with Mojang employees and well-known contributors from the Minecraft community.
As well as this, free codes were given to every attendee of MineCon that unlock Alpha versions of Mojang's other upcoming game, Scrolls, as well as an additional non-Mojang game, Cobalt, which is being developed by Oxeye Game Studios.
MineCon sold all of its 4,500 tickets.
Soundtrack
Composer C418 released a soundtrack, titled Minecraft – Volume Alpha, on March 4, 2011.See also
- TerrariaTerrariaTerraria is an action-adventure/RPG indie game released by independent game studio Re-Logic. The game features exploration, crafting, building structures and combat with a variety of creatures...
, a 2D action-adventureAction-adventure gameAn action-adventure game is a video game that combines elements of the adventure game genre with various action game elements. It is perhaps the broadest and most diverse genre in gaming, and can include many games which might better be categorized under narrow genres...
/RPGRole-playing video gameRole-playing video games are a video game genre with origins in pen-and-paper role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, using much of the same terminology, settings and game mechanics. The player in RPGs controls one character, or several adventuring party members, fulfilling one or many quests...
with sandbox building elements - Ace of SpadesAce of Spades (video game)Ace of Spades is a free-to-play sandbox building and FPS game developed by Ben Aksoy for the PC. The game notably uses Ken Silverman's Voxlap engine.-Summary:...
, a 3D first-person shooterFirst-person shooterFirst-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...
with sandbox building elements - Dwarf FortressDwarf FortressSlaves to Armok: God of Blood, Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress, also called Slaves to Armok II: Dwarf Fortress, but most commonly known simply as Dwarf Fortress, is a freeware computer game by Bay 12 Games for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X set in a high fantasy universe that combines aspects of...
, an indie gameIndie gameIndependent video game development is the process of creating video games without the financial support of a video game publisher. While large firms can create independent games, they are usually designed by an individual or a small team of as many as ten people, depending on the complexity of the...
that combines aspects of roguelikeRoguelikeThe roguelike is a sub-genre of role-playing video games, characterized by randomization for replayability, permanent death, and turn-based movement. Most roguelikes feature ASCII graphics, with newer ones increasingly offering tile-based graphics. Games are typically dungeon crawls, with many...
and city-building games and is primarily known for its unique level of complexity and difficulty.
External links
- Minecraft Forum
- Minecraft Wiki, official Minecraft WikiWikiA wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
- Persson's development blog on TumblrTumblrTumblr is a website and microblogging platform that allows users to post text, images, videos, links, quotes and audio to their tumblelog, a short-form blog. Users can follow other users, or choose to make their tumblelog private. The service emphasizes ease of use. The site ranks as the 10th...