Minecraft has been virtually the most popular and best-selling video game in the world for over a decade. In 2020, representatives of Microsoft, the corporation that owns the rights to Minecraft, said that the number of copies of Minecraft sold had exceeded 200 million. The rival of this giant is supposedly Tetris, a cult game known since the 80s, although the exact number of its sales is unknown. Some experts also believe that the real number of Minecraft fans is well over 200 million since in densely populated China this game is distributed free of charge.
Why is Minecraft called a phenomenon? Mainly because such long-term popularity of the game, especially since it is so simple at first glance, is an extremely rare occurrence. A lot of video games are now being released, so the attention of sophisticated gamers now and then switches from one loud novelty to another. At the same time, the not new Minecraft game for some reason continues to take its place on the pedestal as a symbol of a whole generation. So, what is the secret of Minecraft?
We should start with the history of the creation of this famous game. The game’s creator, Markus Persson, who was born in a small Swedish town, was fond of programming since childhood and created his first video game at the age of 9. His favorite game styles were God Simulators and RPGs. For several years he worked as a developer at a large game development company King. While working, he realized that he would rather like to create his own games than work on commercial projects.
The first version of Minecraft was released in 2009. Then it was called Cave Game and it still had few features and a lot of bugs. There were only two blocks: land and water, and the gameplay was concentrated underground since the game was originally conceived as a clone of Infiniminer, a game about miners. Gradually, Persson added new blocks, items, and features to the game, as well as several types of biomes. There were several versions of the game before the official release finally took place in 2011. However, Minecraft became popular during the testing phase. The success of the game allowed Markus Persson to found the game development studio Mojang and work on improving the game together with fellow programmers.
The Minecraft developers claim to haven’t spent a cent on advertising the game. It’s all about the original concept of Minecraft: the game impressed fans so much that they actively began to spread information about it on forums and YouTube blogs.
Everything in Minecraft is made up of cubes. At first glance, such graphics may seem too angular and unsightly, but later for most gamers, it became a highlight. It’s this cubic structure of the world that allows the player to embody all his fantasies: all cubes can be built and destroyed. With the help of cubes, you can create both modest huts and stately castles.
The classic mode in the game is the survival mode, in which you need to get food in order not to die of hunger, and at night your character is threatened by various aggressive mobs (creepers, skeletons, spiders, and others). Here, construction is subordinated primarily to the goals of survival: first of all, you will need to build yourself shelter from scrap materials to wait out the night, and in the following days it will be possible to complete and decorate it. All useful tools here need to be created from scratch. The game in the survival mode is very dynamic and adventurous, reminiscent of both a show about survival in the wild with Bear Grylls and movies about the apocalypse.
The game also has a creative mode, in which there are no aggressive mobs, there is an endless supply of blocks for construction in the inventory, different game items, and the ability to fly. This mode is perfect for you if you want to devote all your time to building.
Enthusiasts have created wonders here such as the one-hundred-story Tower of Babel, the Renaissance city, Minas Tirith from The Lord of the Rings, the full-scale Battlestar Galactica, and more. And such a block as a Redstone allows you to even engage in engineering inside the game: for example, genius Minecraft fans have created a working computer with RAM and a 3D printer. It seems impossible to create something like this using cubes, but people continue to amaze with such miracles.
That said, of course, you don’t have to be a talented architect, pixel art artist, or engineer to have fun playing Minecraft. Here you can just relax, forget about all the conventions and just build what you want and how you want. And in multiplayer, the player can cooperate with different people from all over the Earth, so this process becomes even more interesting. Just let your imagination run wild and embody your cozy three-dimensional world.
Due to the freedom of creativity and the absence of rigid frames, Minecraft primarily attracts children and teenagers. Their adored game gives them a creative space where they are free from overprotection from parents and teachers. At the same time, some progressive teachers thought of using Minecraft as a learning tool, because it can be used to teach urban planning, cooperation, geometry, recreate historical buildings or scenes from literature in the game, and much more. Adult fans love Minecraft for the opportunity to show hidden creativity and relax after work. And even people who are not too keen on video games can be immersed with Minecraft, thanks to the fact that the gameplay is intuitively simple and straightforward. There are many stories on the Internet about how parents began to learn about Minecraft, wanting to know what their child was doing, and became fans of this game themselves.
As you can see, Minecraft was a real breakthrough, because before no one could imagine such a sandbox game with an endless cube world, where everything is possible. Thanks to the functionality of the game, it suits different categories of people, because everyone likes to feel free and creative. We believe that this simple explanation is enough to answer the question about the causes of the Minecraft phenomenon.
And at the same time, there is no limit to perfection. Mojang Studio continues to release patches and new content for Minecraft. Fans have also made a lot of contributions to the development of the game: on the Internet you can find modifications that change the graphics of the game, add magic or shooter elements to Minecraft, so that the already diverse possibilities of the game become completely limitless. This attracts new players to the game and forces old players to come back periodically to enjoy the updates.
Many game developers, after the tremendous success of Minecraft, started making very similar games to make money from it. Most of these games turned out to be nondescript copies, but some developers managed to create really interesting games like Minecraft and add something of their own to them.
For example, Realmcraft by Tellurion Mobile. At the moment, more than 50 million people have already downloaded it on the Play Market, and most of them enter the game every day. This is because Realmcraft has all the basic functions of Minecraft (survival mode, creative mode, multiplayer), as well as additional features: many different custom skins, 30 worlds with ready-made architecture, an in-game wiki, and several multiplayer mini-games (trouble wars, egg wars, snow fights). At the same time, you can play the game absolutely free of charge, which is a great advantage even over the original. The developers try to regularly add new content to the game, arrange thematic events inside the game, and also regularly answer questions from users on the Play Market and other sites. For those who want to try playing Realmcraft, we advise you to visit the official forum with answers to frequently asked questions about the game and the official Youtube channel, where new creative tutorials are constantly being released.
