Minecraft Essay

MINECRAFT INTODUCTORY ESSAY

 Minecraft is a sandbox game (where a player creates the game themselves like kids playing with sand). There is no specific step or goal, so everyone playing the game has a different experience. It was created and designed by a Swedish man called Marcus Perrson he is also known as ‘Notch’. Players in Minecraft build structures out of textured cubes in a 3D world. Minecraft is a game where u dig (MINE) and build (CRAFT) its within a large world of varying terrains and habitats to explore.

Minecraft is available on many different platforms including Xbox, Windows 10, windows phones as well as Nintendo Wii, PlayStation and Android phones. Minecraft has also produce due to its success spin off games including; Minecraft; Story Mode, Education Edition to be used in education facilities.

Minecraft is unlike other video games because 'playing the game' can mean something different to each player. The basic movement and actions through the game are the same for everyone. Players walk around, jump, dig and punch things with their hand as they go about their day building, mining or farming for resources and food, and crafting these into other useful things like tools and weapons.

Minecraft offers several different ways in which players can customize the way the experience each world. Firstly, they can play themselves (single player) or with others (multiplayer). Multiplayer provides an almost social aspect to the game where friends can all play together in a community. There is also two game modes to choose from the first being the creative mode where players have an unlimited number of blocks and items to build with and can't die or there is survival mode where players start with nothing must find and create things they need to avoid death. There are also different levels of difficulty; peaceful, easy, normal and hard.

The game was first released in May 13^th 2009.

Minecraft has been a global commercial success having over 121 million copies sold worldwide (since feb 2017) having sold 53,000 copies a day during 2016. Round about 55million play the game every month making it the second bestselling game of ALL TIME.  In 2014 the game was bought by Microsoft for 2.5billion dollars (£1.9 billion).

Minecraft has influenced many things in many different ways and forms. Thanks to social media and the platform which it has in todays society Minecraft has been able to market and present itself by other influencers like youtubers who create content to do with Minecraft and make Minecraft videos (YouTube or Twitch) they get paid for doing this and this also allows other players to copy or recreate whatever the video has created in itself creating its own little following. Minecraft itself have huge followings its twitter has 1.58 million followers. Research conducted by the University of Pennsylvania showed that 1 third of Minecraft players learned the game via internet videos. These videos usually include creations made by the players themselves, walk through of various tasks of the game and parodies of popular cultures. One video that became viral was the game of thrones set remake on Minecraft this alone showing how diverse the game is and how kids can let their imaginations run free and, in many ways, express themselves which is why the game is now being used as a teaching aid in certain classrooms in the UK showing the power of gaming on our multicultural society.  Just by typing in the word ‘Minecraft’ into YouTube brings up millions of different results as well as videos the game has made a lot of merchandised.

The game has received millions in merchandise revenue from t-shirts to toys of different characters. On top of this it has spawned its own convention called Minecon which began in 2011 it has been hosted in many places like Las Vegas, Disneyland Paris, California, London and Orlando. In 2017 however, it took place on a live stream rather than a convention floor.