Minecraft Essay

Minecraft Essay

How ownership of Minecraft has affected the games evolution

How Minecraft is marketed to a variety of audiences

The development of the game through technological change

Minecraft was first created by Markus Persson, a Swedish game programmer who developed and programmed the game throughout the company Mojang, who is most famous for making Minecraft, and another game called sandbox. Minecraft is the second most successful video game of all time, behind Tetris. The game was released in November 2011, and to date, the game has sold over 121 million copies across all platforms the game is available on. This includes the 27 million PC copies, which makes it the biggest selling game of all time. Because video games are much younger than other technologies such as films and radio, they still have a long way to grow and develop to suit the growing gaming market. It has been widely successful as no player loses or wins the game, it allows the player creative freedom, and they can find themselves being challenged in the survival mod if that is what they want. It made a change to the violence of games such as Grand Theft Auto, as much younger audiences could interact with the game, with the PEGI age rating being at 7, with very limited bad language. Markus Persson was inspired by games such as Dwarf Fortress, another single-player construction and management based game. He drew inspiration from this but wanted to make it differ in how the goal was to produce a Role Playing variation to the game. 

The game was originally perceived to be childish for complex and serious gamers, however its success showed when in 2012, Xbox paired with Mojang in releasing a version of Minecraft which had new added features such as updates including tutorials and skin packs. Markus Persson stopped working on Minecraft when he sold Mojang to Microsoft for $2.5 billion. Statistics show that in January of 2018, Xbox had 59 million active users, which shows the wide possible game players the game could be opened up to. There are a total of 4.5 million Youtube hits for the game that had no marketing budget. Because of its originality and difference from other gamers in the market at the time, it was refreshing to game players to try something original and different. People enjoy the freedom from rules and freedom to make their own open world,a dot his is what made it popular. Much of its success was owed to Youtube, as mine craft Youtubers turned into creators of new content within the games. Players became interested in testing out the new versions people had created, and after Minecraft 1.0, players were able to 'finish' the game, which created a buzz among fans as they wanted to see what happened when it ended. New textures, items, sounds, particle effects, and combat variety. All combined, the game has sold over 100 million copies, with 40 million unique players per month. Minecraft is owned in every territory and country on the planet - even Antarctica - and if everyone who owned Minecraft formed a nation, it would be the 12th most populated on Earth. Gamers are able to contribute to the development of the program eliminating bugs and facilitating multiplayer capability, and again, is the reason for its popularity.

Minecraft has since being created in 2009, been developed as a game into a brand, with board games, backpacks, character stuffed toys being made etc, widening the market for the game and again, making it a worldwide brand. The upgrades have kept the players intrigued as they want to see the new content develop, and ultimately new players are joint as the game developed, as it remains up to date. The graphics have become much more sophisticated since it's introduction almost a decade ago, as it graphically is much more sophisticated, and contains new features. The idea of it being a open world game is what sparks the interests of players. Minecraft realms was launched to attract and encourage audiences to use the game on dedicated servers and increase subscription revenues. Minecraft Story Mode targets newer audiences with new stories, and players keep coming back for more. Because the game is now owned by Microsoft, they now have the ability to create a bigger advertisement campaign for the game, which has seen a rise in the success of the game.

When the Xbox and PlayStation versions of the game were created, there was chance to offer digital versions of the same game across the Windows 10 operating system to promote the Microsoft brand across home computers. Users were then encouraged to download the game through the cloud servers rathe than physical copies which would make the game more expensive. Pysical copies of the game were often released 6 months after the downloadable version, in an attempt to limit piracy, hacking, and file sharing, showing the change in technology, in that games were being played differently and cyber crime was becoming a stronger concept. Minecraft Realm is an official subscription based server host service that allows players to create and manage their own private Minecraft servers. Realms provided easy and fast ways for owners to manage their own gaming content. It was intended for use by smaller groups or friends or as a family server, however, this has led tot he growth of gamer involvement, as they can now buy and sell resources, skins, buildings, etc, on Minecraft Market place in return for digital game money. This has become a way to make money for some gamers. The game has been recognised and become associated with LEGO to encourage younger audiences, create merchandise development opportunities, as well as other developers and games studios making intertextual references to Minecraft across other games such as Runescapes and the Elders Scroll V. in 2019, Warner Bros have agreed to make a Minecraft movie, which has the opportunity to create several spin-offs, similar to that of the Lego movies. Series such as the Simpson and South Park have made parodies of the show, emphasising how it has been exposed to much wider audiences, such as families through the Simpsons, and adults through South Park.