Minecraft and TF2’s Weird History

Good evening the class-based first-person shooter team fortress 2 came out in 2007 thanks to a multi-billion dollar corporation named valve two years later a survival sandbox indie game called minecraft was brainstormed by a single lonely swedish man in his bedroom but despite having radically different origin stories and being completely separate genres these

Two beloved games have a surprising amount of shared history and quite a large community overlap as well screw you i am gonna go play minecraft so today i’m going to talk about how minecraft and team fortress 2 came to be so intertwined let’s begin first we need to cover the relationship

That notch the creator of minecraft has with team fortress and its developers as you might know team fortress got it started as a mod of quake a game that notch is a lifelong fan of and has even attempted to settle lawsuits with knowing this it’s no surprise notch

Claims to have been a fan of the original quake world team fortress as well as valve’s gold source adaption team fortress classic and when valvelight loosed the pre-release beta for team fortress 2 on september 17 2007 notch joined and continued to play after its official launch i had played a lot

Of quake world team fortress and team fortress classic back in the day and i knew tf2 would be the greatest thing ever my friends humored me and got in on the beta with me and my god was it awesome it was awesomer than awesome fast forward to 2010 notch had begun

Really pursuing work on minecraft and it wasn’t long before he and the tf2 team crossed paths for the first time on july 28th he used his tumblr blog titled the word of notch to praise and promote a community payload level for tf2 called pl minecraft the tf2 blog responded the

Same day by linking notch’s tumblr post and singing their own praises for minecraft notch had already made his high regards for valve apparent in minecraft by including paintings depicting counter-strike maps so when he learned that he had been acknowledged by one of his favorite developers the following morning he took to his blog

Once more to celebrate this is so cool i can almost forgive them for forgetting about gordon almost the next major interaction between notch and valve happened on april fool’s day of 2011 when notch released a prank update for minecraft upon launching a world players were greeted with a steve

Co supply crate which displayed a shop offering items like a mining helmet and enlargement pills the store was just a ruse as clicking to check out prompted players with a jurassic park jumpscare if you’re familiar with tf2 you’ll know that this prank was poking fun at its in-game microtransaction service the

Manco storefront notch talked about the joke further on his blog this is meant to be a playful jab at the manco store in team fortress 2. valve is my favorite game development studio on earth but it seems like they can’t take a joke as they immediately

Put their best witch doctors to work and sent horrible hexes my way my throat exploded into a quagmire of pain my brain started trying to escape from my head and disturbingly large quantities of sticky goo began to make its way out of my face so this is my warning

Do not joke about valve by this point fans were starting to notice the playful relation between valve and notch and became curious why notch hadn’t pursued putting minecraft on valve’s massively popular game storefront steam at the gaming festival pax in august 2011 notch explained to a

Fan that he had plans to add an in-game marketplace to minecraft which would be prohibited under steam guidelines he once again took to his tumblr blog a day later to clarify that though minecraft wouldn’t be coming to steam there was no bad blood between him and valve and that

He was a huge fan of their service on november 5th 2011 notch participated in the third tf2 mix-up charity event teaming up with members of the yogscast notch went toe-to-toe against tf2’s lead developer robin walker as well as youtubers freddie wong and totalbiscuit actually that is a good point is there

Anybody you’re particularly anxious to to make sure that you dominate notch notch and notch later that month on november 23rd valve developed and distributed an in-game team fortress 2 cosmetic called the top notch this hat which is a one-of-a-kind item distributed only to notch’s personal steam account takes after his

Then profile picture on twitter by the way you should go follow me on twitter it was created in response to a tweet notch posted complaining that tf2 players were accusing him of being an impersonator notch was extremely flattered by valve’s gesture and made another blog post praising tf2 holy cow

Thank you valve you wouldn’t believe the amount of medic i get now also spies i am never quitting tf2 again and you should all go buy it right away how much is it you ask it’s free yes notch continued to livestream team fortress 2 on his twitch for years to

Come after that with the game even getting a mention on the final post of the word of notch blog i’ll also keep talking to the players and i’ll keep streaming myself rocket jumping in tf2 forever wants to listen to or watch that when you look at the friendly interactions between the tf2 developers

And notch it becomes easy to see how their mutual respect facilitated a community crossover but this connection was built off more than just dev interaction another notable way that these games fostered their player overlap was by encouraging user contribution and expression this meant that players had an opportunity to

Express their love for tf2 while playing minecraft and vice versa for minecraft a major factor was that skin customization feature that allows the player to set their character to a portrayal of whoever or whatever they want a zombie a robot chris chan you name it and of course an abundance of skins depicting

The team fortress 2 roster were created and posted online for fans to enjoy you can find skins for each of the game’s classes and even some for the minor characters from the game’s comics and shorts online and beyond that minecraft sandbox nature has helped itself to a robust modding scene which has also

Occasionally come to lean into the team fortress community check out this impressive project where someone has tried their shot at remaking tf2 as a minecraft game mode as for team fortress 2 valve has a long reputation as a community-friendly company and even though their communication skills have

Gone off the deep end in the last 10 years they remain leagues ahead of other game companies in terms of how many opportunities they provide to fans building passion projects for example the valve developer community website is essentially a ginormous network of documents detailing valve’s game design philosophies and they’ve made it

Available for modders and developers to study for free or how about the steam workshop where valve has created an official platform to support user-generated content even going as far as to implement uploads into their games and let community contributors take a small cut of the game’s revenue with how

Much free information and promotion valve gives away it should come as no surprise that their games have some of the biggest and most fruitful modding communities in the industry with tf2 being no exception it should also come as no surprise that by giving away incredibly helpful documents that

Explain how to use their developer tools valve accidentally opened the gate for a ridiculous amount of minecraft themed tf2 levels seriously there are so many and they’re still being regularly produced and i have no idea why an interesting bit of trivia is that two builders two tools a notorious minecraft

Anarchy server you may have heard of got its start as an offshoot of a now defunct tf2 server called 242 furious the creator of two builders 2 tools goes by the name house master mirroring the creator of the 242 furious servers floor master floor master is known for a

Couple of other things too he created the intro video for the tf2 community map cp steel which earned him his own community rocket launcher back in 2008 and he was also one of the founders of an early tf2 griefing channel called team roomba but to pull things back

Together how did minecraft and tf2 come to be so intertwined i think it comes down to a couple of factors both games were created around the same time by developers who shared a mutual respect and occasionally cross-promoted both games are very casual and appealed to similar demographics of teenage boys and

Both games fostered exceedingly creative communities which often bled into each other and while both grew to be bloated with updates that a decent chunk of their community members absolutely despise both are still massively beloved by their core fan bases and will likely remain staples of pc gaming for years to come

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