The World-Changing Game That Abandoned Its Creator: The Story of Minecraft

Like people go crazy for this great minecraft yeah and i’ve tried to play it myself but i don’t think i don’t really understand i’m not sure if i understand either okay it was a long time i was freaking out like how do i follow up on minecraft

Because it’s the entire like big like cultural phenomena you can’t manufacture that this game is beautiful it is made by single man cause look at this man this is history this is my minecraft history dude i knew that all this world is all this game is is just a cleverly

Constructed sequence of ones and zeros but i knew that in a way it’s a part of me oh my god after all these What the [ __ ] years the damage my guy dude i’m actually five head for putting my you can’t hurt me in my whole you can’t hurt me in my hole you can’t hurt me One spring weekend in 2009 a swedish programmer marcus notch person decided to create a world uh i don’t have any modeling programs to do the the models i just write them in code the cave game as it was known at first was initially a combination of two games notch enjoyed

Dwarf fortress and infiniminer and yet notch’s goal was not to imitate those earlier games it was to create something entirely new something that would give players the freedom to literally build their own reality and the building blocks of that reality were all right there for them it’s a it’s a toy i would

Say you can build almost anything that you can imagine the initial free version of the game was posted to tig source forum it wasn’t long after that notch began charging money for what was now officially known as minecraft a name that paid homage to the other legendary craft titles

That came before it and unlike many of today’s offerings even those who bought the game in its earliest incarnation never had to pay a cent more for full ownership something the developers honor to this day as word of mouth began to spread on sites like 4chan and reddit minecraft’s popularity began

To rise as well the biggest advantage of doing things that we done will release early and get people to pay to get people who are more invested in the game we want to talk about the game one man’s brainchild was suddenly the obsession of thousands of people and every one of

Them was able to make the game their own there was something irresistible in the sheer absolute freedom of the minecraft experience whether you wanted to stack your virtual legos in peace go on rampages for blocky loot or simply explore the vast landscapes of the game it had something for everyone

This [ __ ] what the [ __ ] okay so i get the worst [ __ ] world possible um it seems like i’m not like a desert wasteland kind of thing i will destroy you cow sorry obnoxious yeah give me your armor oh wow i found like a little island well it’s not really a little island but

It’s like sort of like a little island and then actually it is like a really big island everybody teleport to me this is cool minecraft continued to pick up speed and the classic version of the game received several major updates adding features like the crafting system that allowed players to make more items

And infinite maps that stretched so far that attempting to reach their limit could literally break the game the beta version of minecraft was officially launched in november 2010 just a month after notch founded his own video game development company mojang i quit my job and went full time and then

Decided that i probably need to start a company here because i can’t keep up with like the demand on the game so and now we’re seven people and we have an office and it’s a new year and it’s finally beta the beginning of 2011 marked an important milestone in minecraft’s development

One million copies sold a number of improvements were introduced the following year including the release of the game’s mobile versions and on november 18 2011 notch announced minecraft’s passage from a beta to a full-fledged game at the first ever official minecon are you ready for the official release of minecraft

Minecraft’s success was staggering and seemed all the more unbelievable considering it has never been commercially advertised to its 16 million users minecraft and its community were so closely intertwined the growth was organic and the game’s dedicated fan base found a way to ingrain minecraft even deeper into popular culture

By creating countless youtube music Parodies 2012 proved to be an eventful year for minecraft the game made its way onto the xbox 360 as well as ios and android devices minecon 2012 was held at disneyland paris in november and there was now an official minecraft lego set out there for notch however 2012 marked a personal low point

He went through a divorce that summer which was only the beginning of a downward spiral for the game’s creator but in spite of notch’s personal struggles the game was booming mojang continued to update minecraft regularly and looked for ways to bring the game to even more players trading horses new biomes

And more minecraft in all its glory finally became available on playstation 3 in late 2013. how to attack okay so this is what i punch with so let’s go get some trees is there a way to run how do you run uh do you just double tap or

Or does it auto run or oh okay wait whoa whoa wait minecraft had grown into something more than just a game it turned into a bonafide cultural phenomenon this is a class where two worlds collide history and technology the children at hazeling field school in cambridgeshire are using minecraft

To create an indus valley bronze age settlement elite just playing for like a really long time and then they tell you to get off and they’re like oh come on i don’t want to stop but what notch realized was that the game had absorbed him entirely instead of being marcus person

He had turned into the guy who made minecraft i looked you up on the internet and stuff and it seems like there’s quite a lot of bitchiness in your world like quite a lot of people like i hate him he created minecraft how dare he not be

Me you know notch was personally blamed for any and every issue within the game despite having stepped away from working on minecraft some time ago and the solution seemed obvious hand minecraft over to someone else so just when that happened everyone’s giving me so much like crap online or this one no

This is not worth it anymore so just tweeted kind of jokingly like who wants to buy the company right the tweet may have been a joke but the response was dead serious microsoft offered to buy mojang for an astronomical 2.5 billion dollars because it’s it’s such a huge thing

It’s a cultural phenomenon it’s like buying lego or buying disney or something like that it’s such a an institution particularly to the younger audience and microsoft knows that with microsoft’s backing mojang continued to produce quality minecraft content for its players and notch could enjoy his newfound wealth and finally

Focus on other pursuits but even being a billionaire wasn’t enough compared to being a god minecraft was such a massive accomplishment notch was still living in the shadow of the enormity of his own creation his increasingly erratic social media posts raised questions about how well notch was handling the separation

From his life’s greatest achievement and now i realized oh this fun to go party it’s not a sane way to spend money but it’s fun i figured like when i was younger we didn’t have a lot of money at all if i ever get rich i’m not gonna be one

Of those boring rich people doesn’t spend money right i don’t try to compensate for giving to charity as well so i feel better about myself minecraft in the meantime saw its popularity online wane somewhat its player base was still massive mojang was still doing what it always did updating the game and

Making sure the player experience remained as engaging as ever and you will fight your way through in kind of like a dungeon crawling genre so it’s it’s kind of like a top-down dungeon crawler so you’re traveling around various environments yeah packing up mobs yeah yeah absolutely it’s there

But all those kids who initially got into minecraft and made it as big as it was were growing up there were newer cooler games on the horizon for example fortnite was drawing a lot of minecraft once faithful content creators towards its seemingly greener pastures for some of these older players playing minecraft became

Something like a guilty pleasure but the sun hadn’t set on minecraft forever far from it In 2019 the game celebrated its 10th birthday an event notch wasn’t invited to as microsoft was trying to distance itself from minecraft’s highly controversial creator going as far as removing his name from the game’s splash art while excluding notch from what was essentially the celebration of his life’s most monumental accomplishment

May seem like a step too far his online persona had taken a dark turn over the years racism conspiracy theories not just social media presence had deteriorated to the point of no return when you look at the game today it shows no signs of stopping down with new updates coming out

Just bringing and inviting new people to the game all while notch just slowly fades away day by day the exact opposite of what’s happening to his game minecraft notch’s troubles aside the year gave minecraft’s team many causes for celebration the game’s youtube renaissance being chief among them pewdiepie

A youtuber notorious for sending various games into the stratosphere of online popularity simply by playing them decided to upload his first minecraft video in years i have not played minecraft properly in ever i played the game when it was in alpha that’s right hipster notch supporter i

Think a lot of it has changed i’m not sure the so-called pewdiepie effect did its job and before long the avalanche of creators who wanted to stack cubes for their viewers brought minecraft out of its relative obscurity and back into the limelight sorry i’m so wow that was the most 12

Year old twitch viewer thing of me ever yeah so basically back in like 2011 i used to play a lot of minecraft it’s been a very very long time since i’ve done a single player solo survival effort myself a lot of new stuff has been added

Apparently so i thought just for a bit of a lull i would play is it worth getting back into overwatch again how is he so dumb what a degenerate dog ah this is gonna be mount myth ah dude this is gonna be sick and for those who once enjoyed playing minecraft themselves

Watching their favorite content creators stream the game from their childhood kickstarted a wave of nostalgia sending droves of older players back around the block minecraft was cool again challenge runs strategy guides pranks minecraft offered both new and established streamers unlimited opportunities to create the kind of content they wanted on their channels

I don’t even oh okay okay all right i’m in i’m in the game okay wait so the graphics are actually this bad this is normal oh no what is that this is the oldest version of minecraft look at how bland it is it’s so old there’s no hunger bar

For those who played it as kids the extensive updates mojang implemented over the years made the game feel fresh without taking away what originally endeared players to minecraft its simplistic yet unique design that made the possibilities virtually endless and while notch likely never intended for his own life to take the

Twists and turns that it had ultimately minecraft provided players with exactly the sort of freedom to choose their own path that its creator originally intended for his game the freedom to literally build their own world dude i was so sad when this hard drive died because look at this man this is history

This is my minecraft history dude there have been plenty of attempts to imitate the game’s success but none have ever come close in the decades since its creation minecraft went from an indie darling to the best-selling video game ever created it gave us unforgettable moments of both triumph and failure and crossed over

Into other parts of pop culture that we encounter on a daily basis the sheer magnitude and complexity of what one man created over the course of a one weekend in 2009 makes minecraft an untouchable cultural building block of our time to millions of people out there minecraft

Is more than a game it is a living breathing testament to the power of imagination put me in some random world i’ve never explored you can add weird new items i’ll never know how to use but to me it’s not really minecraft until that music starts fading in

And i’m pulled back into a world when nothing really mattered when everything was easy and when i was happy Thanks for watching if you want more content like this hit the sub button and ring that notification bell for unique bite size videos you won’t find anywhere else hit up our instagram twitter and facebook pages