Notes

The History Of Minecraft - The Best Selling PC Game Ever

In celebration of TechRadar's PC Gaming Week 2020, let's take a look at the history of Minecraft, from its humble beginnings to being the best selling PC game of all time.



"I don’t consider myself a game developer. I make games because it's fun, and because I love games and I love to program"



It all started in 2009. There were many people back then who had very good ideas. Zach Barth, a perennial puzzle innovator, was one of them. It was Zach who coded and released multiplayer mineral-em-up Infiniminer over the course of a few months, abandoning the freeware project after its source code was leaked.



Another was Swedish coder Markus 'Notch' Persson who, after previously helping develop sandbox MMO Wurm Online, was working in his spare time on a kind of Dungeon Keeper/Dwarf Fortress/Rollercoaster Tycoon combo (as odd as that may sound) named RubyDung.



Also, see how to unblock Minecraft at school and work



He tried to create a first person view of the game but was disappointed with his results. He then found Infiniminer.



Persson wrote, "My God," on his Tumblr. I tried to implement that first person engine using RubyDung art and code.



Even his very first version, coded in Java, is immediately identifiable today: even though it wasn't yet formally named, this was Minecraft.



Notch wrote a few months later that "the response was very positive" and "I was blown away [by] its framerate, as well as how it ran in a web browser, so I decided I would go for it."



He pulled in character models from a previous game idea called Zombie Town (opens new tab), and put the first alpha version, now sporting the iconic name, up to test.



It received an immediate positive reaction. Minecraft's freedom and creative nature fascinated players so Notch quickly got to work on new features.



Within a month, Minecraft had sand, water, lava, rudimentary dynamic lighting. Within two months, the earliest multiplayer tests were underway, and the speed of development picked up even further.



Going Alpha



The development quickly moved to a paid Alpha version. This required access to a premium account.



"I thought, if I don't charge I'll never get paid," Notch later explained in a 2012 PC Gamer interview (opens in new tab). "If I wait until the title is finished, it's not going to happen because I won’t have enough money to continue development."



Minecraft's Alpha sales were launched on June 13, 2009. It was released on June 13th 2009.



Later in 2009, Minecraft's Creeper toting survival mode was released for testing. This made Minecraft a more serious game than a toy and enabled Persson to leave his job in May 2010, one year after its initial tests. By June, 20,000 paid accounts had been registered.



The development team saw an explosion of features, including redstone, minecarts and dungeons. This led to a rapid increase in sales and Persson was able to expand the number working on Minecraft.



Mojang Specifications evolved into Mojang AB. This group was founded alongside other Swedish coders. Valve was interested in producing its own games at that time.



"I got a Skype call from Bellevue," game designer Jakob 'JahKob' Porser told PC Gamer. "Notch was like, "I met with them. They want to hire me. Evidently, I'm not interested so let's make it happen." Let's start this business.' I was like, OK, I'll quit my job tomorrow."



The pair were soon joined by Daniel Kappische’ Kaplan, a business development specialist, and CEO Carl Manneh. Manneh was hired (on his advice) from Persson’s former employer jAlbum. Jens Jeb Bergensten, an artist Markus —Junkboy’ Toivonen and Jens _Jeb’ Bergensten - and as Minecraft's popularity grew, the team would grow with it.



"Minecraft is a hugely popular game, and people tell me that it has changed many games. I didn't mean for it to do so."



Even with Minecraft still very much in its early stages (although now playable in its own browser-free client) our pals at PC Gamer magazine made Minecraft its game of the year (opens in new tab) in 2010.



Jaz McDougall wrote that Minecraft is one of the best games because it allows you to play so many different games within it. It's a primal urge to build a hill fort on a hill - in gaming form.



Continued success



The snowball kept rolling downhill. January 12, 2011 marked the one millionth Minecraft account registration. Six months later, 10 million accounts were registered. This was a very popular property, and it was now that it needed to expand its reach.



Java was the core problem of Minecraft. Although not the most intuitive choice, Notch's original programming language was perfect for Minecraft at the time.



It had already helped to foster a growing scene modders tweaking Minecraft for their own ends and facilitated cross-platform playing between PC, Mac, and Linux.



These mods, although not supported, greatly extended the game. Some (including pistons or horses) impressed Notch enough to be included in the game's official game.



The Java overheads, which were not made for games as heavyweight and complex as Minecraft, were an obstacle on every platform.



Minecraft Pocket Edition is a new branch of Minecraft that was created to make Minecraft more accessible to the masses. It is now coded in C++ and designed for smartphones.



Moving platforms



Minecraft Pocket Edition was slow to catch up - it has been consistently behind mainline Minecraft when it comes to features since it was announced - but it brought Minecraft to Android (specifically, the Xperia Play), then to iOS.



Five days after the reveal of Pocket Edition, yet another C++ branch emerged during a presentation at 2011's E3: the console edition. It was originally an Xbox 360 exclusive title. However, it was developed in-house by 4J Studios in Scotland (opens new tab).



The Java edition was not neglected. It left Beta in November 2011 at Las Vegas MineCon, and was sold for twice the original Alpha price. However it continued to be the bearer new features. Version1.0 introduced The End, which adds a formal end to this game.



It also marked Notch’s end as the project's leader, as he handed the reins over to Jeb. Jeb is still the project leader to this day.



Notch stated that he is more interested in the development of new games than maintaining an existing game.



"I get bored or frustrated with things after three to 5 years. Jeb was a great game developer and was very compatible with my vision of how Minecraft should be developed.



Notch himself moved on to other development projects, although he scaled back his efforts to hobby projects and challenges which interested him after creative block caused his first major follow-up project, 0x10c, to fizzle out.



Shortly after Minecraft was officially released, the team behind multiplayer mob Bukkit joined Mojang to help improve the multiplayer experience and create a mod API.



This, along with a continuous scheme of updates and additions, meant Minecraft's official release was not the end of its development story.



A growing empire



Minecraft's popularity with children and its insane sales figures fueled an increase in extra-curricular activities. Toys and branded merchandise were flooding the shelves. The first Minecraft LEGO set (opens new tab) was created just one month after the Xbox edition.



The latter was an immediate success and sold over 17,000 copies per hour after its May 2012 release.



In April 2013, shortly after the release on Minecraft's educational-focused Raspberry Pi Edition, Java and Pocket editions had each sold more than 10,000,000 copies.



In 2013, the exclusive Microsoft-Microsoft agreement was canceled and Minecraft versions for PS3, PS4 & PSVita were released. Minecraft had long outgrown its status as an indie game. Persson, the figurehead of the most significant gaming phenomenon the globe had ever seen was being under immense online pressure.



"Anyone want my share of Mojang?" he tweeted in June 2014. (opens in new window) "So I can move on in my life?" It is not my job to get criticized for doing the right thing.
minecraft wiki


CEO Carl Manneh received numerous inquiries from Persson immediately.

He was: Activision Blizzard, EA, and EA expressed interest in Mojang. However, the company's previous relationship with Microsoft (and, presumably a superior monetary offer), saw a deal being struck.

Microsoft takes control



"I'm not an entrepreneur. I'm not a CEO. I'm a nerdy computer programmer who likes to have opinions on Twitter."



The Redmond company hadn't always been particularly interested in Minecraft, at least if one-time Microsoft-contracted developer Peter Molyneux is to be believed.



GamesRadar's Jeremy said that he can recall going to [Gamescom] back in Microsoft's days and talking to Microsoft. They thought it was rubbish. You know, it didn't have a character, it didn't have a story, it didn't have a tutorial, the graphics were, you know, like 1980s graphics... they totally, totally missed that."



They didn’t miss it in the latter part of 2014. Following the launch of Minecraft's paid-for online server option, Realms, and ten days after the launch of Minecraft on Xbox One, it was announced that Notch and co. were to sell Mojang to Microsoft (opens in new tab) for a cool $2.5 billion.



The deal was completed on November 5, 2014. Persson, Porser, and Carl Manneh left Mojang.



Under new leadership, but maintaining the same dev team that had driven it since Notch's original sidestep in 2011, Minecraft's expansion rolled on.



The Guinness world record was broken at London's Excel Centre by MineCon 2015. The Pocket edition has been ported to Wii U (Windows 10, Samsung's GearVR and Apple TV). By 2016, total sales for Minecraft across all platforms hit 100 million.



And Microsoft was by no means done with Minecraft. An Education edition (opens in new tab), which builds on the creative, problem-solving aspects of Minecraft which had made it such a popular game with young people and adults alike, launched in November 2016



Pocket Edition finally reached 1.0 in 2017, five years after its initial release. A Chinese beta followed in 2017, preceding the most significant behind-the-scenes update in Minecraft's history: the Bedrock Engine.



Released as part 'Better Together’ update (opens a new tab), the BedrockEngine brought all platforms that run Pocket Edition, from consoles to Windows 10, under the hood together and over it.



Cross-platform multiplayer and unification of DLC items landed, along with 4K graphics and planned upgrades to the non-Java Minecraft (now dropping the 'Pocket Edition' tag and simply going by 'Minecraft') would happen simultaneously.



There's still a division within Minecraft - the now-explicitly named Minecraft Java Edition continues development under its own internal team at Mojang.



The future looks bleak



It now belongs to Microsoft in one way. It's been in the same sense as Microsoft for a long time and that will never change.



So what's next for Minecraft? Standing at 144 million paid accounts and boasting a record of 74 million simultaneous players as of January 2018, and surely on its way to ousting Tetris as the top selling video game of all time, Minecraft doesn't show any signs of going anywhere.



The Twitch launcher integration continues to help the mod scene thrive. YouTube continues to be a major draw for the game.



Meanwhile, merchandise sales haven't dipped; Minecraft has become a staple of Lego's commercial efforts. We know this: There is an infinite universe out there. One man's idea and another man's experiment have evolved into something that has thrilled a whole generation of children and changed the way we think and play games.



Minecraft isn't a graphical masterpiece, and it's not, by any stretch of the imagination, a game with an AAA storyline. It's a game that is as relevant today as it was nine years ago. How many games can say that?



TechRadar's PC Gaming Week 2020 features interviews, articles and essential buying guides to celebrate the most powerful gaming platform. All our coverage can be found on our PC Gaming Week 2020 Page.


Homepage: https://minecraft-wiki.net/