Minecraft Essay

Minecraft is a multi-platform, open sandbox game. It started of as an 'indie' game created by a Swedish programmer Marcus "Notch" Perrson in 2009. The game soon became critically ad commercially successful. It was then sold to a big commercial company - Mojang.
In Minecraft, players are able to build structures, and destroy landscapes made out of 3D textured blocks, the main activity to do in the game is mine for different resources and create a world of your own with anything you would want. The game also contains aspects of combat and exploration.

There are two main types of modes that players can use in minecraft:
Survival - This mode is where players must collect resources, build structures, battle mobs, manage hunger levels, and explore the world in an effort to survive and create a successful world. Players are able to play survival mode in either single player or multiplayer. Single player was added in 2009 whereas multiplayer was added in early 2010.
Creative - Creative mode takes away most of the aspects that are in survival mode and allows players to easily create and destroy mechanisms. The player does not need to worry about health, damage, collecting resources, battling mobs as none of that matters when in creative mode. Creative mode was added to the original minecraft in 2009.

Minecraft has been a large commercial success, with over 154 million copies sold by late 2018 with an estimate of 91 million monthly players on the servers spread across 116 different countries where minecraft is accessible. On its release, the game won five awards at three conferences, including an Innovation Award, Best Debut Game, Best Downloadable Game, Audience Award and Seumas McNally Grand Prize. In November 2011, prior to the game's official release, Minecraft had over 16 million registered users and 4 million purchases. Due to its popularity, Minecraft was released across multiple platforms becoming a commercially viable franchise with increased interactivity.

Minecraft has influenced popular culture, thanks to the rising use of social media and technology. Video channels such as Ali-A on Youtube have developed a large follow rating (over 16 million people) and also gamers on Twitch, research showed that one-third of Minecraft players learned about the game and learnt how to play the game form the internet and by watching videos. A simple search for Minecraft  on Youtube will bring up over 100 million different results. The game has also made millions of dollars through selling merchandise such as t-shirts and toys. This mass popularity in the game has caused its own convention to start up called Minecon