Minecrafts Success

Why has Minecraft been a critical and commercial success?

Minecraft is an open-world sandbox (construction) game that was created by the Swedish video game designer Markus Persson and then was further developed and published by companies: Mojang and 4J Studios. Minecraft was originally first created in the summer of 2009 and was released as an independent game that costed around £8, he sold around 40 copies on the first weekend. In the summer of 2010 sales reached 15,000 and the game was now no longer considered an Indie release with Markus teaming up with Mojang to make this a mainstream release. When sales reached 200,000 PayPal froze Persson's accounts for suspected fraud due to the huge transactions entering his account. In April 2011the sales reached 2 million and now Minecraft stands as the ninth selling video game franchise in the world selling a total of 144 million copies. The game currently costs £16 and is available on many platforms such as: XBOX, PS4, iPad, Nintendo Wii and many more and has made £52 million in total revenue.

Minecraft has been highly successful because it is a very unique idea and at its time of creation the only thing that comes to close to an endless open-world sandbox game is Roblox which has many ethical issues. This is because Roblox has been the source of a multitude of investigations into indecent approaches being made between gamers as there is no limit as to where you can go into other players' game. In the game players make structures out of 3-D cubes to mine and then craft whatever structures they desire to, however you can also explore and combat. It also offers several game modes with the most popular being survival and creation mode. The survival one consists of beginning the game with nothing and you must collect all the: tools, weapons, armour and other resources in order to succeed. In the creation mode you get given all the resources needed to make any structure that you would want to.

Another reason for Minecraft's amazing rise to success is the fact that it is incomplete and constantly innovating. This is because when the game was originally designed, Markus wanted to leave it unfinished to ensure that he could cater to whatever responses he got about the game and then subsequently add them into the game. Every Friday he would take these responses and update the game in order to improve it by adding features, which led to sales rising on every occasion. Markus always stays up to date on social media as well by always discussing the needs of his audience before finding a way to get these features into the game. This builds a strong relationship between the consumer and the developer which can be passed on to friends therefore widening their customer base and increasing sales and success.

Minecraft has had a massive cultural influence on people thank to its multiplayer and social media aspects of the game. There are a plethora of Minecraft dedicated streaming channels on YouTube and Twitch which allow players to escape to a community where they can share their interests with people of similar personalities or meet people that are completely different, thanks to Minecraft's massively varied fanbase. This was helped by the fact that Persson never released instructions for the game so if players were struggling they would have to communicate with friends or through social media in order to succeed within the game which greats a positive atmosphere within the Minecraft community.