Minecraft is a sandbox indie game originally created by Swedish programmer Markus "Notch" Persson and later developed and published by Mojang. It was publicly released for the PC on May 17, 2009, as a developmental alpha version and, after gradual updates, was published as a full release version on November 18, 2011. A version for Android was released a month earlier on October 7, and an iOS version was released on November 17, 2011. On May 9, 2012, the game was released onXbox 360 as an Xbox Live Arcade game, co-developed by 4J Studios. All versions of Minecraft receive periodic updates.
The creative and building aspects of Minecraft allow players to build constructions out of textured cubes in a 3D procedurally generated world. Other activities in the game include exploration, gathering resources, crafting, and combat. Gameplay in its commercial release has two principal modes: survival, which requires players to acquire resources and maintain their health and hunger; and creative, where players have an unlimited supply of resources, the ability to fly, and no health or hunger. A third gameplay mode named hardcore is the same as survival, differing only in difficulty; it is set to the most difficult setting and respawning is disabled, forcing players to delete their worlds upon death.
Minecraft received five awards from the 2011 Game Developers Conference: it was awarded the Innovation Award, Best Downloadable Game Award, and the Best Debut Game Award from the Game Developers Choice Awards; and the Audience Award, as well as the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, from the Independent Games Festival in 2011. In 2012, Minecraft was awarded a Golden Joystick Award in the category Best Downloadable Game. As of February 3, 2014, the game has sold over 14 million copies on PC and over 35 million copies across all platforms.
Minecraft is an open world game that has no specific goals for the player to accomplish, allowing players a large amount of freedom in choosing how to play the game.[11] However, there is an achievement system.[12] Gameplay by default is first person, but players have the option to play in third person mode.[13] The core gameplay revolves around breaking and placing blocks. The game world is essentially composed of rough 3D objects—mainly cubes—that are arranged in a fixed grid pattern and represent different materials, such as dirt, stone, various ores, water, and tree trunks. While players can move freely across the world, objects and items can only be placed at fixed locations relative to the grid. Players can gather these material blocks and place them elsewhere, thus allowing for various constructions.[14]
At the start of the game, the player is placed on the surface of a procedurally generated and virtually infinite game world.[15] Players can walk across the terrainconsisting of plains, mountains, forests, caves, and various water bodies.[15] The world is divided into biomes ranging from deserts to jungles to snowfields.[16][17] The in-game time system follows a day and night cycle, with one full cycle lasting 20 real-time minutes. Throughout the course of the game, players encounter various non-player characters known as mobs, including animals, villagers and hostile creatures.[18] Non-hostile animals—such as cows, pigs, and chickens—spawn during the daytime. The player may hunt them for food and crafting materials. By contrast, hostile mobs—such as large spiders, skeletons, and zombies—spawn during nighttime and in dark places, such as caves.[15] Some Minecraft-unique creatures have been noted by reviewers, such as the Creeper, an exploding creature that sneaks up on the player; and the Enderman, a creature with the ability to teleport and pick up blocks.[19]
The game world is procedurally generated as players explore it, using a seed which is obtained from the system clock at the time of world creation unless manually specified by the player.[20][21] Although limits exist on vertical movement both up and down, Minecraft allows for an infinitely large game world to be generated on the horizontal plane, only running into technical problems when extremely distant locations are reached.[nb 1] The game achieves this by splitting the game world data into smaller sections called "chunks", which are only created or loaded into memory when players are nearby.[20]
The game's physics system, in which most solid blocks are unaffected by gravity, has often been described as unrealistic by commentators.[22] Liquids in the game flow from a source block, which can be removed by placing a solid block in its place, or by scooping it into a bucket. Complex systems can be built using primitive mechanical devices, electrical circuits, and logic gates built with an in-game material known as redstone.[23]
Minecraft features two alternate dimensions besides the main world – the Nether and The End.[19] The Nether is a hell-like dimension accessed via player-built portals that contains many unique resources and can be used to travel great distances in the overworld.[24] The End is a barren land in which a boss dragon called the Ender Dragon dwells.[25] Killing the dragon cues the game's ending credits, written by Irish author Julian Gough.[26] Players are then allowed to teleport back to their original spawn point in the overworld, and will receive "The End" achievement. There is also a second boss called "The Wither", which drops materials used to build a placeable beacon that can enhance certain abilities of all nearby players.
The game primarily consists of two game modes: survival and creative. It also has a changeable difficulty system of four levels; the easiest difficulty (peaceful) removes any hostile creatures that spawn.[27]
Survival mode
In this mode, players have to gather natural resources (such as wood, stone, etc.) found in the environment in order to craft certain blocks and items.[15] Depending on the difficulty, monsters spawn at darker places on the map, necessitating that the player builds a shelter at night.[15] The mode also features a health bar which is depleted by attacks from monsters, falls, drowning, falling into lava, suffocation, starvation, and other events. Players also have a hunger bar, which must be periodically refilled by eating food in-game, except in peaceful mode, in which the hunger bar does not drain. If the hunger bar is depleted, then the health bar will slowly diminish. Health replenishes when players have a nearly full hunger bar, and also regenerates regardless of fullness if players play on the easiest difficulty.
There are a wide variety of items that players can craft in Minecraft.[28] Players can craft armor, which can help mitigate damage from attacks, while weapons such as swords can be crafted to kill enemies and other animals more easily. Players may acquire different resources to craft tools, such as weapons, armor, food, and various other items. By acquiring better resources, players can craft more effective items. For example, tools such as axes, shovels, or pickaxes, can be used to chop down trees, dig soil, and mine ores, respectively; and tools made out of better resources (such as iron in place of stone) perform their tasks more quickly and can be used more heavily before breaking. Players may also trade goods with villager mobs through a bartering system.[29] Emeralds are often the currency of the villagers, although some trade with wheat or other materials.[18][29]
The game has an inventory system and players are limited to the number of items they can carry. Upon dying, items in the players' inventories are dropped, and players respawn at the current spawn point, which is set by default where players begin the game, but can be reset if players sleep in beds in-game.[30] Dropped items can be recovered if players can reach them before they despawn. Players may acquire experience points by killing mobs and other players, mining, smelting ores, breeding animals, and cooking food. Experience can then be spent on enchanting tools, armor and weapons.[27] Enchanted items are generally more powerful, last longer, or have other special effects.[27]
Players may also play in hardcore mode, a variant of survival mode that differs primarily in the game being locked to the hardest gameplay setting as well as featuring permadeath; upon players' death, their world is deleted.[31]
Creative mode
In creative mode, players have access to most of the resources and items in the game through the inventory menu, and can place or remove them instantly.[32] Players, able to fly freely around the game world, do not take environmental or mob damage, and are not affected by hunger.[33][34] The game mode helps players focus on building and creating large projects.[32]
Adventure mode
Adventure mode was added to Minecraft in version 1.3; it was designed specifically so that players could experience user crafted custom maps and adventures.[35][36][37]Gameplay is similar to survival mode but introduces various player restrictions such as disabling the ability to place and destroy blocks without the appropriate tools.[36][37] This is so that players can obtain the required items and experience adventures in the way that the mapmaker intended.[37] Another addition designed for custom maps is the command block; this block allows mapmakers to expand interactions with players through certain server commands.[38]
Multiplayer
Multiplayer on Minecraft is available through player-hosted servers and enables multiple players to interact and communicate with each other on a single world.[39] Players can run their own servers or use a hosting provider. Single player worlds have local area network support, allowing players to join worlds on locally interconnected computers without a server setup.[40] Minecraft multiplayer servers are guided by server operators, who have access to server commands such as setting the time of day and teleporting players around. Operators can also set up restrictions concerning which usernames or IP addresses are allowed to enter the server.[39] Multiplayer servers offer players a wide range of activities, with some servers having their own unique rules and customs. Competitions are available in some servers, in which players can participate in a variety of games, including some resembling The Hunger Games.[41][42] A gamemode, PvP (player versus player), may be enabled to allow fighting between players.[43] In 2013 Mojang announced Minecraft Realms, a server hosting service intended to enable children to run server multiplayer games easily and safely.[44]
Development
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The developer of Minecraft, Markus "Notch" Persson, began developing the game as an independent project while working for King.com and laterjAlbum.[46][47] He was inspired to create Minecraft by several other games such as Dwarf Fortress, Dungeon Keeper, and later Infiniminer. At the time, he had visualized an isometric 3D building game that would be a cross between his inspirations and had made some early prototypes.[46] Infiniminer heavily influenced the style of gameplay, including the first-person aspect of the game, the "blocky" visual style and the block-building fundamentals.[47] However, unlike Infiniminer, Persson wanted Minecraft to have RPG elements.[48]
Minecraft was first released to the public on May 17, 2009 as a developmental release on TIGSource forums,[49] later becoming known as the Classicversion. Further milestones dubbed as Survival Test, Indev and Infdev were released between September 2009 and February 2010, although the game saw updates in-between. First major update dubbed alpha version was released on June 28, 2010. Although Persson maintained a day job with Jalbum.net at first, he later quit in order to work on Minecraft full-time as sales of the alpha version of the game expanded.[50] Persson continued to update the game with releases distributed to users automatically. These updates included features such as new items, new blocks, new mobs, survival mode, and changes to the game's behavior (e.g., how water flows).[50]
To back the development of Minecraft, Persson set up a video game company, Mojang, with the money earned from the game.[51][52][53] On December 11, 2010, Persson announced that Minecraft was entering its beta testing phase on December 20, 2010.[54] He further stated that users who bought the game after this date would no longer be guaranteed to receive all future content free of charge as it "scared both the lawyers and the board." However, bug fixes and all updates leading up to and including the release would still be free. Over the course of the development, Mojang hired several new employees to work on the project.[55]
Mojang moved the game out of beta and released the full version on November 18, 2011.[56] The game has been continuously updated since the release, with changes ranging from new game content to new server hosts.[57] On December 1, 2011, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten took full creative control over Minecraft, replacing Persson as lead developer.[58] On February 28, 2012, Mojang announced that they had hired the developers of the popular server platform "Bukkit" to improve Minecraft's support of server and client modifications.[59]
Audio
Minecraft's music and sound effects are produced by German composer Daniel "C418" Rosenfeld.[60] The background music in Minecraft is non-lyrical ambient music. On March 4, 2011, Rosenfeld released asoundtrack, titled Minecraft – Volume Alpha; it includes most of the tracks featured in Minecraft, as well as other music not featured in the game.[61] The video game blog Kotaku chose the music in Minecraft as one of the best video game soundtracks of 2011.[62] On November 9, 2013, Rosenfeld released the second official soundtrack, titled Minecraft – Volume Beta.[63]
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Platforms
Personal computer versions
The PC was the original platform for Minecraft; the game runs on multiple operating systems including Windows, OS X, and Linux.[39][64] Apart from the main version, there are other versions of Minecraft available for PC, including Minecraft Classic and Minecraft 4k.
Minecraft Classic is an older version of Minecraft, available online for players. Unlike newer versions of Minecraft, the classic version is free to play, though it is no longer updated. It functions much the same as creative mode, allowing players to build and destroy any and all parts of the world either alone or in a multiplayer server. There are no computer creatures in this mode, and environmental hazards such as lava will not damage players. Some blocks function differently since their behavior was later changed during development. Minecraft 4k is a simplified version of Minecraft similar to the classic version that was developed for theJava 4K game programming contest "in way less than 4 kilobytes".[65] The map itself is finite—composed of 64×64×64 blocks—and the same world is generated every time. Players are restricted to placing or destroying blocks, which are randomly located and consist of grass, dirt, stone, wood, leaves, and brick.[66]
A port of Minecraft for the Raspberry Pi was officially revealed at MineCon 2012. Mojang stated that the Pi Edition is similar to the Pocket Edition except that it is downgraded to an older version, and with the added ability of using text commands to edit the game world. Players can open the game code and use programming language to manipulate things in the game world.[67] The game was leaked on December 20, 2012, but was quickly pulled off.[68] It was officially released on February 11, 2013.[69]
Console versions
The Xbox 360 version of the game, developed by 4J Studios, was released on May 9, 2012.[70][71] On March 22, 2012, it was announced that Minecraft would be the flagship game in a new Xbox Live promotion calledArcade NEXT.[71] The game has some features that are exclusive to the Xbox 360 version, including the newly designed crafting system, the control interface, in-game tutorials, split-screen multiplayer, and the ability to play with friends via Xbox Live.[72] The version's crafting interface does not require players to place items in the correct place in a crafting menu. The interface shows the blocks required to craft the selected item, and crafts it if the players have enough blocks.[73] Also, the worlds in the version are not "infinite", and are essentially barricaded by invisible walls.[73] The Xbox 360 version was originally similar in content to older PC versions, but is being gradually updated to bring it closer to the current PC version.[70][74][75]
Similarly to the Xbox versions, the PlayStation versions are also being developed by 4J Studios. The PlayStation 3 version was released on December 17, 2013 and is nearly an exact clone of the Xbox 360 version.[76]
During their E3 2013 press conference Microsoft showed a trailer for Minecraft: Xbox One Edition.[77] It will build off Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition but feature larger worlds, expanded multiplayer features, and enhancements powered by the Xbox One. This version will be released "within the Xbox One launch window".[78]
At Gamescom 2013, Sony said that Minecraft would be released as a PlayStation 4 launch title, and would later be released as for the PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 3.[79] However, the game was later delayed and the PlayStation 4 version did not launch alongside the console.[10] It was released on the PlayStation 3 on 18 December 2013.
Handheld versions
On August 16, 2011, Minecraft – Pocket Edition was released for the Xperia Play on the Android Market as an early alpha version. It was then released for several other compatible devices on October 8, 2011.[80][81]An iOS version of Minecraft was released on November 17, 2011.[82] The port concentrates on the creative building and the primitive survival aspect of the game, and does not contain all the features of the PC release. On his Twitter account, Jens Bergensten noted that the Pocket Edition of Minecraft is written in C++ and not Java, due to iOS not being able to support Java.[83] Gradual updates are periodically released to bring the port closer to the PC version.[84]
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