Minecraft

• 1. Introduction

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  Minecraft, the 2011 sandbox game from the Swedish company Mojang Studios, tells its only story through a poem of roughly 1,500 words. The End Poem was written by the Irish novelist Julian Gough. It scrolls past in about nine minutes when a player reaches the ending credits. Nothing else in the game is a narrative text, and no other writing of any real length is aimed at the player.

  The rest is left to whoever is playing. The game sets no required goals, and its world is made of blocks that can be dug up and put back down. How does a game with so little instruction hold so many people? Who made it, and how did a developer's free-time prototype become something Microsoft wanted to own? And how did a world of cubes find its way into classrooms, museums and a library of censored journalism?

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• 2. Rules of the Blocks

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  Dirt, stone, ores, logs, water and lava are among the materials that make up Minecraft's world, and nearly all of it is built from cubes called blocks. These sit on a voxel grid. Players break a block, which is called mining, and then place it somewhere else. Very few blocks respond to gravity, so a placed block simply stays where it is, even in midair. The view is first-person by default, with two third-person options, and an optional achievement system offers goals to anyone who wants them.

  Armor, weapons and tools are the first things a player learns to craft. Armor softens damage from attacks. Swords and bows make killing monsters and animals easier, while pickaxes and shovels break certain blocks faster. Many items come in tiers set by the material used to make them, and higher tiers work better and last longer. Furnaces cook food and smelt ores, and torches give off light. Villagers, a kind of non-player character, trade goods for emeralds and sell emeralds back. An inventory limits how much a player can carry.

  A full day and night cycle lasts 20 real-time minutes, and the hour decides which creatures appear. Passive mobs such as cows, pigs and chickens spawn in daylight and can be hunted for food and crafting materials. Mob is short for mobile entity. Hostile mobs, including large spiders, witches, skeletons and zombies, spawn at night or in dark places such as caves. Zombies and skeletons burn in sunlight unless they wear headgear or stand in water.

  The creeper and the enderman are creatures unique to Minecraft. The creeper sneaks up on the player and explodes. The enderman can teleport, and it can also pick up and place blocks. Some mobs have variants tied to conditions. Zombies, for example, become husks in deserts and drowned in oceans.

  Nine default skins are handed out at random to new players, and Steve and Alex are among them. Players can also create and upload their own. Then there is redstone, a material used to build primitive mechanical devices, electrical circuits and logic gates. With it, players have assembled working machines, including a hard drive and an 8-bit computer.

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• 3. Worlds Without End

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  A map seed, chosen at random when a world is created or typed in by the player, drives the generation of terrain as players explore. The world is divided into biomes, each with its own resources and structures. Horizontally, worlds are designed to be effectively infinite. Vertical space is tighter, with an unbreakable bedrock layer at the bottom and a building limit several hundred blocks above.

  Over 12 million blocks from the world center, the first attempt at horizontally infinite generation produced a glitch known as the Far Lands. Terrain there formed wall-like, fissured patterns. Players treated it as the effective edge of the world until it was resolved. Today the limit is a special impassable barrier called the world border, which sits 30 million blocks away.

  Three dimensions can be reached through portals, and each is its own environment. The Overworld is where everyone starts, with plains, mountains, forests, oceans, caves and small sources of lava. The Nether is a hell-like underworld reached through an obsidian portal and made mostly of lava. Shrieking, fireball-shooting ghasts live there, along with anthropomorphic pigs called piglins and their zombified counterparts. Piglins will barter, handing over items in return for gold ingots.

  Nether Fortresses generate in the Nether and house wither skeletons and blazes. Blazes drop blaze rods, which are needed to reach the End. Players may also build an optional boss called the Wither, using skulls from wither skeletons and soul sand.

  Strongholds, underground structures in the Overworld, hide the portal to the End. It consists of twelve end portal frames. To find a stronghold, a player crafts eyes of ender from an ender pearl and blaze powder, then throws them and follows the direction they travel. Placing an eye in each frame opens the portal.

  The End itself is a set of islands floating in a dark, bottomless void. A boss called the Ender Dragon guards the largest, central island. Killing the dragon opens an exit portal, and entering it starts the ending credits. Afterward the player is teleported back to the respawn point, and nothing stops them from playing on indefinitely.

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• 4. Survival and Creation

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  Wood and stone are the first resources a Survival mode player gathers, since they are needed to craft blocks and items. Depending on difficulty, monsters spawn in dark areas outside a set radius around the character, so a shelter is needed by nightfall. A health bar drops from mob attacks, falls, drowning, lava, suffocation and starvation. A hunger bar must be refilled by eating, unless the difficulty is peaceful. At 3 units or lower the player can no longer sprint, and at zero the player starves.

  Death in Survival mode drops the player's inventory, unless the game is configured otherwise. The player respawns at a spawn point, which defaults to where they first appeared and can be moved by sleeping in a bed or using a respawn anchor. Dropped items despawn after 5 minutes, so there is a race to recover them. Experience points come from killing mobs and other players, mining, smelting ores, breeding animals and cooking food. They are spent on enchanting tools, armor and weapons.

  Hardcore mode and Adventure mode are two variants built on Survival. Hardcore locks the difficulty to Hard and adds permadeath, so a dead player must delete the world or watch it as a spectator. Adventure mode arrived in a post-launch update, in August 2012, and stops the player from directly changing the world. It was designed mainly so that mapmakers could let people experience a custom map as intended.

  Creative mode removes the struggle entirely. Players get an infinite supply of every resource and item through the inventory menu, and they can place or mine blocks instantly. They can fly at will, and their characters usually take no damage and feel no hunger. The mode is meant for building projects of any size without disturbance.

  Hypixel, the largest and most popular multiplayer server, has been visited by over 14 million unique players. Multiplayer can run through direct connections, local area network play, console split screen, or servers hosted by players or businesses. Server operators can set the time of day, teleport players, and restrict which usernames or IP addresses may enter. Fighting between players is optional and must be switched on.

  In 2013, Mojang announced Minecraft Realms, a hosting service for people who did not want to set up a server themselves. Only invited players can join a Realm. Owners on Java Edition can invite up to twenty people, with up to ten online at a time. Bedrock Realms owners can invite up to 3,000 people, with the same limit of ten online at once. Cross-platform play through Realms was announced at Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016, and a beta of the update arrived on the 31st of July 2017.

  Command blocks, made specially for custom maps in Java Edition, arrived in October 2012. Data packs, introduced in version 1.13 of Java Edition, later let players add new dimensions, achievements, recipes, loot tables and more. Community mods range from mini-maps and durability counters to elements imported from other games. Mojang has also supported official frameworks for resource packs, which change textures and sounds.

  In April 2018, malware was found hidden in several user-made skins for Java Edition. The security firm Avast said nearly 50,000 accounts were infected, and the code would try to reformat a user's hard drive. Mojang patched the problem quickly and said the game itself would not run or read the code.

  The 1.1 Discovery Update of June 2017 added the Marketplace to Pocket Edition, which later became Bedrock Edition. It sells skins, maps, texture packs and add-ons from creators, paid for with a digital currency called Minecoins. Mojang described it as another way for creators to make a living from the game. By 2022 the Marketplace had passed 1.7 billion downloads and generated over $500 million in revenue.

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• 5. Notch's Prototype

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  Until March 2009, Markus "Notch" Persson worked as a game developer at King, mostly on browser games. In his free time he built prototypes and took part in the TIGSource forums for independent developers. One of them, RubyDung, was a base-building game inspired by Dwarf Fortress, with an isometric three-dimensional view like RollerCoaster Tycoon. He tried a first-person view like Dungeon Keeper, then dropped it because the graphics looked too pixelated.

  Infiniminer, a block-based mining game first released in April 2009, changed the direction of RubyDung. Persson had just left King and joined jAlbum. Infiniminer brought back the first-person mode and supplied the blocky look and the block-building basics. Persson still wanted RPG elements, which Infiniminer lacked. The first public alpha of Minecraft appeared on TIGSource on the 17th of May 2009.

  The earliest known versions were called Cave Game, with a world of grass and cobblestone blocks that could be placed and removed. The game took the name Minecraft after its debut on the forum. Persson then updated it from community feedback in the Classic phase, which added multiplayer and a survival mode with hostile monsters. Ambient music by C418 arrived in the same phase.

  The Indev phase began on the 23rd of December 2009, bringing paintings by the artist Kristoffer Zetterstrand. On the 27th of February 2010, Persson started the Infdev branch to experiment with infinite worlds. The Alpha phase began on the 30th of June 2010, with frequent and spontaneous updates and the arrival of redstone. Alpha v1.2.0, on the 30th of October 2010, added biomes and the Nether.

  The Beta phase opened on the 20th of December 2010. Beta 1.8, the Adventure Update of the 14th of September 2011, added sprinting, critical hits and a hunger bar, and it introduced creative mode. Version 1.0.0 followed on the 18th of November 2011, adding the End and the Ender Dragon. On the 2nd of December 2011, Persson stepped down and handed the lead to Jens "Jeb" Bergensten.

  The game found its audience without a publisher or advertising. It passed a million purchases less than a month after entering beta in early 2011, spread by word of mouth and unpaid mentions in media such as the Penny Arcade webcomic. By April 2011, Persson estimated 800,000 alpha sales and over a million beta sales, bringing in about 23 million euros, or US$33 million. Before the full release, the beta had gathered more than 16 million registered users and 4 million purchases.

  On the 15th of September 2014, Microsoft announced a $2.5 billion acquisition of Mojang, including the Minecraft intellectual property. Persson had suggested the sale on Twitter, asking a corporation to buy his stake after criticism over enforcing the game's end-user license agreement. That June, Mojang had announced it would enforce a rule banning servers from selling in-game advantages. Persson backed the move, citing emails from parents whose children had spent hundreds of dollars on servers.

  Server owners and players protested. They argued that the rule was broader than Mojang admitted, that small servers would close for financial reasons, and that Mojang was shielding its own Realms subscription. According to Persson, Mojang CEO Carl Manneh took a call from a Microsoft executive soon after the tweet. Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts also approached Mojang. The deal was settled on the 6th of November 2014 and made Persson one of Forbes' World's Billionaires.

  Version 1.8, the Bountiful Update, arrived on the 2nd of September 2014. No major update followed until February 2016, a gap the source ties to the acquisition and Persson's departure from the company.

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• 6. Platforms and Editions

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  4J Studios built the first console version, the Xbox 360 edition, released on the 9th of May 2012 as part of the Xbox Live Arcade NEXT promotion. It brought a redesigned crafting system, in-game tutorials, split-screen play and online play. Unlike on PC, its worlds were finite and bordered by invisible walls. The Xbox One version launched on the 5th of September 2014 with larger worlds and more players.

  PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 editions arrived on the 17th of December 2013 and the 4th of September 2014. The PS4 version was first planned as a launch title but was delayed. A PlayStation Vita version followed in October 2014. Wii U got its edition on the 17th of December 2015, and the Nintendo Switch version launched on the 11th of May 2017.

  On the 18th of December 2018, the PlayStation 3, Vita, Xbox 360 and Wii U versions received their final update, which disabled world transfers to newer versions. They became known as the Legacy Console Editions. Their source code was leaked on 4chan in 2026, revealing unused structures and world types.

  Pocket Edition began in August 2011 as an early alpha for the Xperia Play on the Android Market. It reached other Android devices on the 8th of October 2011 and iOS on the 17th of November 2011. Bergensten confirmed that it was written in C++ rather than Java, because iOS does not support Java. Windows 10 Edition followed in July 2015.

  Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV editions both launched on the 19th of December 2016. Mojang ended updates for the Apple TV version on the 24th of September 2018 because of its small player base. A New Nintendo 3DS edition was announced during a Nintendo Direct on the 13th of September 2017, and its final update came on the 15th of January 2019.

  The Better Together Update, on the 20th of September 2017, merged the Windows 10, Xbox One and Pocket editions into the unified Bedrock Edition, with cross-play between them. PlayStation 4 received the update in December 2019. A native PlayStation 5 version arrived on the 22nd of October 2024, and the Xbox Series X/S version on the 17th of June 2025. On the 7th of June 2022, Java and Bedrock were bundled into a single purchase on Windows, though the two stayed separate games.

  Education Edition launched on the 1st of November 2016 for use in schools. In China, JD.com was announced as its operator on the 27th of March 2019. A separate China Edition, also called My World, was announced on the 20th of May 2016 under a licensing deal between NetEase and Mojang. It is free-to-play and had over 700 million registered accounts by September 2023.

  Pi Edition reached the Raspberry Pi single board computer in alpha on the 11th of February 2013, based on Pocket Edition Alpha v0.6.1. It offered only Creative mode, with no crafting or smelting. Its built-in programming interface let people control the world with external programs, including Python scripts, which made it attractive to teachers and students. It never got another update, yet it shipped by default with Raspberry Pi OS for several years and remains a free download.

  In 2013, Facebook bought Oculus, and Persson abruptly canceled his plans for an Oculus Rift port, saying "Facebook creeps me out." A community mod called Minecraft VR arrived in 2016, followed by Vivecraft for the HTC Vive. Microsoft then added official Oculus Rift support to Windows 10 Edition, and Minecraft VR was dropped after trademark complaints. Mojang announced PlayStation VR support on the 7th of September 2020, then ended it in September 2024, with a final update in March 2025.

  Around 2011, Mojang worked with the Lego Group on a brick-based version called Brickcraft. Persson built an early version under the name "Project Rex Kwon Do," after a character in the film Napoleon Dynamite. Lego approved the project and Mojang assigned two developers for six months. According to Mojang's Daniel Kaplan, it was canceled because of the Lego Group's demands. Lego later considered buying Mojang, but stepped back once Microsoft offered over $2 billion. On the 26th of June 2025, a Brickcraft build dated the 28th of June 2012 appeared on the community archive Omniarchive.

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• 7. The Sound of Blocks

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  Daniel Rosenfeld, the German musician known as C418, made the original music and sound effects for Minecraft. He leaned heavily on Foley techniques, the craft of making everyday noises by hand. "It's a whole trial-and-error process," he said. Grass was his best-known puzzle. He explained that recording real grass gives you nothing, so he broke apart a VHS tape and lightly touched the ribbon.

  Spiders were his favorite sound to design. He spent a whole day researching what a spider sounds like and learned that some spiders make small screeching sounds. He then pitched a recording of a fire hose around in a sampler until it sounded like a strange spider talking to you.

  Many of his decisions were accidents. The creeper has no sound apart from a loud fuse hiss before it explodes. Rosenfeld said that began as a placeholder of a burning matchstick put in by Persson and himself, and it worked so well they kept it. He had also never intended zombies to be frightening, and made them sound comical on purpose. The sound engine fought him throughout. He recalled that two song files playing at once could crash the game.

  The background music is instrumental and ambient. Rosenfeld composed it with Ableton Live and several plug-ins, plus synthesizers attached to his computer, including a Moog Voyager, a Dave Smith Prophet 08 and a Virus TI. He released the soundtrack Minecraft - Volume Alpha on the 4th of March 2011. Kirk Hamilton of Kotaku picked the music as one of the best video game soundtracks of that year.

  Volume Beta followed on the 9th of November 2013, gathering music added in the 2013 Music Update. The indie electronic label Ghostly International issued Volume Alpha on CD and vinyl, including limited transparent green LPs, on the 21st of August 2015. Volume Beta got a CD and vinyl release on the 14th of August 2020.

  His last update for the game was 2018's Update Aquatic. For a while, his was the only music in Minecraft. That changed with the Nether Update of 2020, which introduced pieces by Lena Raine, who remains the primary composer. Other contributors since include Kumi Tanioka, Samuel Åberg, Aaron Cherof and Amos Roddy, and Gareth Coker wrote music for mini games on the Legacy Console Editions. Microsoft retains ownership of all music except Rosenfeld's own albums.

  In a 2015 interview with Fact, Rosenfeld said he planned a third album. By 2017 he said it ran longer than the first two combined, which together last over 3 hours and 18 minutes. Licensing issues with Microsoft have kept it unreleased. When Anthony Fantano asked about it on the 8th of January 2021, Rosenfeld said he considered the record finished, but that things had become complicated now that Minecraft was a big property.

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• 8. Reach and Reputation

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  By March 2012, Minecraft had sold over five million copies on PC, which made it the sixth best-selling PC game of all time. In October 2014, PC sales passed 17 million and it took the top spot. The Xbox 360 version became profitable on its first day in 2012 and sold one million copies within a week. In May 2019, on the game's tenth anniversary, total sales passed 176 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of all time. By April 2025 the figure stood at over 350 million.

  Critics praised the creative freedom and the emergent play that the crafting system allowed. IGN called the blocky graphics "instantly memorable" and said "adventuring is always better with friends." Jaz McDougall of PC Gamer called it "intuitively interesting and contagiously fun." Complaints existed too. IGN found multiplayer setup a hassle, and GameSpot said the game had an "unfinished feel" even after it left beta in 2011. On the 17th of September 2010, the webcomic Penny Arcade began a series of strips about the game's addictiveness.

  At the Game Developers Choice Awards 2011, Minecraft won Best Debut Game, Best Downloadable Game and the Innovation Award, taking every award it was nominated for. It won the Grand Prize and the Audience Award at the Independent Games Festival in March 2011. The Smithsonian American Art Museum chose it as one of 80 games for The Art of Video Games exhibit, which opened on the 16th of March 2012. In June 2020 it was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame.

  Research from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania found that one-third of players learned about the game through internet videos. By May 2012, over four million Minecraft videos had been uploaded to YouTube. In 2014 it was the platform's second-most searched term. The British company Yogscast made Minecraft videos that drew billions of views, and Jordan Maron, known as CaptainSparklez, made music parodies such as "Revenge." Far Lands or Bust, a long-running series, set out to walk to the obsolete glitch on foot. On the 14th of December 2021, YouTube announced that Minecraft views had passed one trillion.

  The game's reach has turned out to be practical. In 2012, Mojang launched the Block by Block project with UN Habitat, so residents could redesign their own neighborhoods by editing in-game copies. Its first pilot was in Kibera, one of Nairobi's informal settlements, and the aim was to upgrade 300 public spaces by 2016. In April 2014, the Danish Geodata Agency built a full-scale Denmark in the game. That worked because the country is so flat that its highest point is only 171 meters.

  Reporters Without Borders used Minecraft to host the Uncensored Library, an in-game archive of journalism by writers from countries including Egypt, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam. It includes work by figures such as Jamal Khashoggi. An international team of 24 people spent roughly 250 hours building its neoclassical hall.

  Schools adopted the game too. MinecraftEdu, founded in 2011, reported approximately 250,000 students with access by 2012. Educators have used it to teach history, language arts and science, from historical landmarks to enormous models of animal cells. In 2014, the British Museum announced a project to rebuild its building and exhibits in the game. Microsoft and Code.org reported that more than 85 million children had used their programming tutorials by 2018.

  Controversy has followed the game as well. In June 2022, Mojang added a player-reporting feature, released in version 1.19.1 on the 27th of July 2022. Banned players were barred from all servers, even private ones, and some players coined the hashtag #saveminecraft and nicknamed the version "1.19.84." A 2020 requirement to move to Microsoft accounts had already angered players, with a migration deadline of the 19th of September 2023.

  The annual Mob Vote, which began at Minecon Earth 2017, asked fans to choose one of three new mobs. In 2023 the choices were the crab, the penguin and the armadillo. A Change.org petition to implement all three gathered approximately 445,000 signatures by the 13th of October. The armadillo won anyway, and in September 2024 Mojang announced the vote would be retired.

  In 2025, Persson ran a poll on his X account about a spiritual successor to Minecraft and clarified that he was "100% serious." Within days, after consulting his team, he canceled the plans.

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