Minecraft was created by Markus Persson in 2009 and was developed by the Swedish production company ‘Mojang’. It was created in the summer of 2009, over only one weekend and to begin with only costed around £8 to download and play, it is now sold at around £25 due to its popularity. It was first published on a forum, and its first mode of advertisement was word of mouth, whereas now millions of pounds goes into the advertisement for the computer game.
It began only selling 40 copies of the game on its first weekend of sales, whereas now it has sold around 125 million copies overall proving its success across the gaming industry and on its platform of game. It is a sandbox computer game, which means that it is a building and construction game. This means that the player is free to play it without specific things such as Wi-Fi or on a computer. Due to the games freedom, it gives the player chance to build and express themselves within the game, which is one of the reasons it is so popular with the younger generation. Since its release it has sold 125 million copies across the world, its success is down to the fact it has adapted and developed since its release as it started as a ‘blocky-looking game’ and is now used for gamers to create their own world out of blocks, independently or with other people and other activities in the game include exploration and combat to target a larger demographic.
Since the release of Minecraft in 2009, it has been a commercial success. It is estimated that 55 million people play Minecraft every month, and is therefore the second best-selling game ever made, coming after Tetris. The company is worth around £1.09 billion, as it was brought out by Mojang in 2014. There are many reasons as to why it has become such a commercial success, including its popularity; Minecraft is played all around the world, in around 8 different countries including the US, Norway and Australia. This means high volume sales, which could be due to its availability and easy accessibility. Continuing from this, another reason that Minecraft is so commercially successful is due to its spread onto different platforms. These include, Xbox, Windows 10, Windows phones, Nintendo Wii U, PlayStation and Android phones. This makes it more easily accessible for a wider audience meaning more people are able to play, therefore resulting in more sales and then higher revenue from sales. Finally, another reason that is credible for the commercial success, is the spin off games and merchandise created since the release of Minecraft. Spin off games include ‘Minecraft; story mode’ and ‘Minecraft; Education Edition’. Both of these games will appeal to a specific demographic, which will commercially benefit the business as they are targeting a wider audience, rather than just focusing on the original demographic targeted by the original Minecraft game. The merchandise that is created and sold across the world, will catch the eye of gamers, and also promotes and advertises the game when people wear the merchandise, which will increase profit which makes it commercially successful.
Overall I believe that Minecraft has been a critical success since its release as it has influenced popular culture, meaning that many clones of the game have been created by game developers, the most famous being ‘Terraria’ which since 2017 has had 20 million accounts created. I believe that is has critical success because it is an open-ended video game, which means the goals of the game are up to each individual player. You can play in creative mode and ‘build whatever you can dream of’ or you can play in survival mode and ‘gather materials from the environment to build shelter’. This shows that it is a critical success as players can do exactly what the mission statement for Minecraft was. In conclusion, Minecraft is a successful game commercially and critically, as its popularity has proven this, by high sales volumes and therefore high amounts of revenue for the company.
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