FIFTEEN years after it launched in alpha, Minecraft is the best-selling video game of all time.
Popular with kids and adults alike, the community surrounding the game only continues to grow as the game evolves.
It’s branching out into other media too, with a Minecraft movie starring Jack Black releasing next year.
To commemorate its anniversary, Mojang has teamed up with publisher HarperCollins to create a new book called The World of Minecraft.
It explores the game’s history with lots of details about its development, from the mouths of the team at Mojang who have been working on it all these years.
Speaking to Alex Wiltshire, Senior Narrative Editor at Mojang we learned how the game’s massive fanbase has affected Minecraft, and how the book represents that.
Wiltshire says: “All Minecraft’s features were designed so that they’re universally useful or appealing across our entire community.
“One thing that you start to realise as you flick through the book is how every aspect of the game [exists because we] considered the many ways Minecraft is played.
“One feature, like for example Redstone, has to work for Survival players who want to build item farms at their base, and also for Adventure map makers who use it to control their designs, and for mod makers, and incredible engineers.”
Fans of the game know how to make their voices heard, as Mojang recently announced they’d be making changes to how they develop the game, based on fan feedback.
This has always been a big factor in determining the direction of Minecraft’s development, even though tough challenges come with it.
Wiltshire says: “Community feedback is crucial to Minecraft’s design process but it’s sometimes hard to understand what it means.
“For example, the book shows how much thought our artist, Jasper Boerstra, put into a redesign of most textures in the game.
“Every week he’d share his progress over social media to get feedback.
“Jasper got the feedback for his redrawn Cobblestone block that it was ‘too bubbly’ – like, what does that mean?
“But it helped him realise that he needed to take it back to the original design and work again from there to achieve the balance of fresh and classic that that iconic block needed to satisfy everyone.”
The Minecraft community exists in many forms across all social media platforms, but content creators are the ones who give the team the most fond memories.
Wiltshire’s fondest Minecraft memory comes from the very early days of the game’s existence.
He says: “For me, it has to be MinecraftFTW’s video of his [in-game] house burning down from way back in 2010.”
MinecraftFTW was one of the earliest Minecraft content creators on YouTube, uploading gameplay videos back when the game was still in alpha.
“It’s the comic timing as he turns from being so proud about his build to noticing it’s on fire and starting to panic, and then the nervous laugh as he realises he can’t do anything about it.
“I think that moment represents something important about Minecraft — that the things you do and make in it really matter because you worked for them and you can lose them in a moment.”
Content creators on platforms like YouTube are a large part of what made Minecraft explode in popularity in the early 2010s.
The book highlights several of these creators, but the biggest spotlight goes to Bristol-based creators The Yogscast.
Wiltshire says: “In World of Minecraft, we wanted to present as wide a view of the community as possible.
“We chose to highlight The Yogscast because they were at the centre of so many different parts of Minecraft’s story.
“They were important to the early growth of SMP role-playing with the Shadow of Israphel series.
“They were involved in the development of important early mods, such as Tekkit.
“And they were present at Minecraft’s early MINECON conventions, with interesting stories to tell about their experiences.”
As Minecraft’s popularity stays strong through the years, it’s no doubt that in another 15 years’ time, there’ll be even more stories to tell.
The standard edition of The World of Minecraft releases on October 10, 2024, with deluxe numbered editions publishing on 24th October 2024. Both versions are available on the HarperCollins website.
If you want to read more about the game, check out how Minecraft is used in schools.
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