Minecraft Essay

Create a 1000 word essay discussing the evolution of Minecraft.  As part of the essay you will address

·      How the ownership of Minecraft has affected the games evolution

·      How Minecraft is marketed to a variety of audiences

·      How users interact with the game including how they create their own content

Minecraft is the second highest selling game in history, after Tetris. This is due to it having a very wide target audience, which is targeted through many different marketing techniques. This large audience has also come with the fast evolution of the game.

Marcus “Notch” Persson and a small company that he founded with two others in Sweden called Mojang first developed the game Minecraft with a very small team. Some players of the game in the early stages helped with early bugs and there was a lot of room for audience interaction as it was open for people to modify the code. The game was available in a downloadable, cloud version which allowed the game to be constantly updated with new features and bug fixes so the game was always working with minimal glitches. The game was available with most games consoles, computers as well as mobile devices. In 2014 Microsoft acquired Mojang and all the rights to Minecraft for $2.5 billion and this change in ownership resulted in a lot of changes to the game itself and the way the game was consumed.

One of the first large changes that Microsoft implemented was cross platform play. Xbox and Windows 10 are both owned by Microsoft so they allowed PC players to play with Xbox players. They soon expanded this function to include many other devices such as the Nintendo Switch and mobile devices. This allowed people to play with their friends on Minecraft, no matter what device they played on. This is a very rare function in games as only a few other large games allow this (eg Fortnite and Rocket League). Minecraft was one of the first large games to allow this cross platform functionality and there was a lot of hype built around it as many people were excited to finally be able to play on massive servers with people they usually could not play with.

Microsoft also had a partnership with Oculus in 2014, soon after they acquired minecraft, to develop a virtual reality version of the game. Virtual reality is a new, exciting concept so when they released Minecraft (an already very popular game) in a VR format there was a lot of people that were intrigued by the concept. This introduced a whole new audience to the world of Minecraft.

Minecraft itself is marketed to a wide variety of people through different ways. Due to the game being a sandbox game, it allows for many different angles to market the game. The game is attractive to all these different audiences because it allows you to do whatever you want.

Minecraft Education is a program that is given to schools for free to help students with STEM subjects as well as artistic subjects. This allows for students to learn in a more interactive way. This also means that the game reaches an entirely new audience as these kids may go away and purchase the game for themselves.

Minecraft made a product with Lego to target their product towards a younger audience. Lego is targeted towards a younger demographic (3+) and because the games are quite similar it allowed for the two companies to share their large audiences. This plays on the creative side of minecraft and the building.

Minecraft features in a music video of the very popular singer, Lady Gaga. This targets and entirely different audience as her audience is mainly younger girls. Most of the other marketing techniques are targeted towards boys. The use of the game in the video is enough to spark an interest in the game for the viewers.

Youtube is also a platform in which  the game is marketed to a wide audience. Youtube appeals to a very wide range of people as the content creators make their videos differently. Most Minecraft youtubers are very family friendly and appeal to a child audience. These youtubers are put on the Youtube Kids app which means they are more likely to be recommended to children. Some youtubers however are less censored and therefore appeal to a much older audience. The people that make the content are usually 20-30, despite the game being stereotypically targeted at younger children.

One of the largest minecraft youtubers is The Diamond Minecart. According to Forbes he is the fourth highest paid youtuber as he made $18 million (not including sponsorships, merchandise or any other revenue streams). His content is very family friendly so he appeals to a younger audience. Another youtuber, SkyDoesMinecraft, is a lot less censored and therefore appeals to a much more mature audience, even thought the game is the same. This is one way that people are making their own content with minecraft. There is evidently a lot of money in the industry of “lets play commentaries” where someone plays a game and uploads their footage to youtube for people to watch.

 One feature that is quite popular with the game is the ability to add mods to the game to alter the original game in order to implement more advanced gameplay. For example there is mods to implement nuclear arms into the game or to add more animals and mobs. This makes the creative possibilities of the game endless as these people make their own mods and release them to the public to play with. This is alternative way of creating your own content through the game as they use an already made game but add to it for extras.