Took Someone Else’s Game and Remade It into a Cult Hit: How Minecraft Came to Be Played by the Whole World

There are three names in the world that almost every person has heard at least once in their life. The first is Super Mario Bros.even my grandmother knows what this is “a jumping rope about some MarioSecond – TetrisEven I, who have never played games, know about Alexey Pajitnov’s development.

And lastly, the youngest on the list, Mining craft.

When I was preparing to write this text, I surveyed different groups of people, and almost everyone responded that they had heard this name and “I think it’s about some kind of game with cubes” One of the respondents noted that he learned about Minecraft: “It seems like a hundred years ago, around the same time as Kobzon“.

And last on my list is me. When did I hear about Minecraft? Around 2012. How much do I know about Minecraft in 2024? Enough to tell you how one of the biggest projects in the gaming industry was born.

Sweden – the cradle of ideas and big names

The gaming industry in the media space is supported by names, among other things. When talking about Super Mario Bros or The Legend of Zelda, the name of their father involuntarily comes to mind – Shigeru Miyamoto. No discussion of the Metal Gear series is complete without mentioning Hideo Kojima.

The game Lone Survivor has gained popularity in narrow circles of horror fans, not least due to its name Jasper Bjornwho created it (and before that wrote the soundtrack for Hotline Miami). By the way, did you know that Hotline Miami was created by two fan films “Drive” from Sweden?

Speaking of Sweden, the Battlefield series is home to the game that changed horror forever, Amnesia: Dark Descent, and the premier mobile puzzler, also made in Sweden. Yes, I’m talking about Candy Crush Saga. And on June 1, 1979, Stockholm was the birthplace of Markus Alexey Perssonfather of the great Minecraft.

Markus claimed that he didn’t initially know that he wanted to build a world in the gaming industry. As a child, he created games in his spare time, but wanted to be a police officer or something like that. When he was about 14 or 15 years old, Markus only knew what he wanted. It took a decent amount of time.

Marcus has loved games since he was a child. The first ray of light was a Commodore 128 computer given to him by his commander. By his own admission, his first game was Notch (Marcus’s nickname) was created at the age of 8. It was a text adventure. The creation of the game became a kind of escapism from pressing problems – Notch’s parents divorced when the boy was 12 years old, and his father, who gave him his main hobby in life, drowned in drug addiction.

The first attempt to make a commercial game was Wurm Online. This fantasy MMORPG, developed in Java, already showed elements of the future Minecraft: close interaction with other players to build structures and scout resources. Marcus did this with a friend in his spare time. However, the project was never released.

Wurm Online looked like a promising MMO for its age, but Notch got bored with it and abandoned it. Spoiler alert: this situation is repeating itself.

When working on Wurm Online, Notch proposed two concepts: freedom of action and construction, but he did not know how to explain them to like-minded people.

However, everything changed in 2009.

A cheeky clone of Infiniminer

This is Infiniminer, not an early version of Minecraft.

In 2009, Notch encountered the indie game Infiniminer, a small competitive sandbox game in which teams of players were dropped into a procedurally generated underground world with the goal of mining ore and delivering it to the surface.

Infiniminer suffered a very unenviable fate – its source code leaked online, and the developer refused to support the project.

So what did Notch do? He decompiled the source code, pulled out the entire graph and world generator, and calculated it with his own work. That’s how Cave Game was born in 2009 on the TIGSource indie developer forum.

And I realized that it was a direct and brazen clone of Infiniminer: two types of objects (grass and cobblestones) and primitive functionality, limited result of mining and placement of blocks. However, the project already in this state caused positive responses in the male communities. At that time, the game worked exclusively in the browser.

Notch was already then what everything is heading towards and corresponds to the Mojang company. And already within its framework the development of Cave Game continues.

After creating the company, Notch took Minecraft out of the browser and started selling it for $13. Without any intentional advertising, word of mouth was enough to sell it. more than 1000 copies per month. The game developed at a furious pace, new blocks and features were added almost every day.

The main update, however, was the addition of a survival mode. The idea was to release the player into an open procedurally generated world where he had to somehow exist (there was nothing special to drink or eat, there was just a health bar), build a house and fight off enemies without any specific goal, was a breakthrough for the game of that time. No one had done it so simply and at the same time so comprehensively.

Success and the most unexpected turn in the gaming industry

Notch never invests money in advertising his children, Minecraft’s wild popularity is fueled by three ingredients:

▸ online multiplayer
▸ word of mouth
▸ YouTube

More than a dozen content makers have made their base on Kubach videos. Mr. Beast started with Minecraft, if you didn’t know. By the way, the game was still in deep beta at the time of 2010 and was far from complete.

On November 18, 2011, Minecraft 1.0 Adventure Update was released, one of the main changes was the presence of a boss – the Ender Dragon, despite the fact that By the way, there is still no plot in the games.

In addition, Minecraft has developed a strong and talented modding community. Mods range from simple re-renderings to full-fledged new texture mechanics.

Industrial Craft is a prime example of how mods change the familiar gameplay.

Peter Molyneux (the industry’s leading visionary and creator of the Fable series) said at the time: “This is one of the greatest innovations I’ve seen in gaming in the last ten years. Minecraft breaks all the rules of gaming.” And he was damn right.

At a time when games were chasing the most realistic graphics and detail, projects without an epic plot, complex characters and with the simplest cubic graphics were gaining popularity. In 2011, Minecraft’s circulation exceeded one million. Markus Persson was only thirty-two years old, and at that time he had already become a millionaire.

Jens Bergensten and Markus Persson.

But soon the first shock came for everyone who had been following the speculation. After the release of Notch, for no particular reason (and in no case expressing his decision) took and assigned to himself the authority to develop the project.

Passed them on to Jens Bergensten, who had long been one of the main programmers at Mojang. Under his leadership, Kubach first chose the limitations of the PC to come to mobile devices. Two years later, the game will also visit the console. Without mod support.

And in 2014, Marcus first joked on Twitter, saying, “should i sell mojang to someone“, and then he used the move with Microsoft for $2.5 billion, after which he called the company and distanced himself from his colleagues as much as possible, literally cutting off all ties with them. Notch provides information about the expansion to this day, although all of them are extremely certain.

Notch personally “launched” Minecraft at an event in Las Vegas.

Persson has said more than once that he didn’t want any popularity at all, he is an introvert by nature and couldn’t handle the success that fell on his shoulders. The reaction of the indie developer community was mostly negative – Notch Yugoslav broke the main rule of the indie industry: to remain independent until the very end.

And subsequently, in Notch’s name, everyone was sent. Because of this, his position became controversial for modern society, which he never hid and actively spoke about on Twitter.

For example, he called feminism “Social disease“, and in March 2019, it was practically replaced to equate transsexuality with mental illness. Marcus is not called out at public Minecraft events, and his name is now harshly reviled within the company.

Minecraft Legacy

Terraria is the main successor of Notch’s ideas, but in 2D.

Thanks to active support from Microsoft, Kubach is still alive today. Global updates happen every year, a movie is being made based on the game, and the project itself is being split into several spin-offs, from an adventure game by Telltale to an action strategy game and a Diablo clone.

I once binge-read Minecraft Dungeons. It was very difficult to tear myself away

There are so many studios and projects that explain Minecraft that they deserve a separate article. Minecraft is where many modern YouTubers’ careers began, Minecraft is used for teaching in schools, and Minecraft has a ton of references in a variety of environments.

It’s not just a game, it’s a landmark industry that was created, nurtured, and abandoned by one talented but humble Swede with a broken-hearted drug-addicted father. I’m not sure there’s been another such global breakthrough in our lifetime.

I am voicing this thought to you. Write in the comments when you first got acquainted with Minecraft and how often your children play it. Have a nice day!

“Indie games give me faith in the future. The gaming industry has been focusing on big projects for too long. With fewer games, we have more room to experiment.” – Marcus “Notch” Persson