The Rise Of Minecraft

As we head into a new year, one of the biggest games out there remains the independent blockbuster Minecraft. Released back in November 2011 on the PC, the sandbox game from Swedish programmer Markus “Notch” Persson sold over 453,000 copies on Christmas Eve on PC alone. The franchise has sold nearly18 million copies across Xbox Live Arcade (over 4 million downloads), PC (over 8.7 million copies) and mobile (over 5 million downloads on Apple iOS and Google Android devices).

The man who works directly with this huge community of gamers at Curse, which runs the official Minecraft Forums, is Tommy Carpenter. He talks about the diverse range of gamers who explore this open world and build new virtual experiences, block by block.

[Vladplaya]

Minecraft sold an idea, an idea of exploration and building, which is great, because now other people can take it and implement it in their games. Otherwise by itself minecraft was pretty mediocre game, if not less, too static and too simple because they just didn't want to put effort into something little more complex, in both mechanics and visuals, which is fine for an indie game that is just trying to take off, but once it got enough support, they should have just improved everything, but they just called it good, which is too bad.

[Lazyeye79]

I agree with you currently, but the more recent and future updates majorly up the mechanics and slightly the visuals.

[SolidDuck]

Minecraft for me still hasn't clicked. I wanted to love it, I just didn't get what the fuss was about.

[DeadlyFire]

hmm....Minecraft has crafted about 7 new titles all inspired by Minecraft's Voxel engine for PC launching in 2013.

I don't know what makes it so popular, but its multiplying.