Minecraft is a sandbox game developed by Mojang Studios. The game was created by Markus "Notch" Persson in the Java programming language.
Following several early private testing versions, it was first made
public in May 2009 before being fully released in November 2011, with
Notch stepping down and Jens "Jeb" Bergensten taking over development. Minecraft is the best-selling video game in history, with over 238 million copies sold and nearly 140 million monthly active players as of 2021 and has been ported to several platforms.
In Minecraft, players explore a blocky, procedurally generated, three-dimensional world with virtually infinite terrain and may discover and extract raw materials, craft tools and items, and build structures, earthworks, and machines. Depending on their chosen game mode, players can fight hostile mobs, as well as cooperate with or compete against other players in the same world. Game modes include a survival mode
(in which players must acquire resources to build in the world and
maintain health) and a creative mode (in which players have unlimited
resources and access to flight). There is also a wide variety of user-generated content, such as modifications, servers, skins, texture packs, and custom maps, which add new game mechanics and possibilities.
Minecraft has received critical acclaim, winning several awards and later being cited as one of the greatest video games ever created. Social media, parodies, adaptations, merchandise, and the annual Minecon conventions played prominent roles in popularizing the game. The game has also been used in educational environments to teach chemistry, computer-aided design, and computer science. In 2014, Mojang and the Minecraft intellectual property were purchased by Microsoft for US$2.5 billion. Several spin-offs have also been made, including Minecraft: Story Mode,[i] Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Earth, and the upcoming Minecraft Legends.
Gameplay
Minecraft is a 3D sandbox game that has no required goals to accomplish, allowing players a large amount of freedom in choosing how to play the game.[18] However, there is an achievement system,[19] known as "advancements" in the Java Edition of the game, and "trophies" on the PlayStation ports.[20] Gameplay is in the first-person perspective by default, but players have the option of a third-person perspective.[21]
The game world is composed of rough 3D objects—mainly cubes and fluids,
and commonly called "blocks"—representing various materials, such as
dirt, stone, ores, tree trunks, water, and lava. The core gameplay
revolves around picking up and placing these objects. These blocks are
arranged in a 3D grid, while players can move freely around the world.
Players can "mine" blocks and then place them elsewhere, enabling them
to build things.[22] Many commentators have described the game's physics system as unrealistic.[23]
The game also contains a material called redstone, which can be used to
make primitive mechanical devices, electrical circuits, and logic gates, allowing for the construction of many complex systems.[24]
An example of
Minecraft's procedurally generated terrain, including a village and the default skin
SteveThe game world is virtually infinite and procedurally generated as players explore it, using a map seed that is obtained from the system clock at the time of world creation (or manually specified by the player).[25][26][27] There are limits on vertical movement, but Minecraft
allows an infinitely large game world to be generated on the horizontal
plane. Due to technical issues when extremely distant locations are
reached, however, there is a barrier preventing players from traversing
to locations beyond 30 million blocks from the center.[j][obsolete source]
The game achieves this by splitting the world data into smaller 16 by
16 sections called "chunks" that are only created or loaded when players
are nearby.[25] The world is divided into biomes ranging from deserts to jungles to snowfields;[28][29] the terrain includes plains, mountains, forests, caves, and bodies of water or lava.[27] The in-game time system follows a day and night cycle, with one full cycle lasting for 20 real-time minutes.
When starting a new world, players must choose one of five game
modes, as well as one of four difficulties, ranging from "Peaceful" to
"Hard". Increasing the difficulty of the game causes the player to take
more damage from mobs, as well as having other difficulty-specific effects. For example, the Peaceful difficulty prevents hostile mobs from spawning, and the Hard difficulty allows players to starve to death if their hunger bar is depleted.[30] Once selected, the difficulty can be changed, but the game mode is locked and can only be changed with cheats.
Some of
Minecraft's monsters, displayed from left to right: a zombie, a spider, an enderman, a
creeper, and a skeleton
New players have a randomly selected default character skin of either Steve or Alex,[31] but the option to create custom skins was made available in 2010.[32] Players encounter various non-player characters known as mobs, such as animals, villagers, and hostile creatures.[33] Passive mobs, such as cows, pigs, and chickens, can be hunted for food and crafting materials. They spawn in the daytime, while hostile mobs—including large spiders, skeletons, and zombies—spawn during nighttime or in dark places such as caves.[27]
Some hostile mobs, such as zombies, skeletons and drowned (underwater
versions of zombies), burn under the sun if they have no headgear.[34] Other creatures unique to Minecraft include the creeper (an exploding creature that sneaks up on the player) and the enderman (a creature with the ability to teleport as well as pick up and place blocks).[35]
There are also variants of mobs that spawn in different conditions; for
example, zombies have husk and drowned variants that spawn in deserts
and oceans, respectively.[36]
Minecraft has two alternative dimensions besides the Overworld (the main world): the Nether and the End.[35] The Nether is a hell-like
underworld dimension accessed via player-built obsidian portals; it
contains many unique resources and can be used to travel great distances
in the Overworld, due to every block traveled in the Nether being
equivalent to 8 blocks traveled in the Overworld.[37] Water cannot exist in the Nether, as it will vaporize instantly.[38]
The Nether is mainly populated by pigman-like mobs called piglins and
their zombified counterparts, plus floating balloon-like mobs called
ghasts.[39] The player can also build an optional boss mob called The Wither out of materials found in the Nether.[40]
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The End is reached by underground portals in the Overworld. It consists of islands floating above a dark, bottomless void. A boss dragon called the Ender Dragon guards the largest, central island.[41]
Killing the dragon opens access to an exit portal, which upon entering
cues the game's ending credits and a poem (the "End Poem") written by
Irish novelist Julian Gough.[42][k] Players are then teleported back to their respawn point and may continue the game indefinitely.[44]
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