The History of Minecraft
Because of the 2020 quarantine, a lot of people have gone back to some old-school and classic entertainment that they used to engage in during their childhood. Some of these include Avatar: The Last Airbender, Legend of Korra, Animal Crossing, and the 2009 block game, Minecraft. Minecraft was popular in the 2010’s and made a comeback in 2019. Recently, more people started watching Minecraft content because of the lockdown. This included the Dream Team and the Dream SMP, DanTDM, PopularMMOS, and many more on Twitch and YouTube. But let’s go back to the beginning, when Minecraft was first created and how it became so popular.
Minecraft was created by Markus Alexej Persson, also known as Notch, a Swedish video game programmer. It was initially called “Cave Game” and was released in 2009 on PC. It was a very basic game, meant more for people who liked to code and design. A lot of people didn’t take it as seriously as a game until recently. Once this small project started to take off, the creator released it in an updated format as Minecraft. It was very basic, for the most part, but early versions of Minecraft allowed for more than just building. What made the game so unique is that it was also a resource management simulation. It allowed players to gather the resources they needed to create, so the creations meant more to them since they had to build them with parts they had collected on their own. This mechanic influenced a lot of games later to come, like Skyrim and Terraria, in their own way. People could also fight monsters, craft items, and explore the blocky world. For a long time, the game was still in its beta phase as players added mods to spice things up in the game.
The beta stage began in 2010 and Persson quitted his daytime job to put all his time and effort into Minecraft. After the bugs were dealt with, the features were added and updates were made, the full version of the game would eventually be released in 2011 after the publisher, Mojang, grew interested in the project and started to fund its development. Worlds expanded in size as the Nether and The End were added, and now there’s a boss for the player to defeat. Once the boss, the Ender Dragon, was defeated, credits would roll but players could go back to their world and explore after they beat the game.
Many versions and platforms were hit throughout Minecraft’s career including the release of a free version of Classic Minecraft on the PC by Mojang. Later, Microsoft bought the company and the game a few years later and published Minecraft on the Xbox 360 and the Xbox One, later bringing the same game to the PlayStation and the Wii U. It’s even on mobile platforms and Windows 10 at this point. Minecraft Story Mode was released in collaboration with TellTale Games, which is a single player story-based game that plays as an interactive story. Minecraft Story Mode eventually was released on Netflix as well. An educational edition of the game was made to be used in classrooms and was more exploration-based.
After not trending on the internet for so long, the game made a comeback in 2019, as well as more content creators becoming more recognized on both Twitch, Twitter, and YouTube. One of these content creators is Dream. Dream rose to popularity in 2019 with unique Minecraft videos like “Minecraft, but mobs rise every minute..” and “Minecraft Death Swap”, series that featured quirky survival challenges, as well as being notorious on his search for Pewdiepie’s Minecraft seed. Once Dream’s videos began attracting a lot of clout, he began to upload videos regularly and quickly showed off his incredible skills at Minecraft to his online audience. Dream is responsible for making the Minecraft Manhunt series popular among the Minecraft community. In that series, Dream, a Minecraft speedrunner, tries to finish the game by beating the Ender Dragon before his friends, who are parading as hunters, have a chance to assassinate him. The Dream Team that I mentioned earlier is consisted of usually three members: Dream, GeorgeNotFound, and Sapnap.
Occasionally, BadBoyHalo is featured amongst them as well. Later in his road of fame, Dream started his own Survival Multiplayer server, known amongst the Minecraft community as Dream SMP. He invited content creators like Tommyinnit, Tubbo, Ranboo, Technoblade, Quackity, Wilbur Soot, Jschlatt, and many others who played Minecraft onto his server and later, an actual roleplay began to take place. They usually took place on the streams on Twitch.
Dream wasn’t the only content creator who benefited from the comeback of Minecraft. MrBeast began to get more and more recognition, though he was already familiar and wellknown in YouTube. Logdotzip also became a familiar face amongst the community, as well as Mumbo Jumbo, Grian, AntFrost, Blue Monkey, Jschlatt, Tommyinnit, and many more. Pewdiepie finally made a Minecraft video after his fans asked for one for years and is continuing to make them, as he was a major factor in Minecraft’s surge of popularity in 2019.
Of course, there were the OGs back in the 2010’s. These content creators included PopularMMOs and GamingWithJen, AntVenom, iBallisitcSquid, StampyLongNose, and many more. Though many of us grew up with those YouTubers, it’s amazing to see such a beautiful game still continue to be a huge trend in the internet. Something so simple yet so beautiful has been cherished by so many generations and hopefully many more to come. This really brings to life the concept that something old doesn’t mean it’s not good anymore; you can still love it just as much as when it was new.
Sources:
https://www.tubefilter.com/2019/08/07/youtube-minecraft-renaissance-logdotzip/
https://blog.feedspot.com/minecraft_youtube_channels/
https://apexminecrafthosting.com/the-complete-guide-to-minecraft/history/
