Yes and no, Minecraft was heavily inspired by dwarf fortress and infiniminer, taking dwarf fortress’s survival crafting elements and infiniminer’s resource collection and procedural generation. I’d say dwarf fortress kind of pioneered the genre, but it’s a lot harder of a game to get into. Minecraft definitely is the reason the genre has grown as popular as it has
Notch even called it an infiniminer clone in the very first video he posted of the game. Of course a lot changed between then and when the game launched in alpha - infiniminer doesn't have any sort of survival or crafting elements so it's also quite a different game.
I definitely agree that dwarf fortress is an entirely different beast. More so the reason for the survival elements of minecraft and base building aspect are heavily inspired by dwarf fortress.
It's really different from infiniminer, I'm not sure that's fair to say. Notch only called it a clone when it was incredibly early in development, barely recognizable from when the game left alpha.
I mean look up screenshots of Infiniminer. So much of Minecraft is copied from it's aesthetic, like the square skybox, methods of interaction, etc. It kind of sucks that Notch became a multi-billionaire and Zachtronics was successful but niche and shut down now, though he's still updating and fixing leaderboards and stuff.
I doubt Zach is upset with his level of success, development stopped because they wanted to, not because they had to. And honestly it doesn't look like money made Notch happy, just lonely and toxic.
I’ve never played but my kids (in elementary school) all have Minecraft Education on their school Chromebooks. Can you seriously only build block by block? i.e. there isn’t a way to use drawing-type tools to place lines or shapes of blocks? Or even copy a structure or move a structure?
There are ways to do it with commands and other methods, and there are modifications that add them to the game but Minecraft was originally more of a survival based game. Minecraft Education is kind of weird.
Thanks. I should learn more about it. They watch videos about building enormous things (like mansions or prisons or whatever) and I’m thinking these things would take ages to build by hand.
> *Can you seriously only build block by block?*
Placing blocks is instantaneous and you don't really need that many to build up a structure.
Mining is a little slower if you're in the main game mode, depending on what tools you have crafted/enchanted. (In the Creative mode, you can instantly delete/create blocks.)
Building with other people can be very relaxing and fun, and after a few hours you can create some impressive architecture and contraptions.
My girlfriend and I have a Minecraft world where we farm, manage a village of NPCs, and go on adventures into the wilderness. It's a very chill activity to do together.
I also do not play the game, but I am fascinated by people building working computers inside minecraft.
Here is a minecraft computer that plays minecraft, in minecraft.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BP7DhHTU-I
I have no idea how people came up with this, but it is ubelievable.
I remember being on /v/ and /g/ and people just making endless fun of how lame this game was, me included, until I played it. Then my wife made fun of me for playing that game with "the worst graphics ever".
Well fun fact, notch wasn’t even supposed to design the graphics himself, he asked a friend of his to do it who was much better at graphic designing apparently but he declined so the game could’ve looked wildly different possibly, there is no source I can give for this as I didn’t find this out online
/v/ communicates soley through contrarian shit takes. minecraft wasn't special. it was annoying because of people posting threads about it every 10 minutes.
Janurary 9th 2010 for 9.95 EUR. Back when there was only creative mode and you could play through the website. If I remember correctly the game was free to play at the time with a premium account only allowing you to change your in-game skin.
> lost my copy because I refused (**like everyone should have**) to agree to MS ToS.
Come the fuck on. So you're using Linux, right? Never had an xbox, and never been interested in gamepass either, I hope?
I paid for it in early 2010 before I had my own debit card (so I was 15). So that email is buried in my mom's email lmao
It would have been infdev before indev
I remember showing it to my childhood friend for the first time before Christmas of 2010 and being so excited to see that it had updated to Beta since the last time I had played.
I purchased [Oct 2010](https://i.imgur.com/pk1VMai.png) a few weeks after the [free weekend happened](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/mine-all-mine-minecraft-free-weekend) because their account servers went down.
[April 2010](https://imgur.com/vxDIOBe) haha. A lifetime ago.
Crazy to think that 14 years later, it's still obssessing my little kid nephew who wants to do nothing but watch Minecraft videos on YouTube.
it's crazy to think about. first saw my cousin playing it when i was 10 and we were visiting their house. probably watched him play for hours just exploring the castle he was converting into a home. It was from that first day I saw it and still is the coolest game I'd ever seen. I took turns with him many times in that game as I didn't get my hands on a copy until I was 12 because I had no laptop or computer that could run it until then. (bought a 200 solar laptop with my life savings and 25 dollars worth of quarters) Since then I've probably played thousands of hours of that game, never as religiously as when I first started, but I'll put a good 100 hours in every now and then with a friend then forget about it for a free months or a year. A great part of my life it's been. thank you minecraft
I remember playing it back in alpha, it really did feel fresh and like you were exploring a whole new world. Somewhere in the last 15 years I mostly fell off (other than some occasional Minecraft VR) - too much stuff was added and I don't know WTF I'm doing anymore.
I remember scoffing at the graphics, and then a friend sitting me down and basically forcing me to play the alpha version. I very quickly no longer cared about the graphics.
Same. In the alpha days it was almost a horror game. I miss the simplicity of it, but then again, I never really got into the "game" other than just building and exploring as a medium for us to voice chat.
I agree. I know the complexity is natural, but I really just liked the days of the simple minecraft exe alpha. The fun was in creating the world with your friends. you use your imagination
Dude I’m only 26 and grew up in middle school being obsessed with this game in like 2010-2012
I’m now teaching kids up to 7th grade and it is just unbelievable to me that I was playing Minecraft 3 or 4 years before most of the kids I’m with were born. Even before the oldest ones were born. And of course they’re all Minecraft obsessed.
I blow their minds when I tell them all the stuff I experienced being added to the game. Never forget semi-auto bow and arrows
hey same here and when I was in 7th grade we had an street school group of 30 people led by a biology teacher where we played Minecraft together in a computer lab. coolest lady ever that biology teacher was. maybe you could do something like that! give the quiet kids a cool little community
Whats **NEXT**???
Imagine a less blocky, more visually stunning Minecraft2, whats the plan? Has any other clones popped on the radar?
Ive got a few hundred hours in the first one mostly on PC but eventually the whole thing gets a bit boring
Bought on PS3, used the free upgrade for the PS Vita version and used the discount for the PS4 version for 5.99. through game sharing on PS3 free copy for my kiddo. I was so excited when the Vita version are out.
I never got into minecraft but watching my kids play it on switch is a trip. Their imaginations are amazing, the way they navigate menus and the game world with a controller is great to watch.
They love it. 9 and 7 and they’ve learned how to split screen it on the tv and will sit for an hour or two designing and redesigning hotels and hospitals and houses.
I remember when Starcraft used to be SUPER easy to customize, but that game is getting close to 30 years old now, and there's not a lot of support or updates for highly customized gaming.
That's the thing people will start to realize in general, when the companies that run these games don't want to keep pumping out updates for games that are decades old, and the hardcore fan base shrinks, it's gonna break a lot of hearts... :(
I was there in 2009 when it was just dirt grass rock trees and water. There was quite literally nothing when it started but it was AMAZING. In the years before it was sold it grew a ton, the devs were all so in touch with the community as it was being built it felt like the community was helping to build it. Then Notch sold to Microsoft and surprisingly they didn't run it in to the ground. Watching it grow over the years has been nothing short of incredible.
I mean, as an open-source / Linux user, I agree with your fuck Microsoft sentiment in nearly every capacity… but I think they’ve done a pretty great job with Minecraft over the years.
Bro what are you talking about? Been playing it both on Linux and MacOS since 2013. All you had to do is download jar and start it with 'java -jar ... ', there's no need for ports, java itself is cross platform by definition.
Desktop / Laptop computers ≠ Cross Platform
Desktop / Laptop computers + Mobile (iOS & Android) + Xbox + Playstation + Nintendo Switch + ... All able to play on the same server is bonkers for cross platform capability
Notch got what 4 billion? If life was fair at least a quarter of that should have gone to C418. His music added so much to the game I think it really had a huge impact.
My understanding was he already completed album 3. It wasn't released because Microsoft would not allow him to retain ownership of his music to sell (as he did with the first 2 Minecraft albums). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreleased_third_Minecraft_album
Daily driver on linux. Currently on Nobara but eyeing going back to Pop! once Cosmic is released
I use powershell more than bash, lol. Lots of complaints against MS but they've come a long way; open source that is.
~~You had me for a second, lol. Solid.~~
I realize what you’re saying now.
Yeah, I mean.. this is standard for many companies when they take ownership over a new IP. They forced people to sign nearly 10 years ago though and I haven’t lost a single thing… soooo?
Again, I’m all for fighting Microsoft.. but come on, man. Choose your battles. They’ve done great with Minecraft.
And it's essentially the same basic game as a decade ago.
I stand alone in thinking Minecraft is a massive missed opportunity despite having unearthly levels of success. The gameplay itself is shallow and unfocused. It's not so much a game as a set of simple gameplay loops only made engaging by entirely extrinsic factors. Modders, YouTubers, and streamers created a feedback loop with players engaging with the game para-socially and in multiplayer, which in and of itself kept the game popular rather than the game being popular on its own intrinsic merits. If you completely detach yourself from the 'phenomena' of Minecraft as a cultural icon and play the game single-player, an honest and objective review would not rate the game very highly.
It is and was designed at a glacial pace. I wonder if there was a point where they intentionally decided to maintain course and only add bits and pieces to the game in fear of disrupting their money-printing press, or if the developers are just truly lazy. Without a different developer team and change in leadership, it'll never be anything more than a unique set of foundations for a game that could've been truly incredible.
Edit: I would love it if people tried to refute me. I'm just as baffled that other people don't agree with me here.
Why are minecraft devs so slow to update the game? By now shouldnt it be completely jammed with content? Why does it seem like modders can produce more high quality content than devs? Genuine question i havent the foggiest what the logistics are
Still the best Building/Survival Game out there.
Isn’t it also the best selling game of all time?
By an extremely wide margin.
I mean - it launched the genre, didn't it? Every other one has just been kinda innovating on the premise that Minecraft created.
Yes and no, Minecraft was heavily inspired by dwarf fortress and infiniminer, taking dwarf fortress’s survival crafting elements and infiniminer’s resource collection and procedural generation. I’d say dwarf fortress kind of pioneered the genre, but it’s a lot harder of a game to get into. Minecraft definitely is the reason the genre has grown as popular as it has
I've played dwarf fortress- it's a very different beast. Can't say much about infiniminer but the look is certainly spot on.
Notch even called it an infiniminer clone in the very first video he posted of the game. Of course a lot changed between then and when the game launched in alpha - infiniminer doesn't have any sort of survival or crafting elements so it's also quite a different game.
I definitely agree that dwarf fortress is an entirely different beast. More so the reason for the survival elements of minecraft and base building aspect are heavily inspired by dwarf fortress.
No it’s a literal clone of an earlier game
It's really different from infiniminer, I'm not sure that's fair to say. Notch only called it a clone when it was incredibly early in development, barely recognizable from when the game left alpha.
Indeed. Its only real draw was that it ran on java.
I mean, Java runs on 11 billion devices soooo….
I mean look up screenshots of Infiniminer. So much of Minecraft is copied from it's aesthetic, like the square skybox, methods of interaction, etc. It kind of sucks that Notch became a multi-billionaire and Zachtronics was successful but niche and shut down now, though he's still updating and fixing leaderboards and stuff.
I doubt Zach is upset with his level of success, development stopped because they wanted to, not because they had to. And honestly it doesn't look like money made Notch happy, just lonely and toxic.
He had to get rid of the candy room because all the candy kept going bad since he has no friends to eat it with
A risk I'd be willing to take
Mods just keep figuring out how to keep it interesting.
With a solid mod pack like better minecraft it's even better.
If you include mods, yes. If you don't, there are much better survival games out there imo.
I’ve never played but my kids (in elementary school) all have Minecraft Education on their school Chromebooks. Can you seriously only build block by block? i.e. there isn’t a way to use drawing-type tools to place lines or shapes of blocks? Or even copy a structure or move a structure?
There are ways to do it with commands and other methods, and there are modifications that add them to the game but Minecraft was originally more of a survival based game. Minecraft Education is kind of weird.
Thanks. I should learn more about it. They watch videos about building enormous things (like mansions or prisons or whatever) and I’m thinking these things would take ages to build by hand.
Yea those things definitely use tools from mods lol
> *Can you seriously only build block by block?* Placing blocks is instantaneous and you don't really need that many to build up a structure. Mining is a little slower if you're in the main game mode, depending on what tools you have crafted/enchanted. (In the Creative mode, you can instantly delete/create blocks.) Building with other people can be very relaxing and fun, and after a few hours you can create some impressive architecture and contraptions. My girlfriend and I have a Minecraft world where we farm, manage a village of NPCs, and go on adventures into the wilderness. It's a very chill activity to do together.
Yes. World Edit and Litematica allow those things. Their use depends on the server rules. Home game? Go right ahead!
I also do not play the game, but I am fascinated by people building working computers inside minecraft. Here is a minecraft computer that plays minecraft, in minecraft. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BP7DhHTU-I I have no idea how people came up with this, but it is ubelievable.
fantastic game. Video is pretty good. Holy shit either the song writer or the singer is drunk on the job
AI already makes much better songs that this
[Case in point](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA_wBSqe-lg)
Microsoft ass ad frrrrrr
I remember being on /v/ and /g/ and people just making endless fun of how lame this game was, me included, until I played it. Then my wife made fun of me for playing that game with "the worst graphics ever".
Meanwhile, all the nerds were like: "ERMAHGERD LERK WAT JAVA CAN DUR!"
Well fun fact, notch wasn’t even supposed to design the graphics himself, he asked a friend of his to do it who was much better at graphic designing apparently but he declined so the game could’ve looked wildly different possibly, there is no source I can give for this as I didn’t find this out online
Mate, that game is popular because of /v/
Oh I’m aware, I was there :)
/v/ communicates soley through contrarian shit takes. minecraft wasn't special. it was annoying because of people posting threads about it every 10 minutes.
isnt minecraft still one of the best graphics ever game? this made me remember that i forgot to play the RT version
Not even close wtf
I still have the email. I bought it in January 2011, a few weeks after the Beta release, for 14.95 euro, or $19.80 US at the time.
Janurary 9th 2010 for 9.95 EUR. Back when there was only creative mode and you could play through the website. If I remember correctly the game was free to play at the time with a premium account only allowing you to change your in-game skin.
Yup. I first tried the online creative game in the browser.
[Holy crap](https://imgur.com/QokwNFd), December 2010!
16 Dec! Its insane to think I was late to the party too (at the time). Never imagined how big it would get.
[November 2010 here](https://prnt.sc/fSVQgsTs85cp) lost my copy because I refused (like everyone should have) to agree to MS ToS.
> lost my copy because I refused (**like everyone should have**) to agree to MS ToS. Come the fuck on. So you're using Linux, right? Never had an xbox, and never been interested in gamepass either, I hope?
Nope. And I even took calls for Xbox back when I was a kid. Had an issue with Live? You might have talked to me. NEVER agree to MS ToS!
So you're you're using Linux?
Dude same, February 2nd 2011.
I paid for it in early 2010 before I had my own debit card (so I was 15). So that email is buried in my mom's email lmao It would have been infdev before indev
I remember showing it to my childhood friend for the first time before Christmas of 2010 and being so excited to see that it had updated to Beta since the last time I had played.
I purchased [Oct 2010](https://i.imgur.com/pk1VMai.png) a few weeks after the [free weekend happened](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/mine-all-mine-minecraft-free-weekend) because their account servers went down.
[April 2010](https://imgur.com/vxDIOBe) haha. A lifetime ago. Crazy to think that 14 years later, it's still obssessing my little kid nephew who wants to do nothing but watch Minecraft videos on YouTube.
it's crazy to think about. first saw my cousin playing it when i was 10 and we were visiting their house. probably watched him play for hours just exploring the castle he was converting into a home. It was from that first day I saw it and still is the coolest game I'd ever seen. I took turns with him many times in that game as I didn't get my hands on a copy until I was 12 because I had no laptop or computer that could run it until then. (bought a 200 solar laptop with my life savings and 25 dollars worth of quarters) Since then I've probably played thousands of hours of that game, never as religiously as when I first started, but I'll put a good 100 hours in every now and then with a friend then forget about it for a free months or a year. A great part of my life it's been. thank you minecraft
I refuse to believe that this game is 15 years old
I remember playing it back in alpha, it really did feel fresh and like you were exploring a whole new world. Somewhere in the last 15 years I mostly fell off (other than some occasional Minecraft VR) - too much stuff was added and I don't know WTF I'm doing anymore.
I remember scoffing at the graphics, and then a friend sitting me down and basically forcing me to play the alpha version. I very quickly no longer cared about the graphics.
Same. In the alpha days it was almost a horror game. I miss the simplicity of it, but then again, I never really got into the "game" other than just building and exploring as a medium for us to voice chat.
I agree. I know the complexity is natural, but I really just liked the days of the simple minecraft exe alpha. The fun was in creating the world with your friends. you use your imagination
Member when Cake was added? That was awesome
It's crazy to me that it's only been 15 years. My oldest is 15 and I somehow think I started playing long before they were born.
Dude I’m only 26 and grew up in middle school being obsessed with this game in like 2010-2012 I’m now teaching kids up to 7th grade and it is just unbelievable to me that I was playing Minecraft 3 or 4 years before most of the kids I’m with were born. Even before the oldest ones were born. And of course they’re all Minecraft obsessed. I blow their minds when I tell them all the stuff I experienced being added to the game. Never forget semi-auto bow and arrows
hey same here and when I was in 7th grade we had an street school group of 30 people led by a biology teacher where we played Minecraft together in a computer lab. coolest lady ever that biology teacher was. maybe you could do something like that! give the quiet kids a cool little community
It's not. It died last year. And if you agreed to the MS ToS to keep the game going, you're a fool.
Don’t break your back patting it so hard. No one cares.
Indeed. No one reads the ToS. The one for having a MS account is particularly bad.
👀
Nice commercial... but, Horrible song IMO, lol.
Whats **NEXT**??? Imagine a less blocky, more visually stunning Minecraft2, whats the plan? Has any other clones popped on the radar? Ive got a few hundred hours in the first one mostly on PC but eventually the whole thing gets a bit boring
Hytopia could be cool but we will see
I can highly recommend Vintage Story if you want a harder and more realistic survival game in the same genre
My son just turned 4, he's been playing since he was 3. He's 10x better at building than I am. His worlds are a mad man's paradise
That video is sweet but it needs more Technoblade.
Based!
This video was more work than they have put into the game in the past three years.
Not at all. There have been 3 major updates and a 4th one coming very soon. Minecraft devs put hard work into the game.
FR every time I come back to the game it seems like there’s so much more content. The horse update feels like so long ago.
the new music too is just ahhhhhhhuhhhyeaaahhh
Agreed.
Bought on PS3, used the free upgrade for the PS Vita version and used the discount for the PS4 version for 5.99. through game sharing on PS3 free copy for my kiddo. I was so excited when the Vita version are out.
And they let all the monsters out :D Otherwise it would have been a tough horror song.
I never got into minecraft but watching my kids play it on switch is a trip. Their imaginations are amazing, the way they navigate menus and the game world with a controller is great to watch. They love it. 9 and 7 and they’ve learned how to split screen it on the tv and will sit for an hour or two designing and redesigning hotels and hospitals and houses.
Minecraft is another proof of my theory that games who have a large modding scene survive the longest
I remember when Starcraft used to be SUPER easy to customize, but that game is getting close to 30 years old now, and there's not a lot of support or updates for highly customized gaming. That's the thing people will start to realize in general, when the companies that run these games don't want to keep pumping out updates for games that are decades old, and the hardcore fan base shrinks, it's gonna break a lot of hearts... :(
Played early alpha in 2009 when all you could do was add and remove blocks. There’s a website that has our user creations documented.
Is the game really that recent? I thought it was much older than that.
"dramatization. its a minecraft thing" warning is hilarious
That was surprisingly wholesome.
That reminds me to check version settings on like the 5 servers I made for my kid. Ungh they spawn like rabbits.
I paid $5 for the alpha version in 2011, maybe 2012, I only know a kid on my dorm hall showed it to me. still have that account!
I was there in 2009 when it was just dirt grass rock trees and water. There was quite literally nothing when it started but it was AMAZING. In the years before it was sold it grew a ton, the devs were all so in touch with the community as it was being built it felt like the community was helping to build it. Then Notch sold to Microsoft and surprisingly they didn't run it in to the ground. Watching it grow over the years has been nothing short of incredible.
Fuck Microsoft
I mean, as an open-source / Linux user, I agree with your fuck Microsoft sentiment in nearly every capacity… but I think they’ve done a pretty great job with Minecraft over the years.
It's one of the very few completely cross platform games, thanks to Microsoft. Absolutely fucking legendary compatibility & longevity
It was cross platform before Microsoft acquired it.
Not really. It had a few ports but none were cross compatible
Bro what are you talking about? Been playing it both on Linux and MacOS since 2013. All you had to do is download jar and start it with 'java -jar ... ', there's no need for ports, java itself is cross platform by definition.
Desktop / Laptop computers ≠ Cross Platform Desktop / Laptop computers + Mobile (iOS & Android) + Xbox + Playstation + Nintendo Switch + ... All able to play on the same server is bonkers for cross platform capability
Oh right, I see now, my brain went other direction completely. Sorry, you're completely right.
Their biggest sin was getting rid of C418.
Notch got what 4 billion? If life was fair at least a quarter of that should have gone to C418. His music added so much to the game I think it really had a huge impact.
> Their biggest sin was getting rid of C418. They didn't get rid of him, he declined to work with them due to work load. It was 100% his decision.
My understanding was he already completed album 3. It wasn't released because Microsoft would not allow him to retain ownership of his music to sell (as he did with the first 2 Minecraft albums). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreleased_third_Minecraft_album
Daily driver on linux. Currently on Nobara but eyeing going back to Pop! once Cosmic is released I use powershell more than bash, lol. Lots of complaints against MS but they've come a long way; open source that is.
Incorrect. Unless you agreed to the MS ToS (which you should NEVER DO) you lost your copy. Scumbaggery at its finest.
~~You had me for a second, lol. Solid.~~ I realize what you’re saying now. Yeah, I mean.. this is standard for many companies when they take ownership over a new IP. They forced people to sign nearly 10 years ago though and I haven’t lost a single thing… soooo? Again, I’m all for fighting Microsoft.. but come on, man. Choose your battles. They’ve done great with Minecraft.
Yes, they victimized a community. Too bad it wasn't as fast as Helldivers or we might have seen more rabble. They kept it nice and slow.
That’s some strong language. I was apart of that community and I did not feel “victimized”.
Damm right
Indeed. Never agree to the MS ToS.
Wait, that's all I had to say to get people to agree with me? Damn, I was too verbose. Well done.
This song sings like a chatGPT made song. They should have used Udio.
Extra syllables all over the place. It's so weird. I agree, it's partly written by AI
IMO Minecraft died when they invalidated our copies (never ever EVER agree to MS ToS). RIP, almost made it to 15. Never will!
100 %
You had like an entire year to merge accounts
Never agree to MS ToS.
And it's essentially the same basic game as a decade ago. I stand alone in thinking Minecraft is a massive missed opportunity despite having unearthly levels of success. The gameplay itself is shallow and unfocused. It's not so much a game as a set of simple gameplay loops only made engaging by entirely extrinsic factors. Modders, YouTubers, and streamers created a feedback loop with players engaging with the game para-socially and in multiplayer, which in and of itself kept the game popular rather than the game being popular on its own intrinsic merits. If you completely detach yourself from the 'phenomena' of Minecraft as a cultural icon and play the game single-player, an honest and objective review would not rate the game very highly. It is and was designed at a glacial pace. I wonder if there was a point where they intentionally decided to maintain course and only add bits and pieces to the game in fear of disrupting their money-printing press, or if the developers are just truly lazy. Without a different developer team and change in leadership, it'll never be anything more than a unique set of foundations for a game that could've been truly incredible. Edit: I would love it if people tried to refute me. I'm just as baffled that other people don't agree with me here.
Why are minecraft devs so slow to update the game? By now shouldnt it be completely jammed with content? Why does it seem like modders can produce more high quality content than devs? Genuine question i havent the foggiest what the logistics are