‘Minecraft’ is to a large degree about having unique experiences that nobody else has had. The levels are randomly generated, and you can build anything you want to build yourself.
— Marcus Persson.
I’ve always loved the game Minecraft and I’m so glad that it’s starting to grow back in popularity but I’m starting to wonder why is Minecraft coming back to the spotlight and why do I love it so much? To answer my questions I had to do a little research and this is what I found.
Statistically speaking, Minecraft isn’t the greatest game. In fact, Tetris holds the crown with over 500 million+ copies sold worldwide whereas Minecraft has only sold 76 million+ copies. However Minecraft has not only stood the test of time with it remaining popular since it’s release in 2011 but has also found a place in everyones ones heart. Let’s look into how and why Minecraft has achieved this.
Why is Minecraft such a Great Game?
Minecraft is a sandbox where you can literally do anything you want and you’re only limited by your imagination. This leads to a compleaty unique experience for everyone as each time you start a new world, it will be different to your last. You could never get bored in your world with endless possibilities of things you can do. But there is no real end. Even if the end credits role and you’ve defeated the final boss, the game still carries on. This doesn’t restrict you on what you can do unlike other sandbox games where they limit you on how much you can build with boundaries. You can also play with others on servers which can be like a completely different game with minigames that fits into all genres of gameplay which fulfills everyones taste. The game can also be dramatically expanded upon through mods and texture packs to offer more possibilites once you get bored of the vanilla version.
Why is Minecraft coming back?
One of the reasons why Minecraft is coming back is due to the boredom that players feel in other popular games. This may sound weird at first but let me explain. For example, Fortnite was probably the biggest game during the years 2017 to 2018, however recently as Minecraft has risen in popularity, Fortnite has decreased. People believe there are multiple reasons for this but one of the reasons is that the gameplay was getting too repetitive. People and streamers were getting sick and tired of the same repetitive endgame and updates were far too frequent leaving players struggling to adpat to the new fetures before the next update came out. Fortnite isn’t the only game that had this problem. Countless of other games have the same flaw but Minecraft is different. In Minecraft, every world generated is differently and everyone plays the game in there own way so every experience is unique. There’s no way a player will ever be bored in this extraordinary game. Not only this but I’ve also discovered that old fans that abandoned game years before are starting to come back to Minecraft. Popular youtubers such as Pewdiepie have also come back to this game and are helping bringing the game back to the spotlight. Not only that but Minecraft’s recent updates are coming out at a perfect rate leaving a 6 month gap for players to enjoy the new features without getting bored. The new 1.13 and 1.14 updates are the biggest updates Minecraft has had in a while which lets returning players to enjoy and explore new worlds and features.
Why did Minecraft die?
There is range of possible reasons why the game decreased in popularity. One of the reasons is the purchase of Mojang by Microsoft. Which really wasn’t much of an issue, but Microsoft wanted to recode the entire game from java to C# which kept several key updates held back. Including the official modding API which still doesn’t exist. Another reason is that private servers were charging high fees and when parents found that kids were paying thousands for server perks, they complained to Mojang. This lead to a change in governing rules that prevented many forms of monitization which reduced ways for legit servers and modders to make money. This prevented server owners from paying their bills. Servers were starting to go out of business and players were getting annoyed. All of this lead to a programmer, Wesley Wolfe, donating code to the modding community to file a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), which forced every single modding community to either rebuild their server and modding API or creatively work around the DMCA.
The Future of Minecraft
We’ve already seen a very promising year with 1.13 and, more recently, 1.14 but, if anything, the future is looking even better. For starters, Minecraft has a whole new franchase of games coming our way with Minecraft Earth which is a Minecraft AR game and is said to be a AR masterpiece by some. We also know about Minecraft : Dungeons which is a Minecraft dungeon crawler which is going to be like the Diablo game series. Mojang is really going big with this Minecraft brand idea they have. There’s even a Minecraft film, a Minecraft book and a Minecraft graphic novel coming out. So theres a lot to look forward to in the future.
Game Trap 