In a world of endless options, where new games are released every day, one game stands tall above the rest. A game that has captured the hearts and minds of players of all ages and backgrounds. A game that has become a cultural phenomenon, a household name, and a true masterpiece of the digital age. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the definitive computer game of the last 15 years: Minecraft.
Now apart from this overdramatic intro there really are not many people who have never heard of this gem of video game software. In the following I will explain why there will not be a more successful game in the forseable future.
What makes Minecraft so successful
As of now Minecrafts selling numbers speak for themselfs when it comes to evaluating the success of the game. With a good space to the second place GTA V (which is an absolute mess right now) Minecraft sold 238 million copies and therfore ranks as the top selling game till now.
Minecrafts unique selling points
Upon looking at the seemingly simple game consisting of blocks, in todays world one would ask why someone would play something with such bad graphics when the new GPU generation can litterally render photorealistic games in real time with RayTracing. But there is so much more behind the facade that lets the player forget the poor graphics and dive into the game. In short the main contributing aspects to this are:
- a super unique concept thats simple and easy to understand
- an extreme surreallity that provides its own world to escape to
- a mind boggling room for creativity
- the best multiplayer experience of any video game till today
- an endless possiblity of modifications that are even welcomed by the developer
Your own world
“Im gonna create a new world” is a term that describes starting a new world in Minecraft. Apart from Mojangs naming scheme this subconsciously describes the way players see Minecraft as its own world where youre the god over space and time.
This posibility to modify everything also deeply satisfies the inner will of humans to shape the environment around them. In Minecraft your not only able to dig a 50m deep hole in to the ground but you can change your surroundings from weather to your location to your house to the literal dimension you are in. The only limitiation is flowery said your own imagination. Even tho there are many sandbox games the majority of them is in some kind of frame limited to a special genre or theme. With Minecraft you are completly free to do whatever you want. From building houses out of dirt to spaceships.
Real Multiplayer
Islands of Kesmai (1984) was the first online multiplayer game, Minecraft managed to perfect the experience to play with your friends to infintiy. Until the Metaverse might some day become something useful and not the chaos it currently is Minecraft has the best Multiplayer/server option of any game released since. This is mostly because the Minecraft server code is freely available for everyone to download and to host on there own hardware with their own settings and modifications. This possibility for the community to improve and adapt the game to their own requirements (from small servers with friends to big servers like mineplex) has kept Minecraft alive for the long time since it had been released.
The Multiplayer mode also experienced a new upswing in popularity during the lockdowns as many could not see their friends for months and hosted their own Minecraft Servers so that they could play Minecraft with their friends over vast distances. Having also done this I can report that it is a lot of fun and you soon start to forget the surreal and abstract surrounding you are playing in. What makes this even better is the seamless intgration of the chat funktion and the really easy to learn commands which open the complete toolbox of the game to the user. Either way Minecraft servers and the possiblity to set them up so easy and host them on your hardware are a major factor that Minecraft hasnt been forgotten in the 14 years since its release.
Modifications
As with every piece of technology games are kept alive by an active community.
A good example is the PSVita which was an absolute financial flop for Sony but was later jailbreaked by the community and it was made possible to sideload any game on it you could think of. Is it to slow to run the game? No problem someone managed to overclock the chip and make it considerably faster. Playing at night and the display is to bright? How about a display hack that dims it below the normal threshold. Thanks to all these modifications the PSVita still has an active community till today.
This same principle can be applied to Minecraft with the execption that Mojang allowed really early into the development that their game could be completly modified by external mods from the community. The fact that there are tens of thousands Minecraft mods with new ones being added every day is a true testament to the flexibility and the strength of an active community with over 140 million active users each month.
Nerd talk
Now with this love letter out of the way there are also a few technical things about minecraft that are just on another level.
Regarding the standard Java edition for PC, Minecraft might very well be the most effiecient piece of software ever written in Java, a language that is not really known for peak performance. This and that Mojang/Microsoft ist still developing the Java Edition, a software written 14 years ago in a probably poorly choosen language lets one admire the endurance and the software engineering skills of the developing team behind Mojang studios.
Conclusion
Minecraft: There is no question: Minecraft really earns the krown of video games. And until the game will fall into oblivion or another major title outstrips MC it will remain at this first position in the race for the most successful video game. – GLPC: phantom
