- Minecraft was the most important game of the last decade.
Even if you've never played it,
it changed the way that you buy games.
It changed what you watch online.
It was the biggest indie hit of the decade,
the best-selling game of all time,
and even now, 10 years later,
it's still hanging out in the top streamed games on Twitch.
The fact is, we live in a Minecraft world.
But how did we get here?
To answer that, we have to go back to a time
when people still asked the question:
(timer dings) What's Minecraft?
Minecraft is a sandbox survival, building,
t-shirt, Lego, AR, book franchise,
choose-your-own-adventure on Netflix,
stuffed toys, sippy cup, hat game.
But it didn't start out with any of that.
- It was the original game without a game.
It was just a sandbox and a bucket of Lego
and you had to make your own fun.
Right? - Yeah.
- In Minecraft, originally.
- That's Lewis Brindley,
one of the founders of Yogscast,
who would later build his career in Minecraft.
But in the beginning,
Minecraft wasn't even a career for its creator.
(ba-dum-shhh)
Markus Notch Persson (who has since milkshake ducked so hard
that people joke the game was made by Hatsune Miku)
started building it in his free time.
In 2009, Notch released the game's first build
on the TIGSource forums
just to see what people thought of it.
He immediately started getting feedback
and screenshots from people building things,
like simple one-block-wide bridges.
Jordan Maron, known to most as CaptainSparklez,
was playing Call of Duty with his friend, SeaNanners,
when he first heard about Minecraft.
- I think we we were playing Call of Duty
and he was like, "I just found this amazing game.
"You can punch blocks and punch chickens,
"and eat chickens."
And I was like, "I don't understand what's going on here.
"Why you're so involved by this
"but sure, I can try it, that's fine."
- Notch continued to release new builds
to a small but growing community.
A community that had to figure out for themselves
what to do with all of these new tools.
- The patch notes were vague at best
and you just had to discover what was there.
And then you'd discover a new mineral or something,
you'd be like, "What do I use this for?"
You just randomly put things together in the crafting grid
and just try and see what you could make.
But that was a good sort of starter to just draw you in
with this sort of mystery.
- Minecraft doesn't tell us how to make a pickaxe
or that we should probably build a house
to shelter out the night
or what that weird hissing sound means.
(creeper explodes)
Over the next year,
Minecraft blasted through development phases.
Classic became Indev became Infdev became Alpha.
The game continued to spread through the veins
of the internet from TIGSource to Reddit
and Something Awful.
And while Wikis and forums were an okay way
to show the game,
video was the quickest route to understanding
what could be fun about a weird block game...
...and how to play it.
Minecraft was coming out as video Let's Plays
gained popularity on YouTube.
And as the live-streaming site Justin.tv
shuttled gameplay content onto a separate platform: Twitch.
In 2013, Mojang added built-in Twitch broadcasting
to Minecraft on Mac and PC,
which removed yet another layer of friction
between players and streaming that sick block content.
The relationship between Minecraft
and video was really symbiotic.
People found the game because they saw it on the platforms
and people flocked to the platforms
because they wanted to see more of the game.
Simon and Lewis of Yogscast
were two of the video creators
that were instrumental in spreading
the good word of Minecraft
through their Let's Play hit, Shadow of Israphel,
a lore-heavy series that lasted two years and three seasons.
Numbers. Their careers have lasted way longer than that.
They're still great.
- [Daniel] They pioneered the Minecraft Let's Play
just hands down. And a large part of Minecraft's success
is because they popularized this idea
of a narrative through the game.
- The success of Yogscast also inspired a handful
of other players who made careers out of gaming videos,
like Daniel, who's known on line as RTGame.
- [Daniel] That playthrough is the reason
I even started on YouTube.
Back then it was kind of like after seeing those guys
just having fun in the game,
it's like, "This looks great."
- But there's a particular structure
that over and over again has helped people
see the scope of Minecraft.
That the things that people can build in this game
are more ambitious than anyone expected.
- The OG Starship Enterprise
just hovering above the town. - The shadow beneath,
left on the ground where all the zombies
and things were spawning in the dark
'cause they thought it was nighttime.
- Simon and Lewis did a tour of the Starship Enterprise
as made by Mozzie Minecraft.
But in 2010, another one-to-one recreation
of the Enterprise went viral.
This one made by a man named Joshua Walker.
- I saw his recreation of Enterprise
and said, "Oh, I wanna do that.
"I wanna make something like that."
- This is Matt, who goes by Mr. Squishy.
He develops games for Minecraft Marketplace now,
but his former magnum opus was building a working version
of Pokemon Red in Minecraft with 357,000 command blocks.
It is the wildest shit you will ever see.
- [Matt] Every green or orange block you see here
is a command block,
it has one line of code in it.
- Matt's first experience playing the game
is one that lots of people share.
He downloaded Minecraft classic for free
off Mojang's website after seeing a Let's Play, natch.
Back in the day, Minecraft Classic was downloadable for free
but you could also buy it for like 10 bucks
to get the latest build
and be guaranteed a copy of the final product.
Nowadays, you're probably used to paying for a game
before it's done.
But in 2010, this wasn't at all normal.
It was early access before early access was a thing.
- I don't think that Notch went into the game
with that sort of business strategy.
I think all the success that came along with it
was very much a surprise.
I think it was just like,
"Eh, game's not done, FYI,
"but if you want it, here it is."
- Minecraft wasn't the first game to do this.
The difference was that Minecraft did this
and made three million dollars – when it was still in alpha.
Following Minecraft's accidental success
with early access,
platforms like Desura introduced alpha funding in 2011
and Steam early access arrived in 2013.
By 2016, Xbox, GOG, and itch.io
all had what amount to early access programs.
As Minecraft's popularity increased,
so did its complexity.
- [Matt] It started as all build-focused.
Then you had the technical revolution with redstone
where it was all piston doors and redstone contraptions.
Then you got into the wave of command block,
which was my bread and butter,
the command block creations.
- Redstone and command blocks let players build circuits
and basically write programs —
literally, write programs — in Minecraft.
- Can do like "Turing Complete" computer stuff.
- Imagine you're playing Legos
- I don't know what that means.
- and someone suddenly adds algebra to it.
Do you know what I mean? - Yeah.
- And the five-year-olds are like,
"What the fuck?
"Why do I need algebra in my Legos?"
- But then there's like a very specific
group of people-- - Of dads!
Who are like, "I love algebra."
- Yeah, they can't get enough of it.
- "I'm gonna build a working clock!"
- "I'm gonna make it so you can play Minecraft
in Minecraft using redstone."
- Yeah, that's right.
- Matt is that metaphorical dad.
He turned his attention to making casino games
like slot machines and roulette.
He was essentially on the ground floor
of a new programming language.
- So you'd read the documentation
and say, "Okay, I know how to make this.
"I know how to play with this now."
And you go and pull down something someone else made
and tear it apart and say,
"All right, I see how that's used."
And then the ideas start forming about,
"All right, what can I make?"
- If you just chain up thousands and thousands,
which some people do in maps,
you can trigger animations and cuts scenes,
interactions between characters running text between them.
So there's just a ton of stuff that you can do with them
to almost script out your own game within Minecraft.
- And that's exactly what Matt did.
He made Pac-Man in Minecraft
and started streaming his builds on Twitch
around the same time.
- It started very much as, "I'm gonna show my workflow."
Because the streams that you see,
the videos you see,
are people enjoying the game.
People playing it,
people having fun with the final product,
but you never see the behind-the-scenes,
tedious grind that goes into it.
- After he built Pac-Man,
he moved onto an even bigger challenge.
- I was set out to make something that proved
you could make anything you want in Minecraft.
And I thought Pokemon Red basically,
if you can recreate a game from another console
in Minecraft – that proves the point.
- The fact that Matt was able to do this
speaks to another reason that Minecraft
has had such longevity.
It's not only a game, it's a platform.
The games inspired by Minecraft,
and there're a lot of good ones,
repurpose mechanics like survival
or building but not its limitlessness.
- There was a lot of sandbox games out there.
We've played 7 Days to Die,
which is like a zombie thing.
I built a giant fort to fight the zombies off
and man, that was really satisfying.
I hadn't done any building in a while.
- It's not Minecraft though.
That's not what she asked. (laughs)
- No but do you not understand?
It is Minecraft though.
You're putting down blocks in the same way.
You're filling them, repairing them, you're placing them,
you're crafting stuff.
Minecraft was the first game,
and so many games came after it.
- Minecraft galvanizes people to create
and share their work
and push the limits of the game at the same time.
Its fandom and their skills are inextricable
from the game's success.
Daniel recognizes that
and that's what his videos are all about.
He regularly musters up hundreds of players
and assigns them a project.
He came to my attention for making 100 people
build an island full of Starbucks cafes.
His community signs up for the most ridiculous shit.
- [Daniel] I'm very thankful for them, honestly,
'cause they're good sports more than anything.
And even if a theme isn't exactly their cup of tea,
'cause sometimes we're have the builds
where they'll protest against it,
so when we were building Starbucks for instance,
people started building different cafes,
which is highly illegal.
But it's okay. (laughs)
- Last time I checked out his Twitch channel,
his community was busy building the Netherlands
in the Nether, which is very good.
But some of his favorite builds
have pushed Minecraft to its limits,
including replicating Terraria,
itself a Minecraft-inspired game,
inside Minecraft, and then building things
inside that terraria.
- [Daniel] It's so cool as far as builds go.
This is such a great concept.
- It's been 10 years
and people are still finding new ways
to be creative like this.
What do you think makes people,
or gives people the drive
to keep creating things for Minecraft?
- Boredom. (Simon laughs)
(beep)
- I think Minecraft had so much more freedom
compared to the game that we came from,
World of Warcraft.
And I think that was,
that contrast between the two is something that,
certainly that I loved.
I felt free in this place.
- Simon and Lewis's love affair with Minecraft
is over now.
But the Minecraft community lives on
through streamers like Daniel.
- [Daniel] It's such a simple game
but that gives it so much appeal.
You just, again, you place a block,
break a block
and if you place enough of those
and break enough,
you can make a story out of that.
And that's wonderful.
- Sounds like Minecraft
is a real building block of the community.
- [Tara] No, no, you turn, building block.
- Oh fuck! (beep)
Sounds like Minecraft is a real building block, oh.
- [Tara] No you turn *before* you say building.
- Wow, sounds like Minecraft is a real
building block of the community.
(upbeat music)
Can the end of the video just be us
trying to do that take? - Yes.
- They added bees,
they actually did add bees.
- They finally added bees to the game.
- I can't believe it
'cause that was something we always joked about
as being--
- The death knell of Minecraft,
when they added bees.