Sometimes, the simplest ideas are the most powerful.
With 14 million copies sold, Minecraft is now the 3rd best selling PC game of all time.
Not too shabby, considering it was originally the work of just one person.
Love it or hate it, Minecraft is a phenomenon.
Its accessible mechanics mean that in the beginning, all you need to know is punch trees:
get wood.
So where did Minecraft's concepts spring from - and why has it proven so popular?
One of the most immediately striking features of Minecraft are its graphics: starkly pixelated
textures and a simplistic palette providing a strong contrast to AAA titles, with their
focus on realism, desaturated tones and cinematic cutscenes.
It's a throwback to games of yesteryear, when hard technical limits meant that each bitplane
and every single pixel were carefully considered.
It's a deliberate style that harks back to a nostalgic age: and it's no coincidence that
most developers who pay homage to this style grew up during the 1980s and early 90s.
One of the vanguards of this retro style, and of indie games in general, was 2004's
Cave Story.
It was Japanese developer Daisuke "Pixel" Amaya's tribute to the games he grew up with:
8-bit titles for the NES like Castlevania and Metroid.
Games like these were able to evoke powerful emotion with incredibly limited resources:
pixelated graphics borne from mere kilobytes of information.
Cave Story paved the way for later indie titles, which embraced this pixelated style - to the
point where it has now become a hallmark.
Not only are visible pixels evocative of a bygone era - lower resolution graphics are
both less resource-intensive, and easier for an artist to produce.
With smaller sprites, the player's mind fills in some detail - a single pixel can be an
eye, a mouth or a nose - avoiding the need for painstaking refinement.
Minecraft's own Notch was one developer under the sway of such pixel minimalism: and in
2008 he produced 'Left 4K Dead' for a Java programming competition.
Inspired by Valve's Left 4 Dead, it was a simple affair of 2D survival in a zombie-filled
map: and while only a minor diversion, the technical feat behind it garnered some press
attention.
Capping a game's size to 4 kilobytes forces lean programming: it's an exercise in efficiency
that has roots in the demoscene.
Compressing code into impossible spaces was a badge of honour for hobbyist coders - with
4K intros and cracktros exhibiting the skill needed to cram graphics and sound routines
into tiny spaces.
In today's era of gigabyte excess, exercises such as Farbrausch's .kkrieger are astounding
- a full first person shooter realised in a mere 96 kilobytes.
Technical feats aside, the deconstruction of both graphics and gameplay into such a
small space favours a simple design - and it was this pared-back approach to a survival
game that laid the foundations for Minecraft.
In Left 4K Dead, some of Minecraft's origins are visible: the zombies, the danger of darkness
and of course - the simplistic artstyle.
Pixel art retains a popular presence even in a post-Minecraft world, but even without
its influence, such a retro revival was inevitable.
Games like 3D Dot Game Heroes were a bigger-budget exploration of nostalgia, with NES-era blocky
sprites fleshed out within a 3D environment.
It was released just after Minecraft's first public alpha, and so Minecraft likely had
no influence over the game's development - but even so, the similarities in aesthetic are
striking.
Also of the same era is Spelunky - a 2D platformer with randomised levels, lo-fi graphics - and
cave exploration.
Mining is far from a new mechanic in games: indeed, it's been present ever since the golden
era of arcade gaming.
1982's Dig Dug sees the player oust subterranean pests from their garden, carving tunnels in
alluvia as they progress.
It was possible to lure a hapless pooka down a tunnel you created, and then dig underneath
one of the strategically placed boulders to crush them.
Later that year, Mr Do!
offered similar gameplay, with a focus instead on collecting fruit dotted about the level.
Boulder Dash in 1984 was particularly influential, kicking off the once very popular 'rocks-and-diamonds'
genre.
Similar to the earlier puzzle game Sokoban, your moves must be carefully considered - with
boulders responding to gravity, it's possible to dig yourself into a corner.
Your goal in this game is simple: dig tunnels, avoid enemies and environmental hazards, all
while collecting diamonds.
Sounds familiar!
More recently, boulder dash clones have fallen out of favour - but every once in a while,
digging, drilling or mining makes an appearance as a mechanic.
Dig Dug successor Mr Driller!
in 1999 offered more in-depth excavatory exploits, with cutesy graphics and bright coloured blocks
through which to burrow.
Mining for resources was the focus of flash game Motherload, originally released in 2004
- and the slightly prettier Super Motherload, released for the PS4 last year.
You start on the surface of Mars, with an agile mining craft yours to control - and
your goal is to extract minerals from beneath the earth.
The deeper you venture, the more valuable ores you'll uncover - but you'll find yourself
depending on the upgrades available to progress.
It was the combination of digging and exploration in Motherload that inspired the development
of a game that would prove particularly important to Minecraft's conception.
In Infiniminer, mining is the name of the game: a team-based multiplayer dig-em-up,
in which red and blue race to collect minerals from the cube-based terrain.
The game's popularity was cut short by a source code leak: and the resultant wave of hacked
clients killed off the game's development.
Nevertheless, it had significant impact - as Infiniminer is perhaps the closest living
relative to Minecraft: it directly inspired Notch to create his cube-based game, and also
one of its key traits: a randomly-generated world.
Randomised worlds are a very appealing thing to games programmers: not only do they lighten
the load of level design, but they also present the creator with surprises and unexpected
challenge.
For a single developer, this can help spur on progress: it's no fun playing the same
level that you created hundreds of times, so an element of randomisation can help preserve
interest.
The grand-daddy of randomised level design is seminal RPG Rogue: a game originally developed
for UNIX back in 1980.
While it's not much to look at, the levels were procedurally generated, with the computer
taking the role of dungeon master during your quest, and potentially throwing a few curve-balls
along the way.
The fusion of fantasy and surprise was compelling - and Rogue went on to inspire many games
that came afterwards: spawning the roguelike genre.
These days, terms like 'roguelike', 'rogue-lite', and 'roguelike-like' have become buzzwords
to sell games on their design approach - normally featuring traits like random level generation
and character permadeath.
In 1984, games like Elite and its sequel, Fronter: Elite 2 were far larger in scope
than Rogue: instead of generating dungeons, the algorithms behind the star maps were capable
of generating entire galaxies.
Although the low-level details were scant, the breadth of interstellar travel possible
was staggering: giving the game near-unending exploration potential, despite the earlier
machines limited storage capacity.
The generation of realistic terrain has long been the goal of programmers: although often
it's more of an exercise in mathematics and fractals than of game design.
This is particularly true in software like Vista and VistaPro: capable of taking a random
seed and creating a fantastical landscape from the resultant heightmap.
It's essentially nothing more than a specialised 3D graph plotter, but it reflects the state
of the art in the early 90s: and the seeds of Minecraft's terrain generation lie in efforts
such as these.
Populous in 1989 made more practical application of terrain generation, granting the player
divine powers to shape the world as you see fit through an isometric view.
In fact, Bullfrog's games have proven particularly influential - helping establish the god game
genre during the 16-bit era, and the presence of dungeons in Minecraft can perhaps be attributed
to 1997's Dungeon Keeper.
As your imps expand your lair into the surrounding earth, you extend the evil bestiary at your
disposal - and thus your ability to quash any potential incursion.
Such base-building mechanics can be very rewarding, and few games have as satisfying construction
as Dwarf Fortress, in public development since 2006.
The game takes a spartan approach to graphics as with the earlier Rogue, with a rich world
detailed with obscure ASCII characters.
While the game might suffer on the accessibility front, it certainly doesn't lack depth - and
it combines the exploration of generated worlds with an added layer of permanence in its base
building and dwarf management.
While Minecraft certainly can't compare on depth, Dwarf Fortress is nonetheless cited
as an inspiration: and indeed, you can cleave rock to carve a mountain base in both titles.
While your band of dwarves can build collectively, Dwarf Fortress is strictly single-player - whereas
Minecraft has a trump card of a social ilk.
The social aspect of its survival multiplayer is perhaps what made Minecraft so incredibly
popular: while the game's world is engaging enough when played solo, the addition of other
players - friends, foes or otherwise - can make it even richer.
In this aspect, Minecraft borrows from MMORPGs: not only in the online sense, but with some
of the other trappings of earlier RPGs as well.
Early MMO games like Everquest and Runescape set the standard for role playing in shared
spaces, in a time before World of Warcraft had taken hold.
The crafting mechanics in Minecraft can trace their lineage back to such games, as they
introduced these mechanics into the multiplayer space.
Minecraft's collective building - in which you create worlds with an avatar in a virtual
world - have roots in games like Linden Lab's Second Life, which paved the way for social
creation in 2003.
Players are able to create 3D objects and skins for their avatar to wear and interact
with, and with a fully realised economy, some have even made a living from their creations.
However, Minecraft has far greater appeal to the younger generation: its simplicity
and accessibility a key asset.
It's often compared to a digital version of Lego bricks: with simple elements combining
to make grand structures, whether building solo or more collectively.
It's little wonder the game has found success - while many of its elements can be traced
to other titles, and some, like Infiniminer, have huge resemblance - Minecraft has a certain
charm that few games can match.
From a simple idea, Minecraft has blossomed from a retro-style indie cube-miner... into
a multi-million copy block-buster.
Thank you very much for watching - and until next time, farewell.