The Origin of Minecraft

Minecraft is arguably the most recognisable games in recent history and has helped build many careers in the field of YouTube. Despite the game's huge success and it's ability to still make headlines 6 years after it's creation the game's interesting origins have been grossly overlooked. So, where did Minecraft come from?

Markus Persson (also known as Notch and shall be reffered to as such hereafter) and Mojang began work on the highly secretive project known as Rubydung. Notch attempted a first person perspective in this game but felt the viewpoint did not compliment the graphics of the game. This idea was scrapped until Notch saw the indie game Infiniminer, this game used blocks to build the world and had a first person perspective. Notch abandoned the Rubydung project and replicated what he saw in Infiniminer and put it into his game, Cave Game.

Cave Game was released in 2009 in it's alpha stages for everyone to play and is quite different to how we know Minecraft today. One such difference was the inclusion of other characters in the world and not just Testificates, such characters included Black Steve. These, however did not fit the blocky graphics of the game and looked out of place. Survival mode had also not been created at this point and the world had little interest about it. All there was, was Grass, Dirt and Cobblestone.

Eventually the name changed to Minecraft: Order of the Stone, this was based off of the webcomic: Order of the Stick which Notch was reading at the time. However, soon after this name was introduced Notch was worried that people would confuse the game with the webcomic and changed the name to just Minecraft. The name was not the only thing to change as previously discussed and probably the thing that's changed the most since Notch's initial conception is The End and the Ender Dragon.

After the release of the Nether in a Halloween update, Notch wanted to create the polar opposite, the Sky dimension. This dimension could be randomly visisted when a player slept in a bed at night. As the game progressed, however, the player had more control over when they visited the dimension. It resembled the overworld with the same grass and tree textures but the dimension was a large floating island. This dimension was to be the home of the Pigmen too, these were completly friendly unlike the Zombie Pigmen in the Nether who are only friendly until provoked. The dimension would also have it's own boss: The Red Dragon, defeating the dragon was the end of the game. This eventually became the End with the Red Dragon becoming the Ender Dragon. This can be seen as the End biome is known as the Sky biome.

From the Rubydung to the Minecraft we know today the company Mojang were hugely successful with this concept despite the whole charm of the blocky world being taken straight from the now little known Infiniminer. This money making machine has become immensly popular and made Notch and Mojang millions.

#minecraft #origin