Why is Minecraft so popular?

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Komal Pradhan, Staff Writer

Minecraft has recently been gaining more and more demand…Why is that?

 

What’s Minecraft?

According to Wikipedia, “Minecraft is a sandbox video game created by Swedish game developer Markus Persson and released by Mojang in 2011.”

A sandbox video game is “a virtual world in which the player can explore and approach objectives freely, as opposed to a world with more linear gameplay.”

Minecraft is also a very sentimental game for a lot of people because many users grew up either playing it or watching their favorite YouTubers play it.

It has two modes: Survival Mode, where players build houses and farms, craft things, and even go mining; and Creative Mode ,where the game lets users be as creative as possible by providing infinite supplies and infinite health to do or build anything. People have built cities, palaces, and obstacle courses and have even done pixel art in creative mode on Minecraft.

Once a player loads up a new world, it’s THEIR world to do anything they want with it. Yes, ANYTHING.

 

Why is Minecraft so Popular?

Minecraft’s popularity can mostly be attributed to nostalgia. There are so many gaming YouTubers like Captainsparklez and Ihascupquake who started Youtube by playing Minecraft; however the game got less popular over the years, and people stopped playing it.

But then Pewdiepie started his survival Minecraft series, and it rapidly gained more and more popularity.

Former Minecraft YouTubers started playing Minecraft again, which gave it an even bigger boost. Minecraft got so popular that even non-gaming Youtube channels started joining in.

When did it start getting popular?

Minecraft started getting popular in June when Pewdiepie* started a series called Gaming Week where he plays random games for a week. (Fun fact, Pewdiepie applied to work for Mojang, the company that owns Minecraft, but got denied.)

It just so happened that he decided to play Minecraft that particular week. It got a massive amount of support from his fans, and he also started genuinely enjoying playing Minecraft. It quickly turned into a daily occurrence for him to upload videos of him playing the game every day.

Soon the videos started getting on YouTube’s trending page for gaming. Then other YouTubers started noticing all the views he was getting and started their own series as well.

It’s also popular because it has so many engaging features. There are many different types of animals in Minecraft, which you can tame and even breed: dogs, cats, pandas, parrots, and fox. There has also been a recent update called The Aquatic Update, which has added seaweed, different types of fish, seagrass, coral reefs, and more.

 

Who is Pewdiepie?

*Pewdiepie is the most-subscribed YouTuber (and now the most-subscribed Minecraft channel). Just recently, he reached his highest peak on YouTube–reaching 100 million subscribers, beating the Ender Dragon in Minecraft, and getting married…all in a week.

He indisputably has more subscribers than the populations of most countries around the world, including Australia, Germany, and Finland. His real name is Felix Kjellberg, and he was born on October 24, 1989, in Gothenburg, Sweden.

He started doing YouTube in 2010 while in college, where he studied technology.  He then left college from lack of interest and started selling prints of his Photoshop art projects and working at a hot dog stand in order to fund his videos. Then in 2012, he started getting a quickly- rising following. Recently, on June 21, 2019, he started the Minecraft series that would blow up in popularity. The result: a net worth of $30 million, and estimated monthly earnings of around $1 million since this summer, according to Wealthy Gorilla.

 

Conclusion

Minecraft’s soar in popularity is due in large part to famous YouTuber, Pewdiepie, making a popular Let’s Play series on Minecraft. His series caused many more to jump on board and create their own.  But the popularity is also deserved. Minecraft is an engaging game that offers users limitless creativity and power to create.

It is available on PC, IOS, and Android for $6.99.

 

(more about Minecraft)