REVIVAL: Mojang’s hit game Minecraft is returning in all of its glory in 2019, proving that an old game can still be on top.
By Andrin Bar, Staff Writer
On May 17, 2009, Markus “Notch” Persson and his company Mojang launched the earliest alpha version of the 3D open-world adventure sandbox game, Minecraft, with no idea how much this game would blow up. A month after entering its Beta phase in 2011, Minecraft sold over a million copies, despite not having any form of advertising except through word of mouth. But what made this game so popular, and why are people talking about the “Minecraft revival?”
To understand what is meant by a revival, we must first discuss how Minecraft “died” in the first place. On October 10, 2016, Minecraft became the best selling game on personal computers (PC), with a registered 17 million copies sold. The question becomes, how did a game this big fail? The idea of Minecraft’s “death” is not that the game was never heard from, but rather that it dropped in popularity. It is very common for video games to die down in popularity after their initial release, but what made Minecraft different was that it never truly died. Looking at sales graphs for the game, you can see that it has steadily been rising. As of May 2019 Minecraft sold 176 million copies. So, if there never was a death, why are people talking of “the Minecraft revival?” The answer lies on websites such as Youtube, Facebook and Reddit.
Content on these platforms is prone to change very regularly, as it directly correlates with whatever fad is currently circulating the globe. Minecraft had some of the most viewed content on these platforms during its release. Since then, however, the internet has moved from Minecraft to other games, such as the Battle-Royale game, Fortnite, and apps such as Tik-Tok. Despite this, Minecraft still had a relatively large following. Youtube creators such as “RTGame” still created Minecraft based content, but overall, there was an undeniable drop in Minecraft’s popularity during this time period.
Minecraft’s sudden drop in viewership on Youtube led to the idea that Minecraft was dying in popularity. However, if you go onto Youtube today, you will likely see Minecraft back in the recommended section. What got it back up there? When talking about the revival of Minecraft, many people point to Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, and his Youtube channel Pewdiepie, the second most subscribed YouTube content creator. After Kjellberg posted his new “Minecraft lets play,” Minecraft was brought back into the spotlight again, as the 99,763, 069 subscribers (as of writing this) all were reintroduced back into the game. However, Kjollberg is not the main reason Minecraft returned. The rise of Minecraft can be most attributed to a counter revival. Games such as Fortnite were getting huge attention, with content creators playing it with millions of viewers. Companies realized this, and soon they were marketing to fans of the game. But people became sick of the game due to overexposure, which is also what happened to Minecraft in the later stages of its popularity. Due to this overexposure, people decided to cause a gaming enlightenment, and look back at the old games they loved when they were younger, Minecraft being the perfect fit.
People remember Minecraft with a certain nostalgia. It was a time when gaming was growing in popularity, and Minecraft perfectly represented this. Anyone could play, but it took masters to build a scale replica of the London Bridge. Minecraft is a game for everyone. Over-marketing and overexposure make it feel like a game is being forcefully shoved down consumers throats. A video watcher can’t go 3 videos on Youtube without seeing a Fortnite advertisement. The games developers wanted to have what Minecraft built naturally, a huge player base. Minecraft didn’t have advertisements, except through word of mouth. There is just something different from hearing a person tell you to play a game in person than on a computer. This is why Minecraft succeeded.