THE HISTORY OF MINECRAFT: How a Swedish Indie Game Came to Dominate the World

Editor's Note: Minecraft enthusiast Will M. ('15) synthesizes the history of the popular game in this self-assigned essay.

As you may have seen in a recent issue of the Prism, I was the creator of a popular Packer Minecraft server known as “Second Semester Server.” Despite its name, I initially opened the server during the end of December 2014, and, in a matter of weeks, it quickly grew to the point where it had an active daily playerbase of around thirty users. The size of the server’s population as well as the daily drama in the student center resulting from Minecraft politics both illustrate the appeal of massively multiplayer Minecraft among high school students, even thoughwas that Notch had a vision to simplify the gameplay to its elegant sandbox core. Although Infiniminer was set in an entirely editable environment, it still had clearly defined objectives and victory conditions for the player to achieve. With Minecraft, Notch attempted to get rid of all artificial rules imposed on the player, leaving them in their own virtual universe. Therefore, there is no simple answer to the question “what is the point of Minecraft?”, and in many ways, its answer is meant to be as existentially absurd and open-ended as the meaning of life.

From its earliest days, Minecraft experienced incredible success for an experimental indie game designed by an unknown Swedish game developer. Yet, more would have to happen for it to become the international sensation it