“Minecraft”, the block game beloved by many and old enough to be a part of many childhoods, has reached its 15th anniversary. The game has gone through many changes throughout the years and is still being updated regularly.
“Minecraft” has been able to consistently stay relevant even after 15 years. There are multiple factors that play into its relevance. The game is still actively being developed to this day. There are many creations generated by its user base. The game has plenty of media coverage through the various content creators.
“Minecraft” is a sandbox game where you can do anything as long as you put your mind to it. The game features many mechanics that enable you to play any way you want. You can build, fight, or innovate. If there is something you don’t like, you can usually find a fix for it online through mods. “Minecraft” is available on almost every platform.
“Minecraft” has a wide variety of users who are keeping the game interesting. There are users who are constantly innovating. Users have built gigantic structures that reach the size a real city. There are users who have made a working computer within the game which can send messages.
In “Minecraft”, you can play with friends locally or play with random people on a public server. Some servers you find in “Minecraft” are mini game servers where you can play many different game modes. Others are survival multiplayer servers (SMP) where you play normally. If you want to get better at something in the game, there are practice servers you can find.
Another thing that keeps “Minecraft” fresh is ‘mods’. Mods are a modification to the base game. There are two types of mods: one will only affect you, while the other needs everyone to have it in order to enable it.
Mods are capable of many things. There is a large community that surrounds modding. There are mods that improve the game’s performance, some add more to the game, and some will change how “Minecraft” is played completely. The mod “Cobblemon” adds Pokémon to “Minecraft”. The mod “Sodium” improves your performance significantly.
These creatable adventure maps have the player follow a linear path and have them adventure. In order to add more functionality to “Minecraft’s” base game, there are data packs. They are a weaker, but more accessible version of mods. There are adventure maps, puzzle maps, and some maps are simply displays that show off builds.
“Minecraft” has a lot of content creators. At first, creators would have ‘Let’s Plays’ where they simply play the game, or they show off something they found neat. There are creators who will go through and play with the aforementioned adventure maps. Some specialized in showing off mods and showing what they had to offer.
“Minecraft” creators today will follow whatever is trending. Some notable trends are ‘100 Days’ spread by LukeTheNotable, ‘Minecraft but…’, ‘Manhunt’ spread by DreamWasTaken, and simulations with one hundred or more people.
The ‘100 Days’ trend was seeing what a content creator could achieve in 100 days. One day in “Minecraft” is around 24 minutes. ‘Minecraft but…’ was the creator beating the game with some sort of twist. ‘Manhunt’ is the creator attempting to beat the game while he is followed by hunters. Lastly, the simulations have a large number of people and put them into hypothetical situations.
There are some creators who stand out from the others. Seth Bling is a creator that has been around for a long time and was known in the community for his redstone skills. Recently, he has made a reappearance and has created a full physics engine into a game without one. He is also using these physics to emulate the game “Angry Birds”.
The YouTuber Technoblade was a creator known for his humor, stories, but most importantly his in-game combat skills. He was known for many shenanigans on servers like Hypixel, DSMP, and MC Championship. He was also known for his inconsistent upload schedule. Unfortunately, in June 2022, he passed away from Metastatic Sarcoma.
Mojang, the company responsible for “Minecraft”, aren’t slacking either, holding conventions like “Minecon”, fixing bugs, and creating new mechanics that won’t detract from the original game. It appears the team behind “Minecraft” and Xbox are making sure that one of their flagship properties prospers for another 15 years.
Here’s to building!