Minecraft

Minecraft is a game about breaking and placing blocks. At first, people built structures to protect against nocturnal monsters, but as the game grew players worked together to create wonderful, imaginative things.
It can also be about adventuring with friends or watching the sun rise over a blocky ocean. It’s pretty. Brave players battle terrible things in The Nether, which is more scary than pretty. You can also visit a land of mushrooms if it sounds more like your cup of tea.
== Gameplay ==
Minecraft is an open world game that has no specific goals for the player to accomplish, allowing players a large amount of freedom in choosing how to play the game.However, there is an achievement system. Gameplay by default is first person, but players have the option to play in third person mode. The core gameplay revolves around breaking and placing blocks. The game world is composed of rough 3D objects—mainly cubes— arranged in a fixed grid pattern and representing different materials, such as dirt, stone, various ores, water, and tree trunks. While players can move freely across the world, objects can only be placed at fixed locations on the grid. Players can gather these material blocks and place them elsewhere, thus allowing for various constructions.
At the start of the game, the player is placed on the surface of a procedurally generated and virtually infinite game world. The world is divided into biomes ranging from deserts to jungles to snowfields. Players can walk across the terrain consisting of plains, mountains, forests, caves, and various water bodies. The in-game time system follows a day and night cycle, with one full cycle lasting 20 real-time minutes. Throughout the course of the game, players encounter various non-player characters known as mobs, including animals, villagers and hostile creatures. Non-hostile animals—such as cows, pigs, and chickens—spawn during the daytime. The player may hunt them for food and crafting materials. By contrast, hostile mobs—such as large spiders, skeletons, and zombies—spawn during night time or in dark places, such as caves. Some Minecraft-unique creatures have been noted by reviewers, such as the Creeper, an exploding creature that sneaks up on the player; and the Enderman, a creature with the ability to teleport and pick up blocks.
The game world is procedurally generated as players explore it, using a seed which is obtained from the system clock at the time of world creation unless manually specified by the player.[24][25] Although there are limits on movement up and down, Minecraft allows for an infinitely large game world to be generated on the horizontal plane, only running into technical problems when extremely distant locations are reached.[nb 1] The game achieves this by splitting the game world data into smaller sections called "chunks", which are only created or loaded into memory when players are nearby.[24]
The game's physics system has often been described by commentators as unrealistic.[26] Most solid blocks are not affected by gravity. Liquids flow from a source block, which can be removed by placing a solid block in its place, or by scooping it into a bucket. Complex systems can be built using primitive mechanical devices, electrical circuits, and logic gates built with an in-game material known as redstone.[27]
Minecraft features two alternate dimensions besides the main world – the Nether and The End.[23] The Nether is a hell-like dimension accessed via player-built portals that contains many unique resources and can be used to travel great distances in the overworld.[28] The End is a barren land in which a bossdragon called the Ender Dragon dwells.[29] Killing the dragon cues the game's ending credits, written by Irish author Julian Gough.[30] Players are then allowed to teleport back to their original spawn point in the overworld, and will receive "The End" achievement. There is also a second boss called "The Wither", which drops materials used to build a placeable beacon that can enhance certain abilities of all nearby players. Two mini-bosses, the Guardian and Elder Guardian, have been added in the 1.8 update of Minecraft.
The game primarily consists of three game modes: survival, creative and adventure. It also has a changeable difficulty system of four levels; the easiest difficulty (peaceful) removes any hostile creatures that spawn.[31]
=== Survival mode ===
In this mode, players have to gather natural resources (such as wood, stone, etc.) found in the environment in order to craft certain blocks and items.[19] Depending on the difficulty, monsters spawn at darker places on the map, requiring the player to build a shelter at night.[19]The mode also features a health bar which is depleted by attacks from monsters, falls, drowning, falling into lava, suffocation, starvation, and other events. Players also have a hunger bar, which must be periodically refilled by eating food in-game, except in peaceful mode, in which the hunger bar does not drain. If the hunger bar is depleted, then the health bar will slowly diminish. Health replenishes when players have a nearly full hunger bar, and also regenerates regardless of fullness if players play on the easiest difficulty.
There are a wide variety of items that players can craft in Minecraft.[32] Players can craft armor, which can help mitigate damage from attacks, while weapons such as swords can be crafted to kill enemies and other animals more easily. Players may acquire resources to craft tools, such as weapons, armor, food, and other items. By acquiring better resources, players can craft more effective items. For example, tools such as axes, shovels, or pickaxes, can be used to chop down trees, dig soil, and mine ores, respectively; tools made of iron perform their tasks more quickly than tools made of stone and can be used more heavily before they break. Players may also trade goods with villager mobs through a bartering system.[33] Villagers often trade with emeralds, wheat or other materials.[22][33]
The game has an inventory system, and players can carry a limited number of items. Upon dying, items in the players' inventories are dropped, and players re-spawn at the current spawn point, which is set by default where players begin the game, but can be reset if players sleep in beds in-game.[34] Dropped items can be recovered if players can reach them before they despawn. Players may acquire experience points by killing mobs and other players, mining, smelting ores, breeding animals, and cooking food. Experience can then be spent on enchanting tools, armor and weapons.[31] Enchanted items are generally more powerful, last longer, or have other special effects.[31]
Players may also play in hardcore mode, a variant of survival mode that differs primarily in the game being locked to the hardest gameplay setting as well as featuringpermadeath; upon players' death, their world is deleted.[35]
=== Creative mode ===
In creative mode, players have access to all of the resources and items in the game through the inventory menu, and can place or remove them instantly.[36] Players, able to fly freely around the game world, do not take environmental or mob damage, and are not affected by hunger.[37][38] The game mode helps players focus on building and creating large projects.[36]
=== Adventure mode ===
Adventure mode was added to Minecraft in version 1.3; it was designed specifically so that players could experience user crafted custom maps and adventures.[39][40][41] Gameplay is similar to survival mode but introduces various player restrictions. This is so that players can obtain the required items and experience adventures in the way that the mapmaker intended.[41] Another addition designed for custom maps is the command block; this block allows mapmakers to expand interactions with players through certain server commands.[42]
=== Multiplayer ===
Multiplayer on Minecraft is available through player-hosted servers and enables multiple players to interact and communicate with each other on a single world.[44] Players can run their own servers or use a hosting provider. Single player worlds have local area network support, allowing players to join worlds on locally interconnected computers without a server setup.[45] Minecraft multiplayer servers are guided by server operators, who have access to server commands such as setting the time of day and teleporting players around. Operators can also set up restrictions concerning which usernames or IP addresses are allowed to enter the server.[44] Multiplayer servers offer players a wide range of activities, with some servers having their own unique rules and customs. A stand-alone server called CraftBukkit[46] has been developed by the community to facilitate development of server-side plugins enabling otherwise impossible gameplay elements such as permissions, ranks, virtual currency, and chat formatting. Competitions are available in some servers, in which players can participate in a variety of games, including some resembling The Hunger Games.[47][48] A gamemode, PvP (player versus player), may be enabled to allow fighting between players.[49] In 2013 Mojang announced Minecraft Realms, a server hosting service intended to enable players to run server multiplayer games easily and safely without the hassle of setting up their own.[50]
== Development ==
The developer of Minecraft, Markus "Notch" Persson, began developing the game as an independent project while working for King.com and later jAlbum.[51][52] He was inspired to create Minecraft by several other games such as Dwarf Fortress, Dungeon Keeper, and later Infiniminer. At the time, he had visualized an isometric 3D building game that would be a cross between his inspirations and had made some early prototypes.[51] Infiniminer heavily influenced the style of gameplay, including the first-person aspect of the game, the "blocky" visual style and the block-building fundamentals.[52] However, unlike Infiniminer, Persson wanted Minecraft to have RPG elements.[53]
Minecraft was first released to the public on May 17, 2009, as a developmental release on TIGSource forums,[54] later becoming known as the Classic version. Further milestones dubbed as Survival Test, Indev and Infdev were released between September 2009 and February 2010, although the game saw updates in-between. The first major update, dubbed alpha version, was released on June 28, 2010. Although Persson maintained a day job with Jalbum.net at first, he later quit in order to work on Minecraft full-time as sales of the alpha version of the game expanded.[55] Persson continued to update the game with releases distributed to users automatically. These updates included features such as new items, new blocks, new mobs, survival mode, and changes to the game's behavior (e.g., how water flows).[55]
To back the development of Minecraft, Persson set up a video game company, Mojang, with the money earned from the game.[56][57][58] On December 11, 2010, Persson announced that Minecraft was entering its beta testing phase on December 20, 2010.[59] He further stated that users who bought the game after this date would no longer be guaranteed to receive all future content free of charge as it "scared both the lawyers and the board." However, bug fixes and all updates leading up to and including the release would still be free. Over the course of the development, Mojang hired several new employees to work on the project.[60]
Mojang moved the game out of beta and released the full version on November 18, 2011.[61] The game has been continuously updated since the release, with changes ranging from new game content to new server hosts.[62] On December 1, 2011, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten took full creative control over Minecraft, replacing Persson as lead developer.[63]On February 28, 2012, Mojang announced that they had hired the developers of the popular server platform "CraftBukkit"[46] to improve Minecraft '​s support of server and client modifications.[64] This acquisition also included Mojang apparently taking full ownership of the CraftBukkit modification,[65] although the validity of this claim was questioned due to its status as an open-source project with many contributors, licensed under the GNU General Public License and Lesser General Public License.[66]
== User-generated and downloadable content ==
A wide variety of user-generated content for Minecraft, such as modifications, texture packs and custom maps, is available for download from the Internet. Modifications of theMinecraft code, called mods, add a variety of gameplay changes, ranging from new blocks, new items, new mobs to entire arrays of mechanisms to craft.[95][96] The modding community is responsible for a substantial supply of mods from ones that enhance gameplay, such as minimaps, waypoints, and durability counters, to ones that add to the game elements from Pokémon, Portal, and The Hunger Games. To make mods easier to create and install, Mojang announced in November 2012 that it plans to add an official modding API.[49] As of 2014, Mojang has yet to reveal more about their modding API.A few examples of mods that are downloaded a lot: Mo' Creatures,Pixelmon,Tropicraft,Morph Mod etc.
Texture packs that customize the game's graphics are also available.[97] In version 1.6, texture packs were replaced with "resource packs". These play the same role as texture packs, but allow custom sounds as well.[98] Custom maps have become popular as well. Players can create their own maps, which often contain rules, challenges, puzzles and quests, and share them for others to play.[39] In version 1.3 Mojang added adventure mode [40] for custom maps and in 1.4, Mojang added command blocks,[42] which were created specially for custom maps. In Minecraft 1.8, Mojang is planning to allow resource packs to be implemented into the world save.[99]
The Xbox 360 Edition supports downloadable content, which is available to purchase via the Xbox Games Store; these content packs usually contain additional character skins.[100] It later received support for texture packs in its twelfth title update while introducing "mash-up packs", which combines texture packs with skin packs and changes to the game's sounds, music and user interface.[101] The first mash-up pack (and by extension, the first texture pack) for the Xbox 360 Edition was released on September 4, 2013, and is themed after the Mass Effect franchise.[102] Unlike the PC version, however, the Xbox 360 Edition does not support player-made mods or custom maps.[103]
== MineCon ==
MineCon is an official Minecraft convention. The first one was held on November 18–19, 2011, at Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. All 4,500 tickets for MineCon 2011 were sold out by October 31.[166] The event included the official launch of Minecraft; keynote speeches, including one by Persson; building and costume contests;Minecraft-themed breakout classes; exhibits by leading gaming and Minecraft-related companies; commemorative merchandise; and autograph and picture times with Mojang employees and well-known contributors from the Minecraft community.[167] After MineCon, there was an Into The Nether after-party with electronic musician deadmau5.[168] Free codes were given to every attendee of MineCon that unlocked alpha versions of Mojang's other upcoming game, Scrolls, as well as an additional non-Mojang game, Cobalt, developed by Oxeye Game Studios.[169] Similar events occurred in MineCon 2012, which took place in Disneyland Paris from November 24–25.[170] The tickets for the 2012 event sold out in less than two hours.[171] The 2013 MineCon was held in Orlando, Florida, in the United States, on November 2–3.[172][173] The next MineCon will be held in fall 2015 inLondon, Great Britain.[174]
== Merchandise ==
A Lego set based on Minecraft called Lego Minecraft was released on June 6, 2012.[175] The set, called "Micro World", centers around the game's default player character and a Creeper.[176] Mojang submitted the concept of Minecraft merchandise to Lego in December 2011 for the Lego Cuusoo program, from which it quickly received 10,000 votes by users, prompting Lego to review the concept.[177] Lego Cuusoo approved the concept in January 2012 and began developing sets based around Minecraft.[177] Two more sets based off the Nether and village areas of the game were released on September 1, 2013. A fourth Micro World set, the End, was released in June 2014. In November 2014,6 new sets came out,although they weren't micro world sets,these sets were on minifigure scale.The stes were: The Cave, The Farm, The First Night, The Mine, Crafting Box and The Ender Dragon.A new Nether set on minifigure scale will come out Summer 2015.
Mojang collaborates with Jinx, an online game merchandise store, to sell Minecraft merchandise, such as clothing, foam pickaxes, and toys of creatures in the game.[56] By May 2012, over 1 million dollars were made from Minecraft merchandise sales. T-shirts and socks were the most popular products.[179] In March 2013 Mojang signed a deal with the children's book publisher The Egmont Group to create Minecraft handbooks, annuals, poster books, and magazines.[180][181][182]
== Popular culture and social media ==
Social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and Reddit played a significant role in popularizing Minecraft.[183] Research conducted by the University of Pennsylvania'sAnnenberg School of Communication showed that one-third of Minecraft players learned about the game via Internet videos.[184] In 2010, Minecraft-related videos began to gain popularity on YouTube, often made by commentators. The videos usually contain screen-capture footage of the game and voice-overs.[185] Common coverage in the videos includes creations made by players, walkthroughs of various tasks, and parodies of works in popular culture. By May 2012, over 4 million Minecraft-related YouTube videos had been uploaded.[179] Some popular commentators have received employment at Machinima, a gaming video company that owns a highly watched entertainment channel on YouTube.[185] The Yogscast is a British organisation that regularly produces Minecraft videos; their YouTube channel has attained billions of views, and their panel at MineCon 2011 had the highest attendance.[185][186] Other well known YouTube personnel include Jordan Maron, who has created many Minecraft parodies, including "Minecraft Style", a parody of the international hit single "Gangnam Style".[187] Herobrine is a major community icon of Minecraft, who first appeared as a single image on 4chan's /v/ board. According to rumors, Herobrine appears in players' worlds and builds strange constructions.[188] However, Mojang has confirmed that Herobrine has never existed in Minecraft, and there are no plans to add Herobrine.[189]
Minecraft has been referenced by other video games, such as RuneScape, Torchlight II, Borderlands 2, Choplifter HD, Super Meat Boy, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Binding of Isaac, Team Fortress 2, and FTL: Faster Than Light.[190] It was also referenced by musician deadmau5 in his performances.[191] A simulation of the game was featured in Lady Gaga's G.U.Y. music video, along with the command "/gamemode ARTPOP".[192] After the release of Minecraft, some video games were released with various similarities withMinecraft, and some have been called "clones" of the game. There have been a few Minecraft-like and Minecraft-inspired games across various gaming platforms since the game became popular. Examples include Ace of Spades, CastleMiner, CraftWorld, FortressCraft, Terraria, and Total Miner.[193] Additionally, in response to Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang and their Minecraft IP, various developers suddenly announced even further clone titles that are being developed specifically for Nintendo's consoles, as they are the only major platforms to not officially receive Minecraft, despite early rumours that the game was in development for the Wii U.[194] These clone titles are either in development for Wii U, such as UCraft (Nexis Games),[195] the Nintendo 3DS, such as Battleminer (Wobbly Tooth Games)[196] and Cube Creator 3D (Big John Games),[197] or for both Wii U and Nintendo 3DS, such as Stone Shire (Finger Gun Games).[198] In an interview Kotaku had with Shigeru Miyamoto and Shinya Takahashi in regards to Minecraft coming to Nintendo's platforms, Miyamoto stated that the Wii U GamePad is a "good fit" for the title, and Nintendo could have popularised the game in Japan.[199]
In 2012, Mojang received offers from Hollywood producers who want to produce Minecraft-related TV shows; however, Mojang stated that they would engage in such projects when "the right idea comes along."[179] A documentary about the development of Mojang and Minecraft was released in December 2012. Titled Minecraft: The Story of Mojang, the film was produced by 2 Player Productions.[200] The second episode of the seventeenth season of the animated television series South Park titled "Informative Murder Porn", features the boys distracting their parents from fighting each other with Minecraft.[201] In the South Park episode, gruff character Corey Lanskin explained the Minecraft game by noting, "You punch the trees to get the wood, you get the wood to build a cabin. … Minecraft, it don't got no winner. It don't got no objective. You just fuckin' build an' shit. And seein' if other things can come and knock it down."[202] On 27 February 2014, Notch revealed that Mojang is in talks with Warner Bros. regarding a Minecraft film to be produced by Roy Lee and Jill Messick.[203][204] On 8 October 2014, Mojang COO Vu Bui stated that the movie was "in its early days of development", saying that it was a "large-budget" production, and also said that it might not be released until 2018.[205][206] On October 16, 2014, the studio announced that it had hired Shawn Levy to direct the film.[207]
Category:Game