Minecraft

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### History

*Minecraft* is a sandbox video game developed by Mojang. *Minecraft* was created by Markus "Notch" Persson in the Java programming language and was released as a public alpha for personal computers in 2009 before officially releasing in November 2011, with Jens Bergensten taking over development around then.

It has since been ported to arious platforms and is the best-selling video game of all time, with over 180 million copies sold across all platforms and over 112 million monthly active players by 2019.

### Information

*Minecraft: Java Edition* is available for €23.95 (US$26.95, £17.95). When purchased, singleplayer and multiplayer game modes can be played using the downloadable stand-alone launcher. The official demo is free, but has a time limit. *Minecraft* development started around May 10, 2009, and pre-orders for the full game were accepted starting from June 13, 2009. *Minecraft*'s official release date was November 18, 2011. As of July 4, 2018, *Java Edition* is the second best-selling PC game of all time and has reached 33 million sales as of November 7, 2019.

### Gameplay

In *Minecraft*, players explore a blocky, procedurally-generated 3D world, and may discover and extract raw materials, craft tools, build structures or earthworks, and depending on game mode, can fight computer-controlled "mobs", as well as either cooperate with or compete against other players in the same world. These modes include a survival mode, in which players must acquire resources to build the world and maintain health, and a creative mode, where players have unlimited resources. Players can modify the game to create new gameplay mechanics, items, and assets.

#### Survival

In this mode, players have to gather all their materials to build, craft items and tools and gain experience points. There is a health, hunger, and armor bar, an inventory, and also a oxygen bar when underwater, suffocating, or in lava.‌ If a player runs out of hearts (health), the player dies and returns to the spawn point. Upon death, the player emits smoke, loses all experience and items, and a death message. Maximum reach is 5 blocks.

#### Creative

During playtime in this mod:; the player has access to an infinite amount of almost all blocks and items available, and can destroy them instantly. Players are invulnerable, unless they fall into the void,‌ and do not have health, armor, or hunger, and can fly. The player has access to items not available in Survival mode, e.g. spawn eggs. The player cannot see command blocks if they look through the creative GUI - they need to spawn command blocks with the /give or /setblock commands. Max reach is 6 blocks.

#### Adventure

Players can interact with objects such as levers and buttons, and can interact with mobs. However, they can break blocks only with tools having a CanDestroy data tag, and place blocks only if the block they are holding has a CanPlaceOn data tag, making this mode good for adventure maps. Max reach is 5 blocks.

#### Hardcore

In this mode, which plays in the same way as Survival mode, the difficulty level is permanently set to "Hard", and when the player dies, the only choice is that the map must be deleted, or the player is sent permanently into spectator mode.

Technically, Hardcore is a game mode modifier rather than a game mode. However, without cheating, it is possible to get only "Hardcore Survival". To obtain "Hardcore Creative" mode, the player must edit the game world with external tools, or opening to LAN, and turning on cheats. There is almost no visible difference between "Hardcore Creative" and "Non-Hardcore Creative", because in Creative mode the only way to die is to fall into the Void or the /kill command. Because of this, "Hardcore" usually refers to "Hardcore Survival". On a server, a player who dies gets put into spectator mode, while all other players remain in survival mode. When looking at a hardcore singleplayer world, the gamemode is "Hardcore Mode!" and the color is red.

Hardcore is not technically a game mode and it cannot be enabled with the /gamemode command.

#### Spectator

This game mode was implemented in 1.8. When in spectator mode, players can clip through blocks, see what other entities are seeing by left-clicking on them, and they are invisible to everything and everyone except for other spectators. The player can't interact with blocks, entities or their inventory. When in third-person mode, they look like a transparent, floating head with no body. The player can use the scroll wheel to adjust the speed at which there are flying, unlike flying in Creative mode.

### Criticism

*Minecraft* has been critically acclaimed, winning several awards and being cited as one of the greatest and most influential video games of all time. Social media, parodies, adaptations, merchandise, and the annual MineCon conventions played large roles in popularizing the game, It has also been used in educational environments, especially in the realm of computing systems, as virtual computers and hardware devices have been built in it. In 2014, Mojang and the *Minecraft* intellectual property were purchased by Microsoft for US$2.5 billion. A number of spin-off games have also been produced, such as
*Minecraft: Story Mode*, *Minecraft Dungeons*, and *Minecraft Earth*.