{"id":7918,"date":"2013-04-15T09:00:30","date_gmt":"2013-04-15T16:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theculturednerd.com\/?p=7918"},"modified":"2013-04-15T09:00:30","modified_gmt":"2013-04-15T16:00:30","slug":"the-success-of-minecraft-over-20-million-copies-sold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theculturednerd.org\/?p=7918","title":{"rendered":"The Success of Minecraft: Over 20 Million copies sold"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Minecraft<\/a>
Minecraft Westero – Game of Thrones<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you’ve never heard of MineCraft<\/a>, you’ve probably been completely out of the loop for several years. Minecraft<\/a> is an independently developed and published open world game that acts as a sandbox for players to create all sorts of incredible things. Markus Pearson released the initial version in May of 2009 and it soon became a huge hit. To date, it has sold over 20 million copies across most existing platforms including Windows PC, Xbox, and a\u00a0variety of mobile editions.<\/p>\n

From MineCraft Middle Earth<\/a> to WesteroCraft<\/a> (the land from Game of Thrones), the creations made by the players of this game are incredible.<\/p>\n

\"minecraftmiddleearth\"<\/a>
Minecraft Middle Earth<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Wired writer Laura Hudson covered the Westerocraft in an article earlier this year<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no surprise, once you hear the astonishing statistics:\u00a0At a size of 59,000 blocks by 22,000 blocks, WesterosCraft is over 500 square miles relative to the characters \u2013 roughly the size of Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe size of what we\u2019re doing isn\u2019t really what Minecraft is meant for,\u201d says Will Blew, the co-creator and technical lead behind the project. Originally launched by Blew and project lead Jacob Granberry in 2011, WesterosCraft quickly grew from a few dozen users to an international community of hundreds of active builders, with thousands more on the forums.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Minecraft creator Markus Pearson was interviewed in an article for The New York, where he talked about the success it has brought him<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Persson is an outspoken critic of publishers, who he believes curtail creativity in the games industry in the search for short-term gains. He once accused Electronic Arts of \u201cmethodically destroying the games industry,\u201d a criticism his independence from the studio system frees him to make. \u201cPublishers might be a necessary thing,\u201d he said. \u201cbut it\u2019s inevitable that they will shift the focus from games being made by people who want to make good games to people who want to make money.\u201d The power balance in the video-game industry is shifting in favor of independent creators\u2014in 2012, the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft overtook Activision\u2019s blockbuster Call of Duty: Modern Warfare as the most played game on the system. In Persson\u2019s view, this benefits players more than anybody: \u201cThe more studios that can remove themselves from the publisher system, the more games that will be made out of love rather than for profit.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…<\/p>\n

It is this type of stand that has made Persson a well-liked figure in the independent-game movement. But it\u2019s true that he can afford to take the anti-corporation stance. Each Minecraft sale flows straight to Mojang\u2019s pocket\u2014there are no middlemen\u2014and, since the game is digitally distributed, there is no physical product to manufacture, store, or ship. After Minecraft, none of Persson\u2019s subsequent games need to turn a profit. In 2011, he gave his \u00a32.2 million Mojang dividend to his employees. \u201cThe money is a strange one,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m slowly getting used to it, but it\u2019s a Swedish trait that we\u2019re not supposed to be proud of what we\u2019ve done. We\u2019re supposed to be modest. So at first, I had a really hard time spending any of the profits. Also, what if the game stopped selling? But after a while, I thought about all of the things I\u2019d wanted to do before I had money. So I introduced a rule: I\u2019m allowed to spend half of anything I make. That way I will never be broke. Even if I spend extravagant amounts of money, I will still have extravagant amounts of money.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

T.C. Sottek at The Verge sat down to talk with Markus at the Game Developers Conference this year<\/a>: <\/p>\n