Why do you think Minecraft has been a commercial and critical success?

Minecraft is a sandbox computer game created and designed by Swedish programmer Marcus 'Notch' Persson in 2009 and fully published by Mojang. Minecraft offers several different modes of play, with the 2 most popular being survival and creation. In survival mode, you begin with nothing and must collect and create all your tools, weapons, armour and other resources from scratch in order to progress. Creation mode differs in that you are given unlimited resources from the beginning and are able to create and wear whatever you want when you want. A key to Minecraft's success and popularity is this ability to create and customise which is really only limited by the player's imagination. I think one of the main reasons that Minecraft is such a success is because the possibilities go as far as your imagination does.

A month after the game was made, he charged people 10 euros to download the game and sold 40 copies in the first weekend. The games was released with no instructions so it got people talking about it, if a person was able to figure out how to make a kitchen -for example- then they could share how they created something with their fellow players therefore creating a hype for the game through sharing ideas. Persson also created the game as an alpha meaning that the core gameplay was established but the game was incomplete. Persson would then update the game every Friday, adding new features and tools which would mean that players would want to play the game at least once a week to see all the new things that have been made. This made sales raise dramatically. Persson had also always been an active member on the TIGSource discussions and now he can communicate with the early players of Minecraft to see consumer reviews and add parts to the game that people wanted.

Minecraft computer alone has sold more than 121 million copies of the game sold (Feb 2017). The player base is huge, therefore increasing marketability in the sense where those 121 million people tell their friends to buy it. An estimated 55 million people play the game every month. Coming after Tetris, it is the best selling game of all time. Minecraft was bought by Microsoft from Mojang in 2014 approx. £1.9 billion. Minecraft has since spread to many different platforms including Microsoft's own Xbox, Windows 10 and Windows phones. Spin-off games have also been published including Minecraft: Education Edition, created by Telltale games and Minecraft: Education Edition, created to be used in education facilities globally. This is then expanding their marketing and creating more hype for the game and making it more successful.

Minecraft has influenced popular culture due to social media. Minecraft video channels on YouTube have huge following as people can watch them and add to their constructions. On top of this the game has received millions of dollars in merchandise revenue from T-shirts to toys, and spawned its own convention, Minecon, which began just 2 years after the game was created. The convention has taken place in Las Vegas, Disneyland Paris, California, London and Orlando which expands their global marketing and attracts even more customers to get involved.

I think the reason Minecraft is so successful is that a video game with no story line sells very well because you can do whatever your heart desires.