The Case StudyBy

Michael Moursi

• Minecraft is a sandbox-building independent video game written in Java originally by Swedish creator Markus "Notch" Persson and now by his company, Mojang.

WHAT IS MINECRAFT?

WHY MINECRAFT?

• I chose to do a case study on Minecraft because I play the game myself for almost a year. Moreover, I have a substantial amount of knowledge about this game.

ABOUT MINECRAFT

• Minecraft is focused on creativity and building, allowing players to build constructions out of textured cubes in a 3D world. Gameplay in its commercial release has two principal modes: Survival, which requires players to acquire resources themselves and maintain their health and hunger; and Creative, where the player has an unlimited supply of resources, the ability to fly, and no concept of health or hunger. A third gameplay mode, named Hardcore, is essentially the same as Survival, but the difficulty is locked on the hardest setting and respawning is disabled, forcing the player to delete his or her world upon death.

GAMEPLAY

• A player in Minecraft has a lot of freedom to choose how to play the game, with the primary goals being surviving attacks by monsters (known in-game as "hostile mobs") and building shelter. The core gameplay revolves around construction. The game world is essentially made of cubes arranged in a fixed grid pattern which represent different materials, such as dirt, stone, various ores, water, and tree trunks. While the players can move freely across the world, objects and items can only be placed at fixed locations relative to the grid. The player can gather these material blocks and place them elsewhere. Therefore, you can potentially create other various constructions.

WHERE TO START?

• The game starts by placing the player on the surface of a huge procedurally generated game world. The player can walk across the terrain consisting of plains, mountains, caves, and various water bodies. The world is also divided into biomes ranging from deserts to snowfields. The in-game time system follows a day and night cycle. Throughout the course of the game the player encounters various non-human creatures, referred to as mobs. During the daytime, non-hostile animals spawn, which can be hunted for food and crafting materials. Hostile monsters, such as large spiders, skeletons, zombies and the dangerous exploding Creeper will spawn in unlit areas, such as in caves or during the night.

THE WORLD

• The game world is procedurally generated as the player explores it. Although limits exist on vertical movement both 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. The game achieves this by splitting the game world data into smaller sections, called "chunks", only created or loaded into memory when the player is nearby.

Dimensions • Apart from the original world you spawn

in, there are different dementions the player can come across, for example a

hell dimension which is called ‘The Nether’, and an unusual dimension

called ‘The End’, the home of the ‘mobs’ known as ‘Endermen’.

• ‘The Nether’ can be found by traveling through a portal, which you have to

make with obsidian and light it with fire to make the portal.

• However, with ‘The End’, one must locate underground ruins of an ancient

civilization (referred to ingame as Strongholds) which can be found on the

main overworld. They must then activate the stronghold's portal using two different items, one dropped by

Endermen and one dropped by Blazes from the Nether dimension.

CAN YOU BEAT MINECRAFT?

• Although Minecraft is mostly a sandbox game, it contains some adventure elements. And, with that, a primary win condition, which is achieved by traveling to ‘The End’ and defeating the powerful ‘Enderdragon’ that flies around the map.

• Upon beating the boss creature (and claiming an exclusive reward), the player is allowed to leave the dimension via a portal, which will cue the game's ending sequence, and credits roll. The player is then teleported back to their original spawn point in the overworld, and, if certain criteria are met, will receive the exclusive ‘The End’ achievement.

SKINS

• Originally, your character is default player is known as "Steve?" (Notch puts the question mark because the name "Steve" is still not confirmed to be his real name). The player's skin can be changed, so it enables to make it your own personal character. Again, you can download skins from various sites and forums, then change your skin on the Minecraft website.

MODS

• To make the game an even more immersive experience, various ‘modders’ have made mods so you can be able to add them onto the game. Popular mods, such as ‘Mo Creatures’ (a mod which includes more mobs/hostile mobs to the game) have made the whole Minecraft experience that more enjoyable.

• Other ‘modders’ have set up a compilation of mods. The most popular one to date is ‘The Yogbox’. It is a carefully chosen compilation of mods which the user can download straight from the program (run in Java).

TEXTURE PACKS

• Apart from mods, texture packs which people have made in the Minecraft community makes the game more visually interesting. Texture packs change the look/texture of Minecraft. There are HD texture packs, and even realistic texture packs which makes Minecraft look more ‘real’ in a way.

CUSTOM MAPS

• Custom Maps are maps created by other players who then upload the files online to share. You can then download them, insert them into a folder and play. Again, some maps create an adventure feel to the game, and some create a more survival feel. One of the most popular custom maps available is ‘Survival Island’. You are stranded on a island with no resources on you. However, there is one tree, hidden chests, plus tasks for you to complete.

RELEASE• Minecraft was released as an alpha on May 17, 2009, with a beta

version on December 20, 2010. Official releases for iOS and Android have been released and the full version of the PC game was released on November 18, 2011 at MineCon 2011. The Android release was temporarily exclusive to the Xperia PLAY but is now available to the rest of the Android Market. A version of the game for the Xbox 360 with Kinect support is under development by 4J Studios, to be released as part of the Xbox Live Arcade Next promotion in May 2012. The game was officially released at MineCon on November 18, 2011. Minecraft was developed for about a week before its public release on May 17, 2009, on the TIGSource forums, where it gained a considerable level of popularity. It has been continually updated and patched since then, and while it was still in alpha release, it gained several hundred thousand sales and received critical notice and acclaim from many reviewers. It passed a million units sold on January 12, 2011, less than a month after reaching Beta. By February 18, 2012, the game had sold more than 5 million units.

Development • The developer of Minecraft, Markus Persson aka Notch, had previously worked on games

such as Wurm Online and as a game developer for King.com for over four years. Minecraft development began in May 10[not in citation given], 2009, soon after Persson had quit his job at King.com.

• Minecraft was first released to the public on May 17, 2009, as a developmental "alpha" release. Although Persson maintained a day job with Jalbum.net at first, he later moved to working part time and has since quit in order to work on Minecraft full time as sales of the beta version of the game have expanded. Persson continues to update the game with releases distributed to users automatically. Persson plans to continue these updates after the release of the full game as long as there is still an active userbase. These updates have

included features such as new items, new blocks, an alternate "Hell" dimension (accessible through

construction of a portal) that Persson terms "The Nether", tamable wolves that assist the player, and changes to the game's behavior (e.g.,

how water flows). Persson plans to eventually release the game as open-source after sales have dropped off and when he wants to move

onto other projects.

• In September 2010 Persson announced that he and a friend were starting a video game company, Mojang, with the money earned from Minecraft. This company was intended to back the development of Minecraft and an unrelated game, Scrolls, which his friend would primarily work on. As part of creating the company, Persson has hired "an artist, a web site developer, and a business guy", additional programmers, and established an office in Stockholm. The four additional employees hired in 2010 were Jens Bergensten, a programmer; Daniel Kaplan, the "business guy"; Jakob Porser, who will be working on the other game for Mojang; and Markus "Junkboy" Toivonen, a pixel artist.

• On December 11, 2010, Persson announced, via his personal blog, that Minecraft would be entering its beta testing phase on December 20, 2010, and that the price would increase to €14.95. 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. On April 7, 2011, Persson made a post on his blog that Mojang has decided to move the game out of Beta on November 11, 2011; however this would not be the "finished product", as the game would be continuously updated before and after the release.

Cost AND PRODUCTION

• To make Minecraft, it literally cost nothing, due to the fact that it is an indie game, and ‘Notch’ mainly made the game, just through code.

• Not many people worked on Minecraft. The main people behind this game are Markus "Notch" Persson and Jens Bergensten. The game was made in Sweden.

• Minecraft is written primarily in Java.

IS THERE A FREE VERSION OF MINECRAFT?

• There is a free version of Minecraft on the Minecraft website. Classic is a title given for this version as it is a released version of Minecraft when it was before in development. It was the first development phase in Minecraft.

• Moreover, in this free version, you do not get the latest updates and blocks. You get some blocks