Minecraft

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the video game. For the franchise, see Minecraft (franchise). For other uses,
see Minecraft (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Minecart.
 Minecraft

Cover art since 2024

Mojang Studios[b]
Developer(s)

Publisher(s) Mojang Studios

Xbox Game Studios[c]

Designer(s) Markus Persson[d]

Jens Bergensten

Artist(s) Markus Toivonen

Jasper Boerstra
Kristoffer Zetterstrand

Composer(s) C418[e]

Series Minecraft

Engine LWJGL

Platform(s) show
Windows
macOS
Linux

Release show
18 November 2011[a]

Genre(s) Sandbox, survival

Mode(s) Single-player, multiplayer

Minecraft is a 2011 sandbox game developed and published by Swedish video game
developer Mojang Studios. Originally created by Markus "Notch" Persson using
the Java programming language, the first public build was released on 17 May 2009. The game
would be continuously developed from then on, receiving a full release on 18 November 2011.
Afterwards, Persson left Mojang and gave Jens "Jeb" Bergensten control over the game's
development. In the years since its release, it has been ported to several platforms, including
smartphones, tablets, and various video game consoles. In 2014, Mojang and
the Minecraft intellectual property were purchased by Microsoft for US$2.5 billion. Minecraft has since
become the best-selling video game of all-time, with over 300 million copies sold and nearly 170
million monthly active players as of 2024.

In Minecraft, players explore a procedurally generated, three-dimensional world with virtually infinite
terrain made up of voxels. Players can discover and extract raw materials, craft tools and items, and
build structures, earthworks, and machines. Depending on their chosen game mode, players can fight
hostile mobs, as well as cooperate with or compete against other players. The game has two main
modes; one being survival mode, where players must acquire resources to survive, and a creative
mode where players have unlimited resources and the ability to fly. Several other game modes exist
besides the two main ones, such as one that allows players to spectate others, one that plays
identically to survival mode, but features permadeath, and one that prevents modification to the world,
useful for mapmakers. The game's large community also offers a wide variety of user-generated
content, such as modifications, servers, skins, texture packs, and custom maps, which add new game
mechanics and possibilities.

Minecraft has received critical acclaim, winning several awards and being cited as one of the greatest
video games of all time; social media, parodies, adaptations, merchandise, and the
annual Minecon conventions played prominent roles in popularizing the game. The game has also
been used in educational environments to teach chemistry, computer-aided design, and computer
science. Several spin-offs have also been made, including Minecraft: Story Mode, Minecraft
Earth, Minecraft Dungeons, and Minecraft Legends. In addition, a live-action film based on the
game, A Minecraft Movie, is scheduled for a theatrical release in April 2025.

Gameplay
Minecraft is a 3D sandbox video game that has no required goals to accomplish, allowing players a
large amount of freedom in choosing how to play the game.[3] The game also features an
optional achievement system.[4] Gameplay is in the first-person perspective by default, but players
have the option of a third-person perspective.[5] The game world is composed of rough 3D objects—
mainly cubes, referred to as blocks—representing various materials, such as dirt, stone, ores, tree
trunks, water, and lava. The core gameplay revolves around picking up and placing these objects.
These blocks are arranged in a 3D grid, while players can move freely around the world. Players can
"mine" blocks and then place them elsewhere, enabling them to build things.[6] The game also
contains a material called redstone, which can be used to make primitive mechanical devices,
electrical circuits, and logic gates, allowing for the construction of many complex systems.[7][8] Many
commentators have described the game's physics system as unrealistic.[9]

An example of Minecraft's procedurally generated terrain, including a

village and the default skin Steve
Players can also "craft" a wide variety of items, such as armor, which mitigates damage from attacks;
weapons (such as swords or axes), which allows monsters and animals to be killed more easily; and
tools (such as pickaxes or hoes), which break certain types of blocks more quickly. Some items have
multiple tiers depending on the material used to craft them, with higher-tier items being more effective
and durable. They may also freely construct helpful blocks—such as furnaces which can cook food
and smelt ores,[10] and torches that produce light—or exchange items with a villager (NPC) through
trading emeralds for different goods and vice versa.[11][12] The game has an inventory system, allowing
players to carry a limited number of items.[13]

The game world is virtually infinite and procedurally generated as players explore it, using a map
seed that is obtained from the system clock at the time of world creation (or manually specified by the
player).[14][15][16] While there are limits on the world's verticality, Minecraft allows an infinitely large game
world to be generated on the horizontal plane, up to 30 million blocks from the world's center. [17] The
game achieves this by splitting the world data into smaller 16 by 16 sections called "chunks" that are
created or loaded only when players are nearby.[14] The world is divided into biomes ranging from
deserts to jungles to snowfields;[18][19] the terrain includes plains, mountains, forests, caves, and bodies
of water or lava.[16] The in-game time system follows a day and night cycle, with one full cycle lasting
for 20 real-time minutes.[20]
 Some of Minecraft's monsters, displayed from left to right: a zombie, a
spider, an enderman, a creeper, and a skeleton. All are from the Overworld.
New players are given a randomly selected default character skin out of 9 possibilities,
including Steve or Alex,[21][22] but are able to create and upload their own skins.[23] Players encounter
various mobs (short for mobile entities) including animals, villagers, and hostile creatures. [12][24] Passive
mobs, such as cows, pigs, and chickens, can be hunted for food and crafting materials. They spawn
in the daytime, while hostile mobs—including large spiders, witches, skeletons, and zombies—spawn
during nighttime or in dark places such as caves.[25][26] Some hostile mobs, such as zombies, skeletons
and drowned (underwater versions of zombies), burn under the sun if they have no headgear and are
not standing in water.[27] Other creatures unique to Minecraft include the creeper (an exploding
creature that sneaks up on the player) and the enderman (a creature with the ability to teleport as well
as pick up and place blocks).[28] There are also variants of mobs that spawn in different conditions; for
example, zombies have husk and drowned variants that spawn in deserts and oceans, respectively. [29]

Dimensions
Minecraft has two alternative dimensions besides the Overworld (the main world): the Nether and the
End.[28]

The Nether
The Nether is a hell-like underworld dimension accessed via a player-built obsidian portal; newer
versions of the game feature naturally generated damaged portals that the player can repair. [30] The
Nether contains many unique resources and can be used to travel great distances in the Overworld,
due to every block traveled in the Nether being equivalent to 8 blocks traveled in the Overworld.
[31]
Mobs that populate the Nether include shrieking, fireball-shooting ghasts, alongside
anthropomorphic mobs called piglins and their zombified counterparts.[32] The piglins in particular have
a bartering system, where players can give them gold ingots and receive items in return.[33] The player
can also build an optional boss mob called The Wither out of materials found in the Nether.[34]

The End
The End is reached by underground portals in the Overworld. It consists of islands floating in a dark,
bottomless void. A boss enemy called the Ender Dragon guards the largest, central island.[35] Killing
the dragon opens access to an exit portal, which, when entered, cues the game's ending credits and
the End Poem, a roughly 1,500-word work written by Irish novelist Julian Gough,[36] which takes about
nine minutes to scroll past,[37] is the game's only narrative text,[38] and the only text of significant length
directed at the player.[39]: 10–12 At the conclusion of the credits, the player is teleported back to their
respawn point and may continue the game indefinitely.[40] Players can also explore further regions of
the End beyond the main island, which can harbor structures known as end cities or ships to find
valuable loot as well.

Game modes
Survival mode

The crafting menu in Minecraft, showing the crafting recipe of a stone

axe as well as some other blocks and items in the player's inventory
In survival mode, players have to gather natural resources such as wood and stone found in the
environment in order to craft certain blocks and items.[16] Depending on the difficulty, monsters spawn
in darker areas outside a certain radius of the character, requiring players to build a shelter at night.
[16]
The mode also has a health bar which is depleted by attacks from mobs, 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 unless the player is playing on peaceful difficulty. [41] If the
hunger bar is empty, automatic healing stops and depletes. Health replenishes when players have a
full hunger bar or continuously on peaceful.[41]

Upon losing all health, items in the players' inventories are dropped unless the game is reconfigured
not to do so. Players then re-spawn at their spawn point, which by default is where players first spawn
in the game and can be reset by sleeping in a bed[42] or using a respawn anchor.[43] Dropped items can
be recovered if players can reach them before they disappear or despawn after 5 minutes. Players
may acquire experience points by killing mobs and other players, mining, smelting ores, breeding
animals, and cooking food.[44] Experience can then be spent on enchanting tools, armor and weapons.
Enchanted items are generally more powerful, last longer, or have other special effects. [25]

The game features two more game modes based on survival, known as "hardcore mode" and
"adventure mode". Hardcore mode plays identically to survival mode, but features permadeath,
meaning players only have one life, forcing them to delete the world or explore it as a spectator after
death.[45] Adventure mode was added to the game in a post-launch update,[46] and prevents the player
from directly modifying the game's world. It was designed primarily for use in custom maps, allowing
map designers to let players experience it as intended.[46][47]

Creative mode
In creative mode, players have access to an infinite number of nearly all resources and items in the
game through the inventory menu and can place or mine them instantly.[48] Players can toggle the
ability to fly freely around the game world at will, while their characters do not take any damage nor
are affected by hunger.[49][50] The game mode helps players focus on building and creating projects of
any size without disturbance.[48]

Multiplayer