Senan Walsh is chopping down a tree when I approach for a chat. The 13-year-old is amassing a pile of timber in a small forest clearing, talking me through his process along the way. He’ll need shelter for what’s coming at night, he says.
Most gamers over the past decade will be familiar with these ritualistic tasks. Walsh, of course, is playing Minecraft, the most popular video game of all time. And, far from any secluded log cabin, Walsh is sitting at a desk, PlayStation controller in hand, and glued to a screen.
“I’m the type of player that chillaxes while playing the game,” he says, half-occupied with the task at hand. “I have hundreds of worlds. When I get sick of one I just start again.”
I’m at Dublin Comic Con to chat to fans of Minecraft in advance of the release of A Minecraft Movie next month. Thousands of cosplayers wade in to Convention Centre Dublin, where two large screens play the trailer for the video-game franchise’s much-hyped big-screen debut. As if Minecraft couldn’t get any bigger, a blockbuster movie starring Jack Black and Jason Momoa ought to do it.
In Minecraft, players explore a randomly generated world made out of square blocks, mine for resources, craft items and fend off all sorts of ghastly ghouls. It’s enjoyed around the world by adults and children, boys and girls, nerds and noobs. So how has this clunky-looking thing become the defining cultural output of the video-game world over the past decade, above the likes of Fortnite or Roblox?
Launched in 2011 by a Swedish game developer, Mojang Studios, Minecraft spawned a community that extended far beyond the game itself. It has averaged about €320 million a year in revenue over the past decade, remarkably consistent in a market that sees interest in most games drop off after the first year or two.
Between its free Chinese format and its paid-for version in the rest of the world, Minecraft has been downloaded almost 800 million times. That’s more than Tetris (520 million) and Grand Theft Auto (435 million).
Unlike what happens with most games, Minecraft’s developers added new elements after launch, to keep it fresh. Its constant evolution has helped it to maintain an active community of about 60 million players a month.
Many of Minecraft’s additions have been free for users; the game’s endless appeal stems from a dedicated “modding” community. A mod, or modification, is an enhancement to the existing game, often developed as a hobby by dedicated gamers and released for everyone to use. In many respects, Minecraft is not the same game as it was upon release.
“Pre-Minecraft, a game was a single experience: you bought the game, you experienced it and you finished it,” says Carlo Azzari, a 35-year-old senior game designer at Black Shamrock. Today, Minecraft is a “forever game”, he tells me in Dublin Comic Con’s gaming zone.
“I think Minecraft opened a whole generation of people that were okay with not having a final goal, that it could be a place I’m in rather than an experience,” he says. “Minecraft is such a broad thing that you’re not playing something – you’re inhabiting a place.
“Minecraft brought a lot of people into the gaming ecosystem that wouldn’t have otherwise been interested ... We’ve yet to see what a full generation of developers who grew up on Minecraft look like. I don’t think games are going to look the same in 10 years.”
If you’ve never played Minecraft, there’s a high chance you’ve seen it being played. As YouTube grew throughout the 2010s as a space for gaming entertainment, Minecraft quickly became the game of choice. Entertainment personalities flocked to this sandbox game, in part as it allowed the freedom to play in a way that appealed to their audience.
It spawned a genre of its own on YouTube and other streaming websites. “Let’s play” walk-throughs, where YouTubers record their progression through the game, later gave way to all manner of reinventions. The latest trend sees up to 1,000 players “simulate society” within the same Minecraft world for a few hours, often narrated by a boisterous YouTuber trying to find a story through the chaos.
Aligning with trends elsewhere, Ireland punches above its weight in this entertainment space, with three popular Minecraft YouTubers in jacksepticeye, who has 31 million subscribers, Nogla, who has 7.4 million, and CallMeKevin, who has 3.6 million.
Compared with the shoot-’em-up games that were once the sole focus among adolescent gamers, Minecraft is understandably preferred by parents. “It is more about building stuff up than knocking stuff down,” says Walsh’s father, Mark, as he studies the screen over his son’s shoulder. “It’s not Grand Theft Auto.”
“It’s quite inclusive,” says Valerie, who is at Dublin Comic Con with her son, Clemont. “It feels like a very safe environment where the kids, especially if they’re playing with their friends, [are] collaborative. And it gives children the space to be really creative without feeling like people are being judgmental, and that’s really important.”
Dressed in a carefully made Minecraft villager costume, Clemont, who is 16, is cosplaying as a recurring character from a popular Minecraft series on YouTube. “I love the creativity of Minecraft, just building your own little world,” he says of the game he has played for nine years. “You really have free rein over what you want to do. There’s so many styles it suits.”
As we speak, a young Spider-Man interrupts to compliment Clemont’s costume. The connection people have through a shared passion for Minecraft is rarely relegated to the digital world.
“It transcends the digital landscape,” says Ben Cunningham, a 25-year-old Lego enthusiast with Shamrock Bricks. He’s selling Lego sets at Dublin Comic Con, including a popular Minecraft-themed range. “We [know] people who play it all the time, but they meet up with their friends they’re playing with. It’s not just people sitting at home and playing online. It’s here, it’s everywhere.”
Cunningham and his fellow Lego devotee Dave Heffernan built a life-size Lego statue of Minecraft’s protagonist, Steve, for last year’s Late Late Toy Show.
“Minecraft is forever, you know?” Cunningham says. “I don’t remember a time when Minecraft wasn’t a game. I feel like it’s always been there. It will just always be there.”
When Microsoft acquired Mojang Studios for $2.5 billion in 2014, many in the industry were surprised. Was this retro-looking game worth that much? More than a decade later, after it has spawned spin-off games, educational versions (which are used in secondary schools in Northern Ireland, for example), merchandise, an interactive TV show, its own subgenre of online entertainment and, now, a blockbuster film, it makes a lot more sense. Game sales alone have generated $4.2 billion, never mind the rest.
Away from the bustle of the Convention Centre, Dr Mads Haahr, an associate professor at Trinity College Dublin’s school of computer science who specialises in game studies and design, gives his view on what makes the game so special.
Minecraft, he says, has a perfect balance of what the French sociologist Roger Caillois called “ludus” and “paidia”, referring to the dichotomy of rules-based and free play. “The early versions of Minecraft were focused on construction,” he says. But soon its developers added a survival mechanism (ludus), where one must build and explore by day and fend off zombies, skeletons and the iconic exploding Creeper by night.
“I think it got the balance right in terms of gameplay,” Haahr says. The game’s “flow” – the balance between the player’s abilities and the challenges they face – is spot on.
“The risk is, if the challenge is too high or the skill is too low, the player becomes anxious or they lose interest. When you play survival mode in Minecraft, there’s that little bit of anxiety in the beginning, but it’s not impossibly hard ... It lets you move up that flow channel in a very nice way, so you can grow skills, and the challenges grow accordingly.”
He also cites Richard Bartle, a prominent academic in the game-design field. Bartle split players’ natural gaming tendencies into four general styles: achievers, who like to get points and win; explorers, who enjoy finding secrets and uncovering hidden areas; socialisers, who get a kick out of chatting with fellow players; and killers, who like to dominate and, of course, kill other players. A game designed primarily for one style will alienate those with tendencies towards others. Haahr says that Minecraft, more than any other game, has created a space where all four player types can thrive.
At Dublin Comic Con, Kayden Markey finally gets his turn at the Minecraft booth. The 11-year-old is a bit of an achiever; he says he’s going to try to beat the Ender Dragon, Minecraft’s final boss. It’s an ambitious task in the few minutes he’ll have on the console, I note. He has beaten the game once before, he says with pride. “It was very hard. I just about did it and had half a heart” – 5 per cent of his health – “in the end.”
At the end of the game, which is triggered by the dragon’s defeat, users are presented with The End Poem, which scrolls across players’ screens for eight minutes. It is an offbeat, existential and hopeful piece written for the game by the Irish poet Julian Gough. As Minecraft’s only narrative exposition, its exaggerated profundity is best enjoyed in the adrenaline comedown following the final battle. Regardless, its closing lines sum up the passion gamers have for this place:
“ ... the universe said I love you because you are love.
“And the game was over and the player woke up from the dream. And the player began a new dream. And the player dreamed again, dreamed better. And the player was the universe. And the player was love.
“You are the player.
“Wake up.”
A Minecraft Movie is in cinemas from Friday, April 4th
