Minecraft: Institutions and Audiences

MINECRAFT TO MICROSOFT

Minecraft, being the huge success that it was attracted many different major companies who wished to get involved and develop the ideas already presented by the base game which at the time of its peak in popularity may have ruined the success that it gained as the owner himself, Notch, had said making money wasn't the point because it was the fun of it that he apparently relished. Obviously this love for making Minecraft soon ran dry as after his secret sale of Minecraft to Microsoft he completely cut ties to the game and as Daniel Rosenfield the composer of the game says, "Markus just wants to be left alone to make little games that no one cares about". Minecraft, at the start of its creation differed vastly from the popular games of the time as most other properties were looking to innovate in terms of quality where Minecraft chose to downgrade its quality giving it the naive qualities and visuals that made it so popular. Markus 'Junkboy' Toivonen, the chief overseer of merchandising stated that "If someone else had become involved early on and made it pretty, I honestly don't think it would have been as successful", this is most definitely a factor in its departure from other games of the time in terms of the amount of people playing it and the world that it has created for fans of the game. It's so simple in its design that its creators are less self conscious about their inputs into the game as its blocky aesthetics disguise any faults in their design or coding work which is what the game was based on, each developers singular quirks in their coding style. As well as this, due to the game being created initially from the 3 creators apartment its brand is that of a familial and loving close knit group that ha made a game for people of all ages and genders. This is another factor in it's success as although its base character is 'Steve' players have the ability to customise their game to the point of complete gender neutrality which is due to the large amount of women who had been added to the Mojang staff as an attempt to add different perspectives, all are welcome to create unlike other games that are tailored to the vastly male gaming audience that is out there.  Mojang has also used the audience that have specifically gripped onto the game with those in the autism spectrum as a tool to help parents connect to their children.

Minecraft isn't a wholly original game as it takes a large amount of influence from games like 'Dwarf Fortress' and 'Dungeon Keeper' with their similar game play and visuals. However Minecraft differs from them as "it's the way you build in the first person perspective and you only interact with one block at a time" and "It's also very open ended. It doesn't tell you what to build", Jens Bergensten says, which allows for an audience to only create as opposed to following orders. This brand that they had created is a large reason that the developing team behind the game and especially its audience felt betrayed by the sudden news of the game being sold to Minecraft and its creators 'selling out'. This was especially damaging to the brand as this close knit friendship group that stood behind the game was now made up of people that believed they hadn't seen their part of the Minecraft fortune. Members of the team felt betrayed by the deal with the composer of the game also saying that "The days before the sale went through I felt betrayed by Markus", this was especially heightened by the fact that the entire managing staff had cut ties with Mojang which is enormously harmful to a company who were now having their independence stripped from them. However, the move was seemingly expected by some of the staff as over the prior years before the sale the state of the company's morale had worsened due to its creators changing from friends who they created the game with to managers who didn't help in its production and simply pushed deadlines making the office into a workplace instead of a safe haven for nerds. Minecraft had been made for the players and those who needed it, but after its sale those who loved it most saw 'Notch' and those who sold the company as sell outs and it tainted the brand that its players so loved.