Developing and Publishing
Minecraft is a first/third person sandbox game created and developed by Markus Persson (more commonly know as Notch), and his company, Mojang for the PC. The game runs on Java.
Mojang is a Swedish company (Mjang being Swedish for gadget) made up of 8 people, including Notch, and was founded in 2009 using the proceeds from Minecraft.
The game is currently in Beta 1.4 testing stage (Beta testing started on December 20th 2010) free ‘Minecraft Classic is also available. Both versions have single player and online multiplayer, Beta offers updates and bug patches where classic doesn't.
Distribution
Minecraft, still being in Beta stages, hasn't been fully distributed yet, On January 12, 2011, Minecraft passed 1,000,000 purchases, less than a month after reaching Beta. At the same time, the game had no publisher backing and has never been commercially advertised except through word of mouth. Word has been spread best by youtube "Let's Plays" by the likes of BannanapieLord, David64rt and AwesomeMattG.
By April 2011, Persson estimated that Minecraft had made €23 million (US$33 million) in revenue, with 800,000 sales of the alpha version of the game at €9.95, and over 1 million sales of the beta version at €14.95.
Consumer Input
The fan base for Minecraft is large, and many have had some from of creative input in to the game, some have made videos for YouTube advertising the game, other have made their own add ons and DLC style work such a mods, texture and map packs.
Popular mods include Mo' Creatures , which adds more animals, both friendly and hostile (everything from duck to unicorns to lions) to the game.
There's a ton of texture packs upfor download, most of which are free, which add a different look to Minecraft. Some make colours more vivid or realistic to add the real RPG feel, others more cartoony for comedy apeal. One of the most popular is Painterly Pack which gives a native-resolution high-quality reskin. Any player has the ability to reskin thier character, by making a Minecraft account and editing their own personal skin, there are also many character re-skins online which offer look alike of popular video games characters, such as Dead Space's Issac Clark or the Scout and Heavy from TF2.
Map packs give a new challenge to those who have grown weary of 'Vanilla Minecraft' or a nicer area for the creatily challenged or people who fnd buliding hard. The most notebale map pack is probably Survival Island, where the player has to live on a tiny island and attemt to find the Curator's Lost Treasure buried deep below. Another could be Minecraft Obstacle, which constits of a serise of puzzles and jumping challenges to test the player.
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