The media industry is one of the world’s most competitive and ruthless industries right now, and the gaming section of media is part of this competitive spirit. There always will be one winner, or will there be? There is a significant debate in the gaming community about whether Minecraft or Tetris is the best-selling game of all time. Does Minecraft deserve to be number 1?

I Beleive Minecraft deserves this title for many reasons. The fact that Minecraft is arguably the best-selling game of all time and is also 12 years old is a pretty impressive stat. This is not by a small margin, either. Minecraft has sold 238 million copies worldwide, doubling the second-place game. The only real competition is Tetris which many say has sold over 500 million copies. This is neither confirmed nor denied and is disputed by the gaming community.

Minecraft is a sandbox survival game that was originally created by a single Swedish developer named “Notch” in early May 2009. He had previous game development experience working for “King” and “jAlbum.” He developed many games in his free time, including Minecraft. Minecraft was released to the public on May 17, 2009, on the TIGSource forum, which is for independent game developers. Slowly over the next coming months, he updated the game, eventually releasing the first alpha version on June 30th, 2010.

As Minecraft picked up speed, Notch quit his job and founded the development company “Mojang.” This allowed him and other developers he hired to work full-time on the game, releasing more updates and working full force to a full version release. This happened on November 18th, 2011, and the whole gaming community was ecstatic. Notch, after a little while of Mojang going full throttle, stepped down as lead designer and instead promoted a prominent figure in Minecraft today named “Jeb Bergensten.”

Minecraft continued to gross in popularity and revenue when in February 2014, it had over 100 million users active on the site. The same year, Microsoft came out of the woodwork and negotiated a deal with Mojang to purchase Minecraft for a whopping price of $2.5 billion. Many were questioning if Minecraft would be a worthwhile investment for Microsoft, judging that their offer of $2.5 billion was over 20 times their entire profit for 2013. Microsoft showed it was worthwhile when in 2018-19, they made over $1.5 billion. 

Microsoft, through Minecraft’s success, figured that capitalizing on the game’s success was the best option for their other projects.  Therefore, in 2016 they released a new project under the Minecraft name, which happened to be the Minecraft education edition. This was released for classroom use. They were able to gain an additional $10 million from the education edition in 2017.

There are many reasons for Minecraft’s success, one of many being its versatility. Anybody that wants to play can play in any way they want to. If they want to set off into the mines and never come back out and just mine and hoard all of the goodies, they can. If the player wants to build amazing creative structures in any medium or way they want, they can. If they want to fight stuff and be the ultimate warrior, they can. The opportunities the game provides are limitless.

The time that some spend playing is not like any other game. There are so many things to do in the game that it takes almost too long. In order to beat the game, the player would have to play for upwards of 70-272 hours in one world to get enough material and to travel and defeat the ender dragon. Not only that, but there are many things that the player is able to do after the game’s technical end. The game ending is almost like a beginning point for the most avid players, many of these players that play a lot beat the ender dragon as soon as possible in order to get the end rewards and begin to accomplish their dreams.

Not only is the game enjoyable the way it was created, but you can also add things to the game called mods. Mods are modifications to the main game, also known as “vanilla Minecraft,” that add anything to the game. Mods are created by the community and not by the developers themselves. This is a purely independent style of play. Anybody can make a mod for Minecraft if they have enough knowledge in game development.

Anything these “Modders” can think of is what they create. There are over 100,000 mods that have been created over the span of this game’s life. By installing mods, the player is able to completely transform their game into an entirely new experience. This adds numerous hours of gameplay to the experience, and some players even prefer mods over vanilla Minecraft.

Minecraft, for anyone that is twenty years old or younger, most likely is one of the most nostalgic games of their childhood. It was the one game that kids could play without doing something wrong or frequently dying. The creativity that kids were able to unearth was unmatched. 

The amount of love and attention that is put into Minecraft by the developers over at Microsoft is also admirable. Microsoft is making sure to consistently update the game and keep it as fresh and new as possible. This can keep the occasional player interested in the game and even get consistent players to have a new peaked interest. With new stuff added, this always gives players something new to do.

Even people at this very school know the worth and the great success of Minecraft. When asked what the number one best-selling game of all time was, three out of the total three people asked this question said it was Minecraft. This shows the massive success of Minecraft and goes to show the recognition of the game even by our piers.

From an independent project by one developer to massive success purchased and maintained by one of the largest tech giants around, Minecraft is something to behold and cherish for a long time yet. I personally have many memories involving this game, getting closer to people I cared for, wasting time, letting my creativity flow, and many more. Minecraft, like many, will always have a permanent place in my heart. Minecraft deserves this number one spot, not just because of nostalgia but because of the limitless potential that it can imbue each player with.