Minecraft

Minecraft is a sandbox video game developed by Mojang Studios. The game was created by Markus "Notch" Persson in the Java programming language. Following several early private testing versions, it was first made public in May 2009 before being fully released in November 2011, with Notch stepping down and Jens "Jeb" Bergensten taking over development. Minecraft has since been ported to several other platforms and is the best-selling video game of all time, with over 238 million copies sold and nearly 140 million monthly active users as of 2021.

In Minecraft, players explore a blocky, procedurally generated 3D world with virtually infinite terrain and may discover and extract raw materials, craft tools and items, and build structures, earthworks, and simple machines. Depending on game mode, players can fight computer-controlled mobs, as well as cooperate with or compete against other players in the same world. Game modes include a survival mode (in which players must acquire resources to build the world and maintain health) and a creative mode (where players have unlimited resources and access to flight). Players can modify the game to create new gameplay mechanics, items, and assets.

Minecraft received critical acclaim, winning several awards and later 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. In 2014, Mojang and the Minecraft intellectual property were purchased by Microsoft for US$2.5 billion. Several spin-offs have also been made, including Minecraft: Story Mode (which has since been shut down on all platforms except Netflix, where only the first five episodes are available), Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Earth (which has since also been shut down), and—in 2023—Minecraft Legends.

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).[25][26][27] There are limits on vertical movement, but Minecraft allows an infinitely large game world to be generated on the horizontal plane. Due to technical issues when extremely distant locations are reached, however, there is a barrier preventing players from traversing to locations beyond 30 million blocks from the center.[j][obsolete source] The game achieves this by splitting the world data into smaller 16 by 16 sections called "chunks" that are only created or loaded when players are nearby.[25] The world is divided into biomes ranging from deserts to jungles to snowfields;[28][29] the terrain includes plains, mountains, forests, caves, and bodies of water or lava.[27] The in-game time system follows a day and night cycle, with one full cycle lasting for 20 real-time minutes.

When starting a new world, players must choose one of five game modes, as well as one of four difficulties, ranging from "Peaceful" to "Hard". Increasing the difficulty of the game causes the player to take more damage from mobs, as well as having other difficulty-specific effects. For example, the Peaceful difficulty prevents hostile mobs from spawning, and the Hard difficulty allows players to starve to death if their hunger bar is depleted.[30] Once selected, the difficulty can be changed, but the game mode is locked and can only be changed with cheats.

Standing on a flat grassy plain against a blue sky, there is a green zombie wearing a blue shirt and purple pants; a large spider with red eyes; a tall, black, slender creature with purple eyes; a green, four-legged creature; and a skeleton.

Some of Minecraft's monsters, displayed from left to right: a zombie, a spider, an enderman, a creeper, and a skeleton