Minecraft: The Game That Shaped Me

 When I was around 8 years old, my parents introduced my brother and I to the internet, namely Google and Youtube.  In the act of learning us of it, they gave us some money to buy something on the Google Playstore.  The first thing that came to my mind was to buy the game that has impacted my life the most up until now, Minecraft.  Now keep in mind, before buying Minecraft we played all those rip-off ones on the Playstore but none ever hit the same as the real deal.  For the last 8 years of my life since buying Minecraft it has become a core part of who I am and how I turned out today.  I can safely assume that I have spent over 3000 hours on this game on various platforms and I am still not done with it.  Not even close.  So join me as I tell you all about the creation of Minecraft, its affect on the internet, memorable Minecraft youtubers and my personal memories and experiences with the game.  

In the beginning, there was Notch. 

On 17 May 2009, Markus "Notch" Persson released the first version of Minecraft on an online forum where he updated the game regularly.  He also released other versions of the game on this forum.  On June 30 2010, Notch released the Alpha version of Minecraft and on 18 November 2011 he released the full 1.0 update (also called the Adventure update).  A short while later Notch stepped down from developing Minecraft and gave the honor to Jens "Jeb" Bergensten to take the lead.  In September of 2014, Minecraft was sold to Microsoft, who are still the owners of Minecraft today.  Some people online feel that it was a mistake for them to have sold Mojang to Microsoft, but according to Markus there were talks that Blizzard and EA were also looking at purchasing Mojang, so I can safely say that Microsoft was the best bet.  

After selling it to Microsoft, Mojang has been releasing Minecraft updates yearly, except for 2015 when there were no updates.  Each update has added new features into the game, like new biomes, mobs and items.  In late 2024 Mojang decided to shift the way they released updates and instead of releasing one big update yearly, they would give the game smaller updates throughout the year.  I personally like this strategy, as it can keep the game feeling fresh.  

While we are on the topic of updates, let me tell you about the mob vote controversy.  For those who don't know, each year Mojang had a vote for which mob they would add into the game with the update.  Some mobs who came out of these votes includes the allay, the phantom and the glow squid.  But in 2024 people started to get fed up with Mojang only putting one of the mobs into the game as they can just put all three into it.  Fans also felt that the vote was way to easy to sway due to youtubers telling their fans their personal choices.  This caused major backlash towards the mob vote and after seeing the reaction online towards it, Mojang decided to stop it. 

Minecraft Youtube

Growing up I watched a lot of Youtube.  Most of the interests I have today can be attributed to finding it on Youtube.  When I was younger (and still now) I loved watching people play Minecraft.  It's just so interesting to see how other people play the game and how they make their world their own.  I also don't really like overly edited videos, so let's plays were and still are my go-to's when watching Minecraft videos on Youtube.  Let me start by telling you first about the more famous Youtubers and then I will tell you about my personal childhood youtuber who gets way less recognition than he deserves. 

Firstly, I really enjoyed watching Grian's playthrough on Hermitcraft.  For those who don't know, Hermitcraft is a SMP server where a group of (more famous) Minecraft youtubers play together.  My personal choice was usually Grian, but I also liked watching Mumbo Jumbo and Good Times With Scar.  I started watching Hermitcraft at season 7 which took place around Lockdown, so I had more than enough time to watch it.  So many moments from season 7 can be used to show how good it was, like the Mycelium Resistance, Grumbot, the "Mumbo Jumbo you are afk" song and so much more.  I'm not even going to lie, I was really sad when season 7 ended.  

Next is one much more people would know about, the Dream SMP.  In the time of lockdown in 2020, the youtuber Dream created a minecraft server where he and his friends could play the game together and just have a fun time.  Later on after more members joined the server, it started to become more of a story-driven series.  I think that one of the reasons it became so famous was because everyone was locked in their houses all day with nothing really to do, so more people started to watch livestreams.  I feel like the Dream SMP was one of those things where you just had to be there to understand it.  So many people online were also absolutely clowning on the Dream SMP and it's fans (which is understandable as lots of the fans were a bit pushy with the whole Dream Not Found thing).  But like all good things, it must come to an end.  I feel like after Technoblade's passing in 2022 the series never felt the same.  Ultimately, in April of 2023 the Dream SMP ended. 

I also regularly watched LukeTheNotable, the creator of the 100 days trend where people try and survive (usually) hardcore Minecraft for 100 in-game days.  I started watching his series at 300 days and have kept up with it to this day where we are still waiting for 5000 days.  I've also watched countless other 100 days videos but I wanted to specifically mention LukeTheNotable as he is the original creator of the idea. 

Ofcourse, how can I talk about Minecraft Youtube without mentioning all the Minecraft parody songs.  There are so many legendary parodies, from Don't Mine at Night, Revenge and the amazing Fallen Kingdom saga.  I can write about so many more but I just wanted to mention the parody song trend of the 2010's.  

Lastly I would like to tell you about a Youtuber who is very dear to me as he was my childhood youtuber (don't get me wrong I still watch him today) and he even inspired me to try and make my own Youtube videos.  That youtuber is TheNeoCubest or just Lee.  I have been watching his channel since his first ever let's play series.  I can still remember when my brother (who introduced me to TheNeoCubest) got his first laptop and we downloaded that let's play's world to explore it for ourselves.  I can confidently say that TheNeoCubest is my favourite youtuber of all time.  He is one of the most naturally entertaining youtubers that have ever existed.  I have even played on his Skyblock server before (even though our wifi isn't good enough for it) and once I saw him in the servers lobby and it was such a crazy experience to see my childhood hero right infront of me.  If there is someone that I have mentioned thus far that I would recommend checking out the most, it would be TheNeoCubest. 

Minecraft's Music

Daniel "C418" Rosenfeld is the creator of most of Minecraft's soundtracks.  He was absolutely the best person for the job, because the tracks he crafted were the perfect background tracks for a game like Minecraft.  Because Minecraft didn't really have any set objectives, they couldn't really make spesific songs for spesific situations, so they had to improvise and create tracks that can play at any moment and feel appropriate.  Minecraft's music is so special to me and many others across the world.  The soundtracks almost represents a better, carefree time when all we had to worry about was going to the Nether.  The music instantly transports me back to a time when I got to play Minecraft with my brother all day.  Every track, from Mice on Venus to Sweden was made with so much love it is hard to explain it without experiencing it for yourself.  I found a quote once that goes a bit like this that explains Minecraft's Music perfectly: "Listening to Minecraft's music is like being sang asleep by your mother when you were little."

The feeling of Minecraft

Whenever I start up a new Minecraft world one thing is always the same: the feeling.  If you didn't know, every Minecraft world is different in some way, because Minecraft worlds are generated using a random seed.  Now even when you play on the same seed as someone else, your world will always be different from someone else's in some way or another.  That is the feeling that I am talking about.  The feeling of unsure excitement of being able to explore and mold a world made personally for you.  This feeling is there even more when you are playing single-player, because it is just you in your own blocky universe.  

The whole mood surrounding Minecraft is full of creativity and exploration.  You can go anywhere, build anything and do anything you want in whatever order you want.  I feel like this mindset of being able to choose my own objectives made it more difficult for me to enjoy games that are more linear as I can't do whatever I want whenever I want.  Another thing that makes Minecraft special is that there is no real ending.  I know that the Ender Dragon is technically the final boss of the game as there is a poem after defeating it (which is absolutely beautiful), but the game doesn't end after it.  Heck, some people only start "playing" after defeating the Ender Dragon.  That also makes Minecraft special, because no matter what you do in the game, you will still have hundreds of things to do and chunks to explore.  The game can physically never end, because even if you get bored of single-player survival you can still play on creative mode or give a shot at hardcore mode.  And that's just the base game, you can still install mods to play with that can change the game drastically or you can join servers and play on them, which could also have add-ons to spice it up.  

Personal Minecraft memories 

When I was in grade 6, I was sick for a long while (about 2 months) and I couldn't really attend school, because it was 2021 and Covid basically just ended, so the schools were still on high alert.  So I spent most of my days those two months at home, but I had to go to the hospital three times, each of which I didn't enjoy (but in all fairness who has ever enjoyed being in a hospital).  But while in the hospital one of the things that kept my spirits high was watching Minecraft videos, more specifically TheNeoCubest's videos.  I have fond memories of watching his Let's Play videos while in the hospital. 

Around the time I first got Minecraft, my brother and I found a world seed where if you typed the letter "v" eight times, you would get this cool village spawn that had a big house on a hill.  We used to spend hours apon hours playing hide-and-seek and just fighting in the world while having an absolute blast.  

We also had a massive survival world that we played together on in which we got full enchanted diamond armour and tools, a whole villager trading centre and so much more.  We even started to build our own mega-bases in a jungle biome where I built a series of connected tree houses, almost like the ewok's village in Star Wars episode 6.  But because we played on Pocket Edition, when we upgraded our phones we couldn't transfer the world over and it was lost.  All our builds and progress just gone in an instant.  All we now have left of that world is our memories of it.  

In conclusion...

Minecraft is one of the best games of all time, hands down.  I put this blog post off for a long while, because I wanted it to be "perfect", but I'm happy that I got to express my love for Minecraft to all you reading this.  Minecraft helps me and many other people to keep our childlike wonder alive and that is the reason I will never stop playing Minecraft.

Thank you so much for reading my blog post, if you enjoyed it please consider folllowing my blog as it will notify you when I publish a new post and it will make my day.  So until next time, keep on mining, keep on crafting and most importantly keep being creative. 

...and the universe said I love you