Have you ever found yourself playing Minecraft, looking at the world around you, and thinking, “I wonder how this game went from being a simple block game to being the most popular game in the world?” In this article, I’ll be explaining what Minecraft is, the beginning of Minecraft, how it became such a big game, how updates have changed the game, and how it impacts pop culture today.

What is Minecraft?:

For those unfamiliar with Minecraft, Minecraft is a 3D blocky adventure game where players can explore the world around them. It’s often referred to as a “sandbox” game because there is no set goal in Minecraft, you can do almost anything in the game. There are two main game modes—Survival mode and Creative mode. In Survival mode, you can explore your world, gather resources, mine, craft, fight mobs, and most importantly—try not to die. Most people who play Survival play it to get a challenge out of the game. In Creative mode, you can fly without special items, break and build with any block you want to, and much more. You’re also immortal and have access to an unlimited amount of materials. Most people who play Creative play it to create anything they dream of in the game.

Minecraft also has two main editions. Minecraft Java Edition and Minecraft Bedrock Edition. There are only slight differences between the two, however. Minecraft Java Edition is for PC (e.g., Windows, Mac, Linux), while Minecraft Bedrock Edition refers to any edition that isn’t Java Edition (e.g., phones, tablets, Chromebooks, etc.).

The Beginning:

Before creating Minecraft, Markus Persson (also known as Notch) was a game developer at King, a Swedish video game development and publishing company. During his time at King, Notch worked on many browser games and learned multiple programming languages.

One of the projects he was working on was called RubyDung, a 3D base-building game inspired by another game called Dwarf Fortress. He stopped working on it, however, after feeling the graphics were too pixelated.

In March 2009, Notch left King and joined jAlbum. He continued to work on his prototypes for his games there. In April 2009, a block-based and open-ended mining game called Infiniminer was released. This game inspired Notch to start working on RubyDung again and turn it into a game like Infiniminer, but with RPG (role-playing game) elements to it. He also named it Cave Game, then Minecraft: Order of the Stone, until he shortened it to Minecraft.

On May 17th, 2009, Notch published the first ever version of Minecraft.

On June 18th, 2009, Notch created the Swedish video game development company Mojang Specifications. He later changed the name to Mojang Studios. Over the next two years, he worked on updating the game by adding different mobs (entities), tools, two new dimensions called the Nether and the End, etc.

Notch decided to fully release version 1.0.0, which was the second part of the “Adventure Update”, on November 18th, 2011. Soon after, he stepped down from the game’s development, handing his position to Jens Bergensten (also known as Jeb).

On September 15th, 2014, Notch decided to sell Mojang to Microsoft on Twitter after receiving criticism for enforcing EULA (end-user license agreement), which is a legal contract between a software supplier and a customer where it protects the developer’s intellectual property and puts on user restrictions. Since 2011. On November 6th, 2014, Microsoft accepted the deal and acquired Minecraft. Notch earned 2.5 billion dollars and became a billionaire.

Popularity:

Minecraft started to become famous in the early 2010s, shortly after its full release in 2011. It mainly became popular due to the amount of videos on YouTube people were creating dedicated to Minecraft. Many YouTubers, like StampyLonghead, CaptainSparklez, StacyPlays, DanTDM, and many more made videos of walkthroughs of tasks within the game, Minecraft-themed parodies of pop music, and made “Let’s Play” videos, which were videos where the YouTuber will record themselves playing the game and post it online.

During the Pandemic, its popularity boomed again after YouTubers like Logdotzip, MrBeast, Grian, Mumbo Jumbo, and so many other people started creating multiple videos of Minecraft speedruns, PvP (Player vs. Player) gameplay, and making videos for Minecraft multiplayer servers like the Lifesteal SMP, Hermitcraft, and more.

Updates:

Minecraft is never a finished game; it’s always being worked on and has been through many major updates for almost seventeen years. I won’t list every single major update, but I’ll mention some of the ones I think were important.

Version 1.5, also known as the Redstone Update, was released on March 13th, 2013. Redstone is like electrical wiring; except it’s a type of mineral in Minecraft, and it’s within the game. People often use redstone to create different machines, circuits, etc. This update added extra blocks to redstone, including droppers, hoppers, Daylight Sensors, Redstone Comparators, and much more. These new blocks made it possible for people to build more complex systems within the game.

Version 1.16, also known as the Nether Update, was released on June 23rd, 2020, nearly a decade after the dimension was added to the game on the Halloween Update on October 30th, 2010. The Nether Update added multiple new biomes, mobs, structures, blocks, etc. to the Nether. This was a much-needed major update to the Nether after receiving many smaller updates from 2011 to 2016, which left the Nether mostly unchanged.

Versions 1.17 and 1.18, also known as Caves and Cliffs Part I and Caves and Cliffs Part II, were released on June 8th, 2021 and November 30th, 2021, giving a massive revamp to Minecraft’s caves and Overworld terrain generation. Caves and Cliffs Part I added new mobs like the axolotl, updated the texture of ores so that they’d be easier to find, added amethyst geodes to caves, and more. Caves and Cliffs Part II added different caves, like Lush Caves and Dripstone Caves, made mountains taller (going up to coordinate Y = 260, or 260 blocks above Y = 0), increased the building height limit to Y = 319 (319 blocks) and depth limit to Y = -64 (-64 blocks below Y = 0), and much more.

Impact on Pop Culture:

In its almost seventeen-year history that will continue to expand, Minecraft has broken multiple records throughout its years and literally changed the world. As of 2026, Minecraft has over 212.32 million gamers worldwide who consistently play the game at least once a month, which is around 2.654% of the global population. It has also sold over 300 million copies worldwide. On YouTube, there are over 35,000 active creator channels that regularly produce Minecraft content. In December 2021, one trillion views were generated on Minecraft content since the first video ever uploaded about Minecraft. It’s considered one of the best video games in the world by critics and people who play it regularly. And it’s also used in education, with over 40,000 schools using Minecraft Education Edition to teach computer science, art, history, etc. It became one of the most recognizable cultural icons. Whether you play the game or not, you can probably recognize common icons like the grass block and the Creeper.

Minecraft has even been used to uncensor articles by journalists in countries where their work is typically censored due to it informing people about topics their government doesn’t want people to know about. The Uncensored Library is a Minecraft world made by a group called Reporters Without Borders that’s focused on copying censored articles onto books and quills so that people can read them. Each section of the library is divided by country (e.g., a book from Saudi Arabia would be in the Saudi Arabia section, while a book from Mexico would be in the Mexico section). They are able to do this because Minecraft is still allowed in almost every country and the nations that are in this library (Iran, Russia, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Egypt, Brazil, Eritrea, and Belarus) don’t ban Minecraft, which means the journalists in those countries are still able to publish articles that would otherwise be completely censored.