- 5/27/2025
#CinemaJourney
#GameChangers
#GameChangers
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00In Minecraft, you're sure to encounter many animals.
00:11Cows, pigs, chickens, the occasional pink sheep, even a dragon, if you get to the end.
00:18But one animal you won't see is a worm, and yet there's a little bit of worm in every
00:24Minecraft block, hidden deep inside the game's DNA.
00:30All the great video game developers borrow from somewhere else.
00:33But I thought he had taken something that he shouldn't have.
00:37Well, we'll get to that.
00:40But wherever Minecraft came from, it was quite crude.
00:43There was too many bugs in it.
00:44Graphics very lo-fi.
00:45It's undeniable that it revolutionized how people play games.
00:49Oh, I get this game.
00:52Mojang.
00:53And how game developers make money from the people playing the games.
00:57Video games have always been designed to take your money.
01:00Small microtransactions.
01:01Because we're making loads of money.
01:04This is a story of people power.
01:06It really grew and grew into an actual phenomenon.
01:09A beautiful community.
01:10How everyone contributed to the success of the game.
01:14Of power players.
01:15She's got to go to Nosh's house.
01:16She's got an epic jelly-belly wall.
01:17I don't believe in God.
01:18I believe in money.
01:19And power plays.
01:20Who are these people?
01:21They thought we were laundering money.
01:22Whoops, sorry guys.
01:23Oh, no, no, no.
01:24No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
01:25We didn't really mean to do that.
01:26How could he sell his own baby?
01:27I can have kids in Minecraft.
01:29From the snowy depths of Sweden.
01:31Lonesome and dark.
01:32To the boardrooms of Silicon Valley.
01:34Minecraft took over the world one block at a time.
01:37They caught the gaming world right at the perfect time.
01:40But along the way, worlds would fall.
01:43It caused a huge backlash.
01:45They start hating the developers.
01:47And norms were broken.
01:49He says really gross things.
01:51I had to send a lot of threats.
01:53We were actually allowed to just say whatever.
01:55It was the thing that broke him, I guess.
01:57Because this is Minecraft.
02:00The game that truly changed everything.
02:03This is going to blow the head off of folks.
02:19Minecraft.
02:41Sweden.
02:43A cultural mecca of Northern Europe.
02:45Renowned for its exquisite meatballs.
02:48Self-assembled furnishings.
02:50And everything else.
02:54But one thing you might not know about Sweden.
02:57Is its role in reshaping the landscape of video games.
03:01Sweden is always one of those European countries.
03:04That has had a strong video game development culture.
03:08There is less daylight in Sweden.
03:12That probably makes computer games pretty attractive.
03:16To people who want to bond online.
03:19Don't have to go outside in the cold.
03:22Well, in 2009, as gamers huddled for virtual warmth on a gaming forum.
03:27One topic was heating up.
03:29And soon, everyone was talking.
03:32About this game called Minecraft.
03:38The first time I saw Minecraft was on an internet forum called TIGSource.
03:43And it was posted there by a local guy.
03:45Markus Persson, he is also known as Notch.
03:48Yeah, I thought it was quite crude.
03:50Graphics very lo-fi.
03:52I didn't really understand the beauty of it.
03:54But I had colleagues who played the game a lot.
03:58Like, every day after work, they played Minecraft.
04:01And eventually, I also started playing back then.
04:04This early alpha version of so-called Minecraft.
04:07Had everyone asking, who made this game?
04:11My name is Rolf Jansson.
04:13And I'm the co-founder of Mojang Specifications.
04:16Together with Markus Persson.
04:17He is also known as Notch.
04:19Mojang in Swedish means, it has two dots over the A.
04:23So it's Mojang.
04:24And that means a trinket, basically.
04:26Sounded cool in English, Mojang.
04:28I liked it.
04:30The partnership between Rolf and Notch.
04:32Started when the pair began working at Swedish game developer, Game Federation.
04:37So me and Markus started about the same time.
04:40Within a month, I think.
04:41Back in the year 99.
04:43He seemed like a gamer and oozed sort of talent.
04:47I'm not sure there was anything Markus couldn't do, programming-wise.
04:51The two quickly bonded over their love of games.
04:54But not the computer kind.
04:56Magic the Gathering, every lunch.
04:58Markus would usually win.
05:00Because, yeah, for some reason, he was better at building decks.
05:04But soon enough, Magic the Gathering started to lose a little magic.
05:09So Rolf had an idea.
05:11I suggested that we make an MMO.
05:14He did want to make a fantasy MMO.
05:16For, I guess, Magic the Gathering, maybe.
05:19Okay, we can make a fantasy MMO.
05:21And to compete with the big MMOs at the time.
05:24Like EverQuest and EVE Online.
05:27This would be more than just an MMO.
05:29It would be a sandbox game.
05:32But, what is a sandbox game?
05:34A sandbox game is best explained in comparison to a theme park game.
05:39Most games were theme parks.
05:41You walked around in the developer's idea of what you should experience.
05:45You know exactly what to expect, after a while.
05:48So, I wanted to let people create stories.
05:52Change the environment.
05:54They could impact others.
05:56And people could be inspired by what you had built.
06:00However, the game Notch and Rolf made together wasn't Minecraft.
06:04In an ode to Magic the Gathering, their game was called...
06:08Worm Online.
06:11The idea was you had this rich, verdant land that you could do anything with.
06:16So you could build a farm.
06:18You use that farm to grow crops.
06:20You sell those crops.
06:21You get money.
06:22You use it to transform the landscape.
06:25Building bridges.
06:26Building castles.
06:27And, like a worm, slowly inching toward public release.
06:32Marcus decided to release the game before I thought it was time.
06:37So, suddenly the game was up and running online.
06:41And I was like, okay, maybe not.
06:46It was a bold move from Notch, because the game was riddled with bugs.
06:51Exactly. Yeah, it caused a bit of frustration.
06:54I had hoped to polish the server more, make it more stable.
06:59And players were quick to point out the flaws.
07:02The horrible part is that they become so engaged that they start hating the developers,
07:07which is sad, when they make mistakes.
07:10Since we had very strong ideas on how the game should be,
07:16so our ideas often clashed with the idea that the players had.
07:22Needless to say, players started having opinions about us.
07:28And soon, Rolf and Notch would have opinions about the future of Worm Online.
07:33And those opinions differed.
07:35Dealing with Marcus was...
07:37I mean, I obviously didn't like that he released the game very prematurely.
07:43But as time dragged on, it became harder and harder,
07:48because I could tell he was getting tired of it.
07:52So I wasn't really surprised that Marcus wanted to leave.
07:57It was probably a good idea that he left, and we separated that way.
08:02And he wasn't leaving empty-handed.
08:04We discussed that he should take Mojang.
08:07I didn't know if we would ever make any money,
08:10because we didn't make enough for one salary at the time.
08:15So Marcus would usually win.
08:19Having parted ways with the co-founder of Mojang and taking the company with him,
08:23Marcus Pearson, a.k.a. Notch, was looking for inspiration for his next video game,
08:28when he saw...
08:30An existing game called Infiniminer.
08:32Which was open-source and easily reverse-engineerable.
08:35Infiniminer is this first-person mining game.
08:39It's competitive, where you would compete against other people,
08:43and it was like a multiplayer game.
08:45And thought, I could do this better.
08:47And so, just like all the other video games that had come before it...
08:51They were just copying what was popular.
08:54And Notch turned this into this.
08:57He took the things about Infiniminer, he took the things about Worm,
09:01and he combined them together and remixed it into something new that had never been seen before.
09:06Which brings us back to here, and this forum,
09:09where Notch was spreading the word about his new partially-completed game.
09:12The game was released in a very early state,
09:14which is usually called Alpha.
09:16A period of development where the game was playable,
09:19but it's going to be bugged and incomplete.
09:21I'm not getting any meat from these animals.
09:23It's a move Notch had done before.
09:25Marcus released the game before it was time.
09:28One of his biggest strengths was that he had this dialogue with the players,
09:32and he implemented a lot of features from the feedback he got from the players.
09:36Just kept getting more features, like added health, added fighting, and stuff like that.
09:41With a little bit of momentum behind them, Mojang also got themselves some more staff.
09:47So Notch dropped an ad on his blog,
09:49and started hitting up the local game jams, scouting for talent.
09:53So a game jam is where you have a limited amount of time, like a weekend,
09:56and everybody has the same topic, and multiple teams will build it in that amount of time.
10:01I went to a game jam, and Notch was there,
10:05and all of us other developers were starstruck,
10:08because we knew that Notch released his own game,
10:10and he's selling like 50 copies a day, and we thought that was amazing.
10:14And for Daniel, this was an opportunity to make a good impression.
10:19Notch was looking for a new CEO, that's what the ad said.
10:23I was like, hey, I can apply for that job.
10:25I'm the CEO of an indie company, or used to be.
10:28I had quit two months prior to that.
10:30Notch had found his man.
10:32Daniel would be the perfect CEO for Mojang.
10:37Marcus called me up, and he said, we don't want to have you as the CEO.
10:41And I got really disappointed and sad.
10:44I was like, okay, alright, that was it.
10:46Actually, that wasn't quite it.
10:48But he said, we want you to assist with the business side of things.
10:51Alright, that's fine with me, I guess.
10:54Yeah.
10:55Yeah.
10:56Well, also coming on board, Italian programmer, Tommaso Cecchi.
11:00I think I got hired as employee 30,
11:02and so the office was really small, and it was really independent,
11:05and the game was already doing great, so we could really do whatever we wanted.
11:12We were quite a small team.
11:13It was very playful.
11:14And soon, this young team of developers began expanding the world of Minecraft.
11:18With new updates.
11:19There was farming, and armor, dungeons, and rails.
11:24Not to mention, a whole nother dimension called the Nether.
11:28Minecraft was slowly spreading through word of mouth,
11:30and more and more people were seeing the game and seeing what it could do.
11:34But one player had seen something a bit like it before.
11:38I got a pretty early version of Minecraft,
11:41and I thought, wow, a bit tough on me to see that.
11:47I, of course, recognized lots of the features in Minecraft.
11:53After all, Minecraft played like a kid-friendly version of Worm Online.
11:57Both with its terrain manipulation, and RPG-like weapons and tools.
12:02I told him that I thought he had taken something that he shouldn't have, I think.
12:08So I made that clear to him.
12:09And all Rolf could do was sit there and watch,
12:12as Minecraft made so much money, even PayPal couldn't believe it.
12:16Minecraft was doing so many transactions per day,
12:20that they thought we were laundering money.
12:22PayPal actually ended up freezing Notch's PayPal account,
12:26because so much money was coming in.
12:28We had, I think, about $2 million there that they froze.
12:31I had just signed the contract, I had not gotten any salary at all.
12:35So I was super afraid that it was my last month at Mojang.
12:39Marcus didn't know how nervous I was.
12:42But don't worry, Daniel got his money, and Notch got even more.
12:46We got so much PR thanks to all this publicity.
12:49Our sales increased a lot.
12:51And then, even more money flowed in.
12:54Because by December of 2010, Notch would raise the price of Minecraft from $9.99,
12:59taking the game out of alpha and into beta.
13:02It's kind of weird, because it's being sold, so it's kind of been released,
13:05and it's kind of a new model, but it's in beta,
13:08and we're aiming at a release late this year sometime.
13:11Beta is a version that you really would like to release,
13:14but probably there is too many bugs in it.
13:16Which was certainly familiar territory for Notch and Rolf,
13:20who suffered the consequences for releasing Worm online early.
13:24They start hating the developers, which is sad.
13:28But as always, Notch relied on brutal honesty from gamers to point out bugs,
13:33and to give feedback on Minecraft's new modes.
13:36So Minecraft has two basic modes.
13:38One is a creative mode, and one is a survival mode.
13:40And survival mode is what I think you would consider more of a traditional video game.
13:44The idea of survival mode is you've been dropped into this random world.
13:48Okay, that's kind of weird.
13:50You get to grow crops, you get to fight monsters,
13:53you only have your hands, and you've got to go and, you know,
13:56chop down trees by punching them.
14:01When they started adding enemies and kind of raising the stakes
14:04of what it meant to kind of be in this sandbox,
14:07and it took the survival mode to kind of speak the language of the time
14:11in terms of adoption, like, oh, I get this game.
14:15And then there was creative mode, which improved on Minecraft's classic mode.
14:19Creative mode, I'm going to make a workbench.
14:22You can build from whichever blocks that you want
14:25rather than having to, like, build with blocks that you mined.
14:29This time-saving option unlocked the architect inside fans.
14:33I made something new for you guys.
14:35One of the first things that I created in Minecraft was a full-on carnival.
14:39Yay!
14:41With rides that people can ride.
14:44Let's go into the funhouse first.
14:46So I'd actually invite friends to come on the server,
14:48and we would walk through, and I would see them experience the maze,
14:52and we would play games and go on the rides together.
14:55Who doesn't want a carnival?
14:57With enough patience, a player could build just about anything,
15:01which is where things start to get complicated.
15:04Somebody had made the entire, like, Star Trek Enterprise
15:07and showed, like, the potential that Minecraft had
15:10for this kind of creative power.
15:12This is a one-to-one scale model of the Starship Enterprise.
15:17They showed it off in a YouTube video,
15:19and that video got millions of views.
15:21Among the video's viewers, Star Trek's corporate parents.
15:25That eventually led to a letter from Viacom
15:28that they would sue us if we continued using their IP to promote Minecraft.
15:32All hands abandon ship!
15:34Being confronted by a potentially catastrophic lawsuit,
15:37it was unclear if Minecraft could be released at all.
15:41A letter from Viacom's lawyers had rattled the Mojang team.
15:45When we got the threat level, we initially, like,
15:47whoa, do we need to be serious about this?
15:49Like, are we going to go to the US and sit there in a courtroom for months
15:53and discuss what Minecraft is?
15:56But we talked to our lawyers,
15:59and we had to educate their lawyers and Viacom
16:02that Minecraft is just like Photoshop, blank canvas,
16:05and the players or the creators are able to do whatever they want in it.
16:09Someone painting Mickey Mouse in Photoshop,
16:11you can't sue Photoshop because of that,
16:13and we have no control over what the players build in Minecraft.
16:18And we just left it off, basically.
16:21Which meant it was time to start building,
16:24or rather, creatively interpreting everything and anything.
16:28Middle Earth, Lord of the Rings.
16:30Like, they'll build the palace of Versailles, Death Star.
16:33Cute little cottage core houses and gardens.
16:36Hogwarts.
16:37Minecraft inside of Minecraft.
16:39I think, like, one of the rewards of the game
16:41is sharing what you did with other people,
16:44and, like, having people like it.
16:46The players played a huge role in Minecraft's success
16:49because they made a lot of YouTube videos.
16:51Let's go!
16:53My son, who's eight, watching a YouTuber playing Minecraft,
16:57which is, to me, bizarre because, first of all, like, who are these people?
17:02Well, one of them is Tiffany Herrera, otherwise known as Cupquake.
17:07Hey, everyone, it's Cupquake.
17:09Welcome back to another episode of Minecraft Oasis.
17:13As you guys can see, I've done a lot of building.
17:16I attended one of the first actual Minecons.
17:20Hey, we're at Minecon! Yay!
17:23It was such a magical experience,
17:25being with people who were so excited and passionate about this game,
17:30just like me.
17:32And despite the millions of users playing on Minecraft Alpha and then Beta,
17:36the official Minecraft still hadn't been released.
17:39But that would all change at 2011's Minecon.
17:43Are you ready for the official release of Minecraft?
17:49It was a ten-year journey for Notch and Mojang to reach this point.
17:53It's very well.
17:55But the official release of Minecraft is really just the start of the story
17:59because soon it wasn't so much Notch modifying the game,
18:03but the gamers themselves.
18:06The impact of Minecraft's modding community was huge.
18:09Modders were players that modified the game's code to tweak it.
18:13Next we have Explosive Enhancement,
18:15which is a simple little mod that completely replaces the explosion visuals in the game.
18:19Or completely reinvent it.
18:21Like you can add more animals, more enemies,
18:24just completely different world generation, new game modes.
18:27You can do a lot of stuff.
18:29Thanks to a set of community-built tools,
18:31players didn't need to be an elite hacker to mod Minecraft.
18:34I had mods that, you know, introduced villagers
18:37and I can have relationships with the villagers.
18:40Brian, why are you being such a jerk?
18:42And have kids and start a family in Minecraft.
18:45Oh, I have a baby boy.
18:47It seemed the whole world had created a new world in Minecraft.
18:52And as this world expanded and populations grew,
18:55so too did the demand on servers.
18:59When people played Minecraft to play together in multiplayer,
19:02they had to play on a server.
19:04As more people play, that requires more server infrastructure,
19:08requires more community management.
19:10As a result, the Minecraft community began to turn to third-party companies
19:14such as Hypixel, McGamer and M&B to host their games.
19:18One of the biggest and hardest jobs in the industry is server architecture.
19:23And large-scale hosting was not cheap.
19:26So these companies had various ways of monetizing the servers
19:31and some of them were not so friendly in our opinion.
19:35They had quite not-so-nice monetization models
19:38and we wanted to change that.
19:41They decided, we're going to enforce these more strictly.
19:44An update to end-user license agreement to protect our users and players
19:48to not being taken advantage of.
19:51Since we also noticed that a lot of kids were playing,
19:53we wanted to make sure they could have a safe space.
19:56With the revenue stream cut off, the servers got angry.
20:00It caused a huge backlash.
20:02One of the defining points of Minecraft's development
20:05was the ability to talk candidly at its developer
20:10and to have him talk back to you.
20:12Unfortunately, that is a double-edged sword
20:15because when things go wrong, guess who people are going to come at?
20:18They're going to come at the person that they've been talking to for years
20:21about this, like, hey, this sucks.
20:24Could it be that the founding principle of Notch's open communications
20:28with the players was beginning to turn sour?
20:31A big portion of the community, and especially the ones hosting servers,
20:35started to send a lot of threats and not-so-nice tweets to Marcus.
20:41Notch went scorched earth, spewing his own torrent of vitriol on social media.
20:46We didn't have a PR department.
20:48We didn't have anyone controlling what we said to people at Mojang.
20:51We were actually allowed to just say whatever.
20:53And Marcus wasn't shy about sharing whatever.
20:56He tweeted out, like, I'm fed up with this.
20:58Who wants to purchase my shares in Mojang?
21:03And when I saw that tweet, I didn't think so much about it,
21:06and I thought it was just Marcus being silly Marcus.
21:09Gamers lose it online every day, but Notch wasn't just a gamer.
21:13I started to get some weird text messages from management.
21:18It was asking me for numbers and how we were performing on various platforms.
21:22And, well, it's not like Daniel was the CEO or anything.
21:26So I got very suspicious.
21:28For the last three, four years I've been working there at Mojang,
21:31no one had asked me a single time about how we were performing on different platforms.
21:38I was like, whoa.
21:40All right, they are maybe serious about this Marcus tweet.
21:43So perhaps it wasn't such a surprise when Notch gave Daniel the news.
21:48We're going to sell Mojang.
21:51And what was that like for you?
21:55I'm sorry, can we take a break?
21:58Of course.
22:08Notch may have laid the original brick, but it was the team at Mojang who'd built Minecraft.
22:14And now, at least for one Mojang employee, everything was falling apart.
22:19So when they told me this in the meeting room, I got really sad.
22:24And it eventually led to me being depressed.
22:29And it was a lot of feelings to deal with because I worked so hard at this company.
22:37I had gone in like 100% working day and night on Minecraft.
22:42And I really felt that it was a part of me.
22:45It's awesome.
22:46Yeah?
22:47It's super cool.
22:48Yeah, finally.
22:50And we were this kind of like big family working together and making Minecraft a success together.
22:56And they were taking decisions above my head.
23:00That's how I felt.
23:01Making matters worse, it was unclear who Mojang's new owners would be.
23:05Even from like Minecraft's earliest days, they have always been courted by venture capitalists seeking to invest.
23:12One of those investors was Sean Parker.
23:14He was one of the co-founders of Napster.
23:16And Minecraft, because it was as big as it was and it was making the kind of money that it was, said, we don't actually, we don't need your help.
23:23But investors kept trying.
23:24They were courted by Activision Blizzard and by Electronic Arts.
23:30But one company, Microsoft, who made Xbox, had a little problem with their rival Sony, who made PlayStation.
23:37Sony has a first party slate now in exclusives.
23:41Games like God of War and Charted and Last of Us.
23:44And therefore, Microsoft's been playing catch up and buying a lot of companies.
23:48And one company they bought was Mojang for $2.5 billion.
23:52I was so surprised that he actually sold the company because we were making loads of money.
23:57How could he sell his own baby?
23:58I didn't realize back then in what kind of mental state he must have been in to get all those kind of threats, letters and hate.
24:07And I only thought that because he was so famous and successful, like why did he care about what people said to him?
24:13Just people online being mean, which was nothing new, in my opinion.
24:17For Notch, really nothing new.
24:19Players start hating the developers. It was the thing that broke him, I guess.
24:25And the consequences of the sale would be felt from the waters of Sweden to the hills of Beverly.
24:31Because that sale to Microsoft worked out very well indeed for Notch.
24:36He's got a ton of money.
24:37Jay-Z and Beyonce didn't get the $85 million house they were looking at.
24:40Bummer, who got it?
24:41A famous video gamer, his name is Marcus Person.
24:45There was all the talk in the game dev circles of like, oh dude, you've got to go to Notch's house.
24:51He's got an epic Jelly Belly wall.
24:53Leaving Notch to happily chew on a wide assortment of jelly beans.
24:57Minecraft's new owner, Microsoft, now had their cake and were eating it too.
25:02One thing that's really going to be clear, we're going to learn a lot as an organization
25:07and what it means to work with a community that's as vibrant as the Minecraft community.
25:12Microsoft was the turning point for Minecraft.
25:15Over the next years, around the acquisition and following it, it really grew and grew into an actual phenomenon.
25:21It seemed Minecraft had taken over the world.
25:24But worlds can come crashing down.
25:28And far from snowy Sweden and sunny California, something was coming that could spell the end for Minecraft.
25:36Roblox has something that Minecraft did not have, a very thriving marketplace
25:41where people can sell content they have themselves created.
25:45So it's not just one game, there's a whole bunch of games all on Roblox, created by players for other players.
25:52In other words, it's like YouTube, but for games.
25:55On YouTube, you make your own video, upload it to a website, anybody who wants to see it, they can go and check it out.
26:01In Roblox, you make your own game, upload it to their website, and then anybody can come in, connect, and play that game.
26:08And Microsoft, they definitely felt the threat of Roblox.
26:13They were very, they were afraid of Roblox.
26:16They were afraid that Roblox would catch up and eventually become a way bigger game.
26:19But Minecraft stayed big through small microtransactions.
26:24You want to stand out from other players a certain way,
26:27well, maybe a certain combination of cosmetics allows you to do that.
26:31Let the player base provide revenue by buying things to make them look different in the game.
26:36So long as it doesn't provide a competitive advantage.
26:39But adding microtransactions was nothing compared to what Microsoft had planned next.
26:46One big thing with Minecraft was that we wanted to enable a cross-platform play
26:50between different consoles and mobile phones and systems and PC,
26:55because it was in the ethos of Minecraft to be able to do whatever you want.
26:59But hold on just a minute.
27:01This concept of cross-platform gaming is lovely, in theory, but come on.
27:07You can't just go willy-nilly having players playing the same game at the same time on different consoles.
27:13Because, as we know, the console wars were brutal.
27:17Beat Nintendo, make heads roll.
27:20And years of fighting had scarred a generation.
27:25If you were born in the early 80s and you're growing up with Sega and Nintendo exclusively,
27:29you think that's going to be the paradigm forever.
27:32You can't do this on Nintendo, Genesis does.
27:35But then Sony comes and crashes the party.
27:38Mustache man, your worst nightmare has arrived.
27:41And then Sega drops out.
27:43Microsoft now comes in, now we have this Microsoft-Sony-Nintendo paradigm at the moment.
27:48And besides, cross-platform play would require everyone to come on board.
27:53Sony and Nintendo and Apple and Google.
27:57And to this prospect, they all said,
27:59Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
28:00Oh, no, no, no.
28:01No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
28:02No way in hell.
28:04In the 2010s, gamers were abuzz with talk of cross-play.
28:09But video game companies weren't happy.
28:12No way in hell.
28:14But even if you could convince the main players to collaborate for cross-play,
28:18it wasn't as simple as just clicking a switch.
28:22Because all these different games on different platforms had different code.
28:27It had at least three main versions that were completely made from scratch, actually.
28:32It had Java, which is the first one.
28:34Then it had a C++-based version for consoles.
28:37The third version, actually, I got hired to work on the Minecraft Pocket Edition.
28:41Designed for mobile devices,
28:43Tomaso was looking to make one common core called the Bedrock Codebase
28:48that would work on both iOS and Android.
28:51For Pocket Edition, just porting things from the Java Edition into the mobile version,
28:56which I feel like they didn't believe in it too much,
28:59because phones were really weak.
29:01It was iPhone 4 kind of time, I guess.
29:04The Pocket Edition had limitations.
29:06With no caves, no.
29:08The biomes were really small.
29:09It had no sky, no moon, no clouds.
29:12So there we go.
29:13This is a cave.
29:14But also it was really, really buggy.
29:16No, don't look at the bugs.
29:17Don't look at the bugs.
29:18But bugs are not when they launched it in 2011.
29:2220 million people actually bought this very, very limited version of the game.
29:26Maybe we can do more with that, especially because phones are getting really powerful.
29:30Tomaso's buggy Bedrock engine had not only proved that cross-play was possible,
29:35but that it was extremely popular.
29:38So Microsoft hoisted the white flag and lowered their controllers.
29:43And so suddenly we saw this big push from Microsoft of like,
29:47hey, we can, you know, this is possible.
29:50Looking to form a peaceful alliance with the other platforms.
29:53We're open to this idea.
29:55Finally achieving a utopia of cross-play.
29:58Sony and Nintendo and Apple and Google.
30:02And the entire industry was on board.
30:04Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
30:05Oh, no, no, no.
30:06No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
30:07No.
30:08Or not.
30:09No way in hell.
30:11Because Sony for the longest time, at least within the last like 10 years,
30:15has been winning the console wars as it were.
30:17Like they were outselling Microsoft specifically.
30:20That's their main competitor.
30:21So it runs antithetical to that to have a game where an Xbox player and a Sony player can play together.
30:29And Nintendo, for their part, also didn't want anything to do with cross-play.
30:33Nintendo has always been kind of off to the side,
30:36doing their own thing and making billions of dollars doing it.
30:39But a solution to the cross-platform problem was lurking within Minecraft itself.
30:44Because among the millions of Minecraft players were the developers at Epic Games,
30:49a studio best known for its first-person shooters, Unreal, and Gears of War.
30:55The developers played Minecraft, loved those crafting elements, loved the building,
30:59and they drew on those elements and remixed them and said, what if we do that with shooting?
31:05And in the same way that Minecraft was inspired by Worm Online and Infiniminer,
31:10soon Minecraft had spawned...
31:12Oh! I just birthed a baby boy!
31:16Not like that. A very real competitor.
31:19Imagine a game in which you explore, you scavenge, you build, and ultimately you survive.
31:25Ladies and gentlemen, I'm proud to announce the trailer for Fortnite.
31:30In October of 2017, in basically a Fortnite.
31:34Fortnite Battle Royale had 10 million players.
31:37They caught the gaming world right at the perfect time.
31:41It was a hit with not only seasoned gamers, but with young kids as well.
31:45Although it was a relatively violent game on the surface about hunting down people and shooting them,
31:50everything is brightly candy-colored and cartoonish and jokey.
31:55When you eliminate a player, there's no blood, there's no body, nothing like that.
31:58The loot explodes out of them and they get teleported away and that's it.
32:01Never give up!
32:04Do-do-do-do!
32:07Fortnite quickly became one of the most popular games of all time.
32:11However, this still wasn't a cross-play utopia.
32:14Microsoft had been trying to court Sony and being like,
32:17hey, how about we announce cross-play together for Fortnite at a tech show?
32:21Let's go ahead and do this. It's going to be a win for both of us.
32:24To which Sony replied, oh, no, no, no, no, no.
32:27No.
32:28Historically, they have been bitter rivals and, you know, had no incentive to work together.
32:33However, public sentiment was quickly turning on them because by now, everyone kind of knew the truth.
32:39OK, cross-platform play has been possible for a long, long time.
32:46And the blockers for it were always business reasons.
32:49And the reason everyone knew it was possible is because it accidentally happened.
32:55Through a configuration issue, Fortnite accidentally turned on cross-play for a little bit.
33:02Because on Fortnite one day, in the rather innocuous manner of a username,
33:07that one sharp-eyed player on PS4 noticed was formatted with a space which PlayStation didn't allow.
33:15Instead, it looked like the player was playing on an Xbox.
33:19They're like, oh, whoops, sorry, guys. We didn't really mean to do that.
33:22That got the fire lit under people.
33:24After sharing their discovery on Reddit with other players reporting the same thing,
33:29it seemed like the players finally had the sandbox they'd been dreaming of.
33:32It is undeniable that being able to play Fortnite on an Xbox and a PlayStation made the game what it is.
33:40Briefly.
33:41They're like, oh, whoops, sorry, guys.
33:43This oversight was quickly remedied.
33:45But for gamers everywhere, this was no happy accident.
33:49People were like, if the technology is there, why can't we do this?
33:54For one glorious weekend, Fortnite proved that cross-play was essentially as easy as turning on a switch.
34:01And then turning it off again.
34:03And so ultimately, through this complete accident, as they might describe,
34:08really just opened up the world to us.
34:10And they started to pressure these big companies and be like, you know, tear down that wall.
34:15We want to play together.
34:17Which brings us back to Tommaso.
34:19Because remember that buggy Minecraft Pocket Edition that worked across both Android and iOS?
34:25Well, it turns out the key to Minecraft cross-play was in that bedrock core.
34:30And thanks to the Better Together update, Minecraft Bedrock Edition was released a mere two days after the Fortnite accident.
34:40Accident.
34:42It was actually easier to just port the phone version to console.
34:46You kind of take the majority of the code and make it work.
34:50When Minecraft Pocket Edition began with limitations.
34:53Limited 256 by 256 world.
34:57It was now as big as it gets.
34:59Becoming the premier Minecraft Edition.
35:02The team was like two people to four people and then went to 600 people, which is kind of insane.
35:08It got really huge.
35:09And even Sony finally relented, allowing Minecraft cross-play with the PlayStation 4.
35:15Finally, the utopia of true cross-platform play was realized.
35:22Cross-platform play.
35:24I cannot emphasize enough how important that is for current gaming.
35:28Today, Minecraft has well over 150 million active users across more than a dozen platforms.
35:35My youngest daughter plays on Switch.
35:37Her sister plays on PlayStation in the family room.
35:40And I play on my PlayStation in my room.
35:42For the first time, all the unique and wonderful worlds created by players would finally come together.
35:48Forming one complete Minecraft universe.
35:51A huge part of Minecraft was the community and how everyone contributed to the success of the game.
35:57The shared community around this experience has become so compelling.
36:00A beautiful community cooperating and engaging in this virtual world.
36:05The Minecraft community was now whole.
36:07With one notable exception.
36:09The game's creator.
36:11He's always been, according to him, like this kind of loner, introvert kind of person who likes to focus on his project or whatever.
36:18And comes out of it every now and again as introverts do to socialize.
36:22And then go right back into his hole.
36:24Notch used social media to build the Minecraft community.
36:28But after Marcus' exodus from Mojang, that conversation turned dark.
36:33He says really gross things about women.
36:36He says gross things about trans people.
36:39He says gross things about race and things like that.
36:43It completely changes how people perceive him.
36:48As a result, Microsoft looked to distance itself from Notch.
36:51Removing his name from the game's introduction ahead of Minecraft's 10th anniversary celebration.
36:57Minecraft wouldn't be what it is today without all of you.
37:00On behalf of our entire team, thank you so much.
37:05But Minecraft's legacy had grown beyond any one person.
37:09I think one of the beauties of Minecraft is when you see a player playing for the first time.
37:14Like when they start punching a tree or a dirt block and then something clicks in their head.
37:20They're like, ah, I can manipulate this world.
37:23That kind of notion and feeling that your actions changes how the world reacts to you is quite powerful.
37:31Minecraft reimagined the gaming landscape one block at a time.
37:35But Daniel Kaplan would find himself longing for the way things were.
37:40As Mojang grew and Xbox grew together with Mojang and had their own Minecraft team in the U.S.,
37:48I became very frustrated because there were so many layers of approval.
37:52So many meetings and so many people needed to be involved into making a decision or a change in Minecraft.
38:00And the cultures did not fit so well, for me at least.
38:06And that eventually led me to quitting Mojang.
38:09Daniel's role at Mojang has been huge, but not quite huge enough.
38:14And so in 2017, Daniel left.
38:17And finally, in 2021, became the CEO he was destined to be.
38:23Today, I'm the CEO of a company called Keepsake Games, and we are 14 people at this company.
38:30I really don't want this company to become big in any way.
38:35Because I really like being hands-on with the game, working with the coders and artists and designers.
38:41Meanwhile, Mojang's first game, Worm Online, is still going strong.
38:46And it's still available to play today. You can go on Steam right now and download and play Worm Online for free.
38:52The two creators of Mojang's original game certainly took different paths.
38:57I told Markus that I thought he had taken something that he shouldn't, and he didn't acknowledge it.
39:03And I'm not sure he understood at all.
39:08I wasn't particularly happy with how things turned out.
39:13Rolf sold Worm Online in 2019, and he's still gaming.
39:18I don't think I'll ever stop creating games. I'll probably keep doing it until I can't.
39:24Meanwhile, the founding members of Mojang continue to redefine games.
39:30Gaming is going to keep actually diverging into so many ways to play.
39:36I feel like it doesn't make sense anymore to speak about one single gaming.
39:40And while Minecraft reinvented an industry, it's clear the revolution has just begun.
39:46It's the indie developers that have the ability and the creativity without meddling from corporate overlords,
39:53without too much concern about appeasing shareholders or making the games that shareholders think they want to print money.
40:02And we're seeing now people making games of any kind and any direction.
40:07There's just going to be a lot more for everyone, and I think that's pretty cool.
40:11I think it's going to be even a tighter-knit community, more people making cool things for us to experience and enjoy.
40:17Thank you guys so much for watching. We will see you later. Bye!
40:26This story of games has largely been about how you play the game.
40:30How are you going to do that?
40:32Simple dimple.
40:33Because as we've seen, winning is a $300 billion industry.
40:38It takes many forms.
40:39A beautiful community.
40:40I'm sorry, I'm getting emotional.
40:43And the price of victory?
40:44It just knocked Atari right on its ass.
40:47Sega's a company that does everything wrong.
40:49Has been steep for some.
40:51So he looked in the eye and he had the gun in his hand.
40:54And it changed game history forever.
40:57If you don't obsolete yourself, somebody else will.
41:00We got a failure on our hands.
41:02But one thing's for sure.
41:03Make your head spin.
41:04Whichever game you play...
41:06Sega!
41:07Atari!
41:08Nintendo.
41:09Nintendo.
41:10Whenever you play it, everyone wants to play it.
41:12It wasn't guaranteed to be a success.
41:14It grew into a phenomenon.
41:15This game isn't over.
41:17Nobody expected it to end up where it is now.
41:19And what comes next?
41:20Nobody can really predict where it's going to go next.
41:22Well, let's find out.
41:24Take this chocolate and this peanut butter and put it together.
41:26Because hey, it's your go.
Recommended
46:27
|
Up next
55:36
55:09
1:32:37
1:47:40
1:40:01
1:36:48
2:31:30
1:01:30
1:37:13
1:35:47
3:23:17
49:56
1:32:49