TIME Minecraft

WHEN JENS BERGENSTEN WAS hired by Sweden-based game studio Mojang Studios in 2010, he never imagined that the team’s hit game would have the legacy that it has today. Instead, he saw it as the ideal starting point for a small team with big ambitions. “At that time, Minecraft had sold 700,000 copies,” Bergensten said. “For a small indie game to sell that well was unheard of [at the time]. So our mental picture of it was that we had peaked. We were going to finish up Minecraft and use the money to create new indie games.” In a short amount of time, however, it became clear that Minecraft wasn’t just another indie hit. It was the indie hit. It’s hard to put into words how unprecedented Minecraft’s success was.…

BEGINNING IN DECEMBER 2011, JACOB Granberry and Will Blew began overseeing a land-development effort of truly epic proportions. Covering more territory than the city of Los Angeles, in 2013 it is about 70 percent complete and already contains roughly 8,000 structures. It’s so sprawling and ambitious, though, that nobody knows for sure just what’s there. “I haven’t seen near everything, and I started the damn project,” said Granberry. Their undertaking happens to be a digital recreation of Westeros, the fabled continent from George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books and the HBO series based upon them, Game of Thrones. And Granberry and Blew happen to be creating all those castles, towers, farmhouses, shops, and ships in Minecraft, the online game from a Swedish start-up named Mojang that’s…

THE PLAYERS OF MINECRAFT AREN’T the only ones who are constantly building. It’s true of the creators as well. Ever since the first version of the game launched in May 2009, the game’s architecture and experience have been continually modified, expanded, and honed. Here are ten of the notable highlights of Minecraft’s journey of transformation. OCTOBER 2010 The Nether is added to Minecraft. Thanks to the “Halloween update,” suddenly players could go through a portal and pass from the Over-world into this dark place, encountering lava that flows like water and zombie pigmen, fire-breathing ghosts, and other horrors. This new environment escalated the fantasy aspects of the Minecraft world. JUNE 2011 The massive Adventure Update includes Creative Mode. A great deal was added to the game at this time—the extremely…

The ever-evolving game of Minecraft got its latest update this summer. Update 1.21, dubbed Tricky Trials, adds a slate of enemies, blocks, tweaks, crops, and gameplay scenarios that expand on Minecraft’s exploration and swashbuckling elements. The star of this expansive update is the titular, procedurally generated dungeonlike Trials Chambers. These hidden structures, inspired by Meso-American architecture, can be found in any world and offer a challenge for which even the most grizzled Minecraft veteran might need a friend or two to complete. For those who manage to make it to the end of these elusive chambers, rewards await. From enchanted wearables and magical weapons to rare crafting materials and game-altering consumables, the rewards of tackling these new environments and the obstacles within are a fun and engaging way to strengthen…

IT ISN’T EXACTLY A HUSH-HUSH TRADE secret that, in Hollywood, movies often take years to come to fruition. Even so, the seemingly cursed production history of Warner Bros.’ big-screen adaptation of Minecraft has been a frustrating series of fits and starts that goes back an entire decade. In fact, the project’s path to the multiplex has been so long and winding that you may want to stock up on regenerative pork chops and enchanted golden carrots before reading further. When Stockholm-based game developer Mojang Studios first rolled out its sandbox-and-survival adventure on November 18, 2011, the company instantly realized that it had a hand-over-fist blockbuster on its hands. In fact, it wouldn’t take long for Minecraft to become the best-selling game of the millennium. To date, it has sold more…

While the big-budget Minecraft movie starring Jack Black and Jason Momoa has repeatedly taken one step forward and two steps back during the past decade, the block party appears to be going more smoothly over at Netflix with its in-the-works Minecraft animated series. Although less publicized than its feature-film sibling at Warner Bros., the show’s top-secret existence was confirmed on the streaming giant’s social media channels in May 2024, when it dropped a 21-second teaser (featuring a green creeper and a whole lot of lava) along with the news that the series would place brand-new characters in the pixilated world of the hit game (side by side with existing characters Steve and Alex, naturally). Netflix also confirmed that the CG-rendered series was being developed by WildBrain—the Canadian animation studio behind the…