Description

Minecraft is a sandbox video game originallycreated by Swedish programmer Markus "Notch" Persson and laterdeveloped and published by Mojang. The creative and buildingaspects of Minecraft enable players to build constructions out oftextured cubes in a 3D procedurally generated world. Otheractivities in the game include exploration, resource gathering,crafting, and combat. Multiple gameplay modes are available,including survival mode where the player must acquire resources tobuild the world and maintain health, a creative mode where playershave unlimited resources to build with and the ability to fly, anadventure mode where players can play custom maps created by otherplayers, and a spectator mode where players can fly around and clipthrough blocks, but cannot place or destroy any. The PC version ofthe game is renowned for its third-party mods, which add variousnew items, characters, worlds, and quests to the game.

Minecraft received five awards during the 2011 Game DevelopersConference. Of the Game Developers Choice Awards, it won theInnovation Award, Best Downloadable Game Award, and Best Debut GameAward; from the Independent Games Festival, it won the AudienceAward and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. In 2012, Minecraft wasawarded a Golden Joystick Award in the category Best DownloadableGame. As of June 2016, over 106 million copies had been sold, withmore than 40 million unique Minecraft players each month across allthe various platforms the game is available on making it thebest-selling PC game to date and the second best-selling video gameof all time behind Tetris. In September 2014, Microsoft announced adeal to buy Mojang and the Minecraft intellectual property forUS$2.5 billion; the acquisition was completed two months later