Minecraft- Audience

1.How many platforms/devices is Minecraft available for?

Most recently: Playstation Network or Xbox Live Arcade, Nintendo Switch and 3DS. Many versions download only.

2.What has been the critical reception for Minecraft? Ie what awards has it won?

On release, 5 awards at 3 conferences, including an Innovation Award, Best Debut Game, Best Downloadable Game, Audience Award and Seumus McNally Grand Prize.


3.What rivals and clones exist of Minecraft

Castleminer is the most famous one and Battleminer was available on Nintendo until they got the distribution agreement to the original recently.




Audience

The PC version of Minecraft was noted for its “modding” scene.

Modding can involve superficial changes, like making rainbow-coloured chickens, or deeper changes to the rules that govern the game. Modding also makes it easy to build vast structures with code instead of building one block at a time. You can make your own games within Minecraft by programming a whole new set of rules and situations.


So it’s original audience was independent programmers and coders or budding ones.


Minecraft's creator Markus Persson said in 2012 that he was initially skeptical of mods, fearing that the usermade content would threaten his vision for the game. Persson says he came around, as he claims to have realized that mods are "a huge reason of what Minecraft is". In some cases, authors of mods even ended up getting a job at Mojang.




Theorist: Henry Jenkins

Minecraft offers social experiences and communities. As a result it has a strong well-developed fan base.

There is a backlash though against Minecraft. This is partly because it is so popular, it has come in for criticism for being everywhere and spreading into everything (The Manchester United effect).

The main theme you find though, is that whilst people still admire the game, the hate the community that produce vast amounts of fandom productions. Like this one!




Gamers

Gamers are the main audience for Minecraft, obviously.

As the game is available on so many platforms, it’s potential audience is very wide eg
•Those loyal to a particular brand eg Sony
•Those who own multiple devices
•Older gamers playing on older devices
•Newer gamers: the mobile and handheld devices are currently driving the sales of Minecraft eg the release of the Playstation Vita version increased Minecraft sales by 79%


Target Audiences 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwa7Y4T28bU

•Who is Minecraft’s audience beyond gamers?

Designers, architects, artists, fans of “other world” media eg Game of Thrones, engineers.

•How is Minecraft’s relatively unique in the concept of audience feedback?

They are creating the game by playing it. You can see what they are doing with the product.

•Does Minecraft have a MASS or NICHE audience?

Not mass like BBC1. Gaming is big but we would still define the audience as a relatively large niche audience.

•What PRODUCTS are Minecraft users likely to use?

Minecraft ones!

•What TYPE OF PRODUCTS are they likely to use? 

Other games, music, clothing (teen to young adult products)





A study of about 200,000 Minecraft users

• 75% of gamers are male, with an average age of 23.
• 72% of gamers have a 'core' gamer type, meaning they regularly play video games but aren't competitive or super serious.
• 53% of gamers play for for than 30 minutes for 6-7 days a week. In terms of motivation for playing, 59% say it's because of the community (chatting, teams) and 56% say its because of design (customisation, expression).
• Compared to an overall baseline, Minecraft has a slightly higher proportion of female gamers, a slightly younger audience and plays slightly more days per week than average.

Persson and Ownership

• As a lead developer, and the producer of the text, Peerson had every right to take credit for the game’s success, however he actually does the contrary, directing the credit towards the consumers, going as far as to assert that they themselves infact own the text.
• However there are also examples that contradict the consumers having this much power.
• Following the announcement of Minecraft’s sale to Microsoft there was an angry outburst from fans on social media
• if they really did have as much power as Persson suggests then they would have been able to stop such a significant decision from happening.
• This would suggest that in reality, as with most other texts, it is much more likely that consumers have their voice heard, but the definitive power resides with producers.

 

Meanings

• By actively using the texts, consumers will be interpreting their own meanings, each of which will be unique because of the openness of the game and the influence personal socio-cultural experience plays in decoding meaning

 

Youtube

• YouTube acts as a catalyst for Minecraft's success
• consumers share the creative ways they’ve played the game with other fans.
• These videos soon became known as Let’s Plays and although they are not new in themselves, their popularity, along with the gaming industry in general has been growing in popularity
• This trend was recognised by the YouTube itself, who in 2015 launched YouTube Gaming, a website specifically for content such as Let’s Play videos with improved features such as live streaming.
• Every Let’s Play Minecraft on YouTube is a paratext to the game, this is how the game became so popular without any professional marketing and it is also for this reason; content owners are more lenient with fan made paratexts, because it’s free exposure.
• As Let’s Play videos grow in popularity, so does the effectiveness of the them as paratexts.
• The most popular channel on YouTube is a Let’s Player, ‘PewDiePie’ and he has over 44 million subscribers, this means every minecraft video he publishes is a possibility for minecraft to get exposure in front of over 44 millions people.
• Youtube is a way of distributing Minecraft cross-platform and for many,it is the only way to experience Minecraft. This isn’t just because people don’t have access to the game but rather many people simply prefer watching people play Minecraft to actually playing it themselves
• YouTube acts as a nostalgic replacement of the old world of gaming, a platform you go to with other people and where you can share your own gaming experiences, just like in arcades.
• One other important aspect as to why Let’s Play Minecraft videos are so important is the ‘vloggers’ themselves.
• successful because each one is different, from how the game is played to how the presenter puts their own unique take on it.
• in January 2015, 96.6% of all gaming videos were fan made and for Minecraft that figure was was 99.9%

Prosumers

• Fans continued to produce their own stories that fit with what little mojang provides consumers with, however, more interesting is the fact that these game related videos received nearly twice as much engagement than any other categories of video on YouTubeIn 2014 Brandon Liatch, an invested petty producer of Minecraft wanted to create a part live action-part animation film based on the Minecraft world.
  • Using KickStarter he managed to get $60,000 before Mojang shut it down, saying “We don’t allow half a million kickstarters based on our ip without any deals in place.
• Despite Minecraft and Mojang being very open to the way you use it’s content they still have reasonable limits, and the agency of a prosumer is not breaking copyrights.

Stats

• In 2014 ‘Minecraft’ was the second most searched term on YouTube, behind only ‘music’
• In January 2015 it had more views than eighteen of the other top twenty popular gaming franchises (Newzoo, 2015), it has become a cultural phenomenon.