What evidence is there that Minecraft has been a success and why has it been successful?

What evidence is there that Minecraft has been a success and why has it been successful?


evidence

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

in January 2015, 96.6% of all gaming videos were fan made and for Minecraft that figure was was 99.9%

• These videos soon became known as Let’s Plays -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.
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Why
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.

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

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.



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.

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.