Task 2 - Report on a Game Franchise

Minecraft is a game that consists of simple techniques that make the game exciting and unique in its own way. Minecraft was created by a Swedish person named Markus “Notch” Persson and it was produced by a Swedish company named Mojang who it was first released on May 17th 2009 as a development release. Minecraft started off as an independent project as Notch was inspired by other games such as Dwarf fortress, dungeon keeper but the one that gave him the biggest influence was Infiniminer as the game had similar aspects such as 3D environments, first person and the game also had a blocky style. However, Notch wanted a unique RPG theme to the game and implemented how players could customise and create their own skins using pixel textures. Minecraft was updated with lots of new features such as mobs, items, blocks, survival mode and he also fixed the way that water was flowing on which was known as the alpha version of Minecraft that was released on June 28^th 2010. After the game became more popular and he started to earn money, he created a Swedish company and named it “Mojang”. Notch announced that the beta testing of Minecraft was going to be on the 20th December 2010. Mojang decided to release the full version of Minecraft on November 18^th 2011 and on December 1st 2011, “Jeb” took control of the creative control in Minecraft.

This game is available for a large range of platforms including the PC, PS3, PS4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, Xbox Gone, Android and IOS. 

Minecraft has very good statistics as the game has sold over 22 million copies of the game just for the PC and Mac version and in the past 24 hours, 13,144 has been sold. This shows that the game is very well known and popular as people are still buying the game even though it is almost 5 years old meaning that many people are still being inspired to buy and play the game.

I have interviewed Tom Gaynor about the different aspects of Minecraft and how the different mechanics are processed in actual gameplay. He is a casual player who plays minecraft from time to time so he knows a fair amount about the game considering that he has been playing the game for quite a while. He states that Minecraft is a very simplistic and blocky game which it is and he says that the game has some very unique and fun aspects that allow you to customise the game in order to make you enjoy it more. He also explains that the game is very easy to play as it can also be played on multi platform devices and he gives the example that his 8 year old cousin even plays it which means that the game is aimed towards any ages and it is also child friendly which should allow to game to receive more attention and population. Tom says that the game is very creative and imaginative as there is so many different things to do in the game whether it is solo or multiplayer. Tom also states how the look of the game can be customised such as the textures

I started playing Minecraft roughly about 2 years ago as I bought it from the App Store on my iPod. I played on creative with my sister from time to time as we built giant structures and buildings which I thought were truly amazing at the time as we spent lots of time on a local server and filled up a huge amount of land. I bought Minecraft for the PlayStation 3 as I was inspired by a YouTuber who I regularly watched, and I mainly played survival with some of friends as we played though the main story in order to get to the final part which was (at the time) to defeat the Ender Dragon.  Now, I play on the PC version of Minecraft which is better by far as there is a wider range of variety such as mods, which allow you to alter your game in different ways. For example, there are mod packs such as the crafting dead or crazy craft which are custom made mods with custom weapons and aspects which give the game a completely different effect. There are also mods which can help you in PvP such as better sprint and OptiFine. The PC version of Minecraft is adapted in ways where multiplayer servers are hosted and communities build up. I spend a lot of time playing on the server “Badlion” which is based on PvP including Potion PvP and UHC.

 As I watched a lot of Call of Duty videos a lot on YouTube, My favourite YouTuber at the time was called Ali-A. He mainly posted Call of Duty content to his channel but one day, he uploaded a video saying how he made a second channel where he would upload others games including games such as Pokémon, Mario and mainly Minecraft. I watched a few of his let’s plays on Minecraft and I was amazed by how cool it was and also the amount of different things that you could do on the game. He was new to Minecraft and he was learning the new mechanics and ways of how to get through the game and how to survive.

Minecraft has lots of different aspects. For example, the game can be customised in different ways including skins, Texture packs, Mods and much more.  

Skins in Minecraft are made from large pixels which can be easily customised to show a players uniqueness and identification. They can be made using programmes such as paint.net or photoshop or there are some websites online that allow you to create a skin and look at it in a 3d aspect like Novaskin or Skincraft.

Here is how a skin looks when it is completed. As you can see, the separate parts of this image folds together to create a 3D skin which is used in game. This is one of the skins that I have made and as you can see, I have shaded the skin to show more detail and make it seem a lot better rather than plain. I think that this was a very good feature to other game as it allows everyone to have their own character that gives them uniqueness and I think that it is really cool.

Every single block, item, mob, are made from texture that are all put together to combine and create a texture pack. These are very easy to custom to a players taste and these can be made from resolutions ranging from 16x16 to 512x512. I think that this is a very good feature as you can create how you see your world which makes it more personal and creative for the actual game.

 There are lots of amazing mods in Minecraft that can benefit you in different ways. Here are some of the mods that I think are pretty cool and work very well with the game to enhance better performance and generally help in many ways.

Optifine - https://optifine.net/home

Optifine is a mod that optimizes Minecraft and helps you gain more FPS, you also lag less and you gain extra options in game that you can alter to change how the game is processed and looks. A really cool feature about this mod is that you donate £5 to receive a really cool cape that you can fully customise choosing from any colour with different effects and you can also use a banner design to create a banner cape. Here is a screenshot of how one would look on a player and I think the looks super cool and it is really worth donating in my opinion. Optifine has special features that allow you to customise how you see your game whether its making it look more fancy and clean or even if it is to gain more FPS and disable a lot of those options. With this, you can also set a "Zoom" hotkey and this is extremely useful as you can press this to see for example name tags from far away or a person. Optifine is an extremely important mod that is installed in a click and it makes everyone happy.

LabyMod - http://www.labystudio.de/

LabyMod is a mod that I have just recently got that will only work on the 1.8 version of Minecraft and I think that it works amazingly. LabyMod includes so many beneficial features that can help enhance your gameplay and make PvP overall easier and more customisable. As most of us probably know, 1.8 is not as good as 1.7 for PvP. However, this mod has the aspect of combining both 1.7 and 1.8 PvP together on servers such as Badlion and MCgamer that are compatible with both 1.7 and 1.8. 

Bspkrs’ - http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/mapping-and-modding/minecraft-mods/1282347-bspkrs-mods-armorstatushud-directionhud

Bspkrs’ mod allows you to modify Minecraft in benefitting ways. For example, you can install a direction HUD, that shows a compass like bar at the top of the screen, which indicates which way you are facing, (North, East, South, West. This is very useful in game modes such as MCSG considering how most professional players tend to go on “routes” to get the most “stacked” and will most likely win the game. I used to use this mod all the time as it helped me find my own routes and I definitely recommend it. Another useful aspect of this mod is the armour status HUD, which shows the percentage that your armour is on until it will break. This is extremely helpful, especially to people who play the Gapple kit as the aim of the kit is to fight until all of the opponents armour breaks which results in them losing more health and eventually dying. I have used this mod multiple times and it notifies me when I need to apply a new set of armour which will overall allow me to focus more on the gameplay rather than keeping an eye on my armour which could potentially make me lose the match. Another feature that the Bspkrs’ mod includes is the status effect HUD. This is an amazing addition for most aspects of PvP but in my opinion, PvP that includes potions is where this mod will help out the most such as Kohi and Gapple. This practically shows what effect you have on from a potion and it also shows you when the effect will run out. This is fairly crucial as the effects can be the difference of coming out victorious or defeated, for example, if the player ran out speed, they would not be able to apply better strafes to get bigger combos and it also makes it hard to run away from an opponent as they can easily catch up to you using their speed and kill you. I highly recommend people to use this mod as it benefits you in most ways for PvP and it is also a very clean mod that can be easily useful for everyone.

There are also Mod packs that mostly change Minecraft into a different game as things such as new items, mobs, blocks and much more is included. These are very fun to play along with friends or even by yourself considering that it is like a new adventure as there are many different things to discover and find out. A good example of a mod is crazycraft which is pretty popular for a minecraft youtuber to use in a series and I think that it is really fun to play as there is so much to do compared to regular vanilla minecraft.

Minecraft has different versions which are basically updates which change performance. Minecraft was first released at version 1.0 on the 18^th November  2011, which was where the game was first released to the public and this includes bug fixes that were in beta 1.9 and there were also new sounds and some small changes overall. In version 1.0, they added a lot of blocks that are obtain in the nether such as netherbricks and glowstone and they also added “The End” which is a different world where Minecraft would have an actual ending to the game. This update included new biomes and texture for blocks that were more detailed and made the blocks look a lot more polished and clean.

Minecraft had updated to version 1.1 and it added 56 new languages to the game, there were new world generation options such as “super flat” and they also added spawn eggs which allow you to spawn any mob by right clicking with the spawn egg. Along with this update, there were some more minor changes that help the game as more enchants were added to the game and the mob AI was also improved.

The Minecraft 1.2 update includes features that increase the height of the build limit and it also has new biomes such as jungle biomes. In the abandoned mineshafts, there are now wooden bridges and new mobs and items including bottle o’ enchanting, Redstone lamp, chiselled stone brick, iron golem and ocelot.

Minecraft 1.3 is an update that shows the new adventure mode, adds the aspect of “trading” with villagers and there are also jungle temples and desert temples that have been added into the game. There were also some new items that were added to the game, the enchanting was improved and the difficulty of fighting creepers increased.

Minecraft 1.4 is titled as the “Pretty scary update” as there were new mobs that were added to the game such as the Wither, Wither skeleton, Zombie villagers, Bats and Witches. The AI was also improved which made the mobs a lot more difficult to beat and the damage of their attacks have been increased.

Minecraft 1.5 was the redstone update, this had many updates and improvements that were aimed towards items that revolved around redstone and just how redstone worked in general. This was also when the block of quartz were added in which comes from an ore in the nether and makes a nice looking block. There was also more support on having realistic lighting in the game and also texture packs were made easier and they also supported animated textures.

Minecraft 1.6 was mainly focused horse based things as they were a new feature added to the game. This includes the new feature of resource packs which is similar to a texture pack but in a more compact way which could turn out to be simpler for some people. There were also some new status effects that were added such as health boost, absorption and saturation which are all really useful for playing the game in general.

Minecraft 1.7 introduced many new biomes, flowers, stained glass, better networking, new commands and more. 1.7 added the feature of using a sprint key so you didn't have to double tap to sprint every time. Acacia trees and Dark Oak trees were added to 1.7 which I think were a nice feature because they look very nice in game and I think that a wider variety of trees were needed. The biomes added were: Mesa, Savanna, Sunflower plains, Rooftop forest, Birch forest, Flower forest, Taiga, Mega Taiga, Extreme hills +, Ice plains spikes and Deep ocean. This added a whole new feature a feel to the game of Minecraft as it gave us the option to explore more biomes and other cool stuff which I really enjoy when I play Minecraft now as I see them regularly and I know quite a lot about them.

Minecraft 1.8 was designed to enhance performance of the game and it made it easier for map makers to create adventure maps, it added many blocks, mobs and a structure for survival play, many commands were added or extended, the world boundary was enforced dynamically, many survival mechanics were changed, spectator mode was added, increased performance significantly and added many options for the world customisation. Enchanting was altered as you had to use Lapis lazuli to do enchanted and the level systems worked a little bit differently. Granite, Andesite and Diorite were new blocks added to the game which had a random chance of spawning underground. These blocks aren't really special for anything and are used for decorative purposes. A big thing in this update is the Ocean Monuments, these are underwater ocean temples that are filled with guadians and elder guardians. The elder guardians give you the status effect of mining fatigue which is extremely annoying but you will be rewarded afterwards as you can mine the new blocks inside and you also recieve a wet sponge when killing one.

Minecraft 1.9 is an update that is still in the creation as it has not been released fully to the public but some videos and information has been released about it. It is a combat update that focuses mainly on aspects of PvP and there is also a pretty big update to do with the end. In order to inflict a bigger amount of damage onto a target, you must charge your attack and the longer you charge it, the more damage the hit will actually do. There is also a new method called "Duel wielding" where you can actually use 2 items at the same time as you use both hands rather than just one. This is very useful as you can customise it to a way that would work for yourself. For example, if you're mining, you can use the pickaxe in on hand whilst having torches in the other. Shields have been added to the new update as you can block hits which will wear down the durability for longer but it helps you contain more health. The End has had numerous updates implemented and I think that they are pretty cool. An "End city" is a new dungeon-type structure that is randomly generated in the new outer end islands. There are buildings that resemble a tree house and you can find chest loot and these new block/ mobs called "Shulkers". These will appear as a block at first and then it will move and shoot you which will give a new effect called "Levitation" which will make you rise from the ground for a short amount of time. In End Cities, there are these new things called Chorus trees which will a chrous plant or a chorus flower when broke. Igloos will spawn in ice plains and cold taigas randomly which I think is pretty cool as the biome before seemed pretty empty and plain compared to other biomes.