Development
began developing the game as an independent project while working for and later . He was inspired to create Minecraft by several other games such as , , and later . At the time, he had visualized an isometric 3D building game that would be a cross between his inspirations and had made some early prototypes.Infiniminer heavily influenced the style of gameplay, including the first-person aspect of the game, the "blocky" visual style and the block-building fundamentals. However, unlike Infiniminer, Persson wanted Minecraft to have RPG elements.
Minecraft was first released to the public on May 17, 2009, as a developmental release on TIGSource forums, later becoming known as the Classic version. Further milestones dubbed as Survival Test, Indev and Infdev were released between September 2009 and February 2010, although the game saw updates in-between. The first major update, dubbed version, was released on June 28, 2010. Although Persson maintained a day job with Jalbum.net at first, he later quit in order to work on Minecraft full-time as sales of the alpha version of the game expanded. Persson continued to update the game with releases distributed to users automatically. These updates included features such as new items, new blocks, new mobs, survival mode, and changes to the game's behavior (e.g., how water flows).
To back the development of Minecraft, Persson set up a video game company, , with the money earned from the game. On December 11, 2010, Persson announced that Minecraft was entering its beta testing phase on December 20, 2010. He further stated that users who bought the game after this date would no longer be guaranteed to receive all future content free of charge as it "scared both the lawyers and the board." However, bug fixes and all updates leading up to and including the release would still be free. Over the course of the development, Mojang hired several new employees to work on the project.
Mojang moved the game out of beta and released the full version on November 18, 2011. The game has been continuously updated since the release, with changes ranging from new game content to new server hosts. On December 1, 2011, took full creative control over Minecraft, replacing Persson as lead developer.On February 28, 2012, Mojang announced that they had hired the developers of the popular server platform "CraftBukkit" to improve Minecraft 's support of . This acquisition also included Mojang apparently taking full ownership of the CraftBukkit modification, although the validity of this claim was questioned due to its status as an project with many contributors, licensed under the and . On September 15, 2014, announced a $2.5 billion deal to buy Mojang, along with the ownership of the Minecraft . The deal was suggested by Persson when he posted a tweet asking a corporation to buy his share of the game after receiving criticism for "trying to do the right thing." It was completed on November 6, 2014, and led to Persson becoming one of ' "World's Billionaires".
Audio
Minecraft 's music and sound effects are produced by German sound designer . The in Minecraft is non-lyrical . On March 4, 2011, Rosenfeld released a , titled Minecraft – Volume Alpha; it includes most of the tracks featured in Minecraft, as well as other music not featured in the game. The video game blog chose the music in Minecraft as one of the best video game soundtracks of 2011. On November 9, 2013, Rosenfeld released the second official soundtrack, titled Minecraft – Volume Beta, which includes the music that was added in later versions of the game. A physical release of Volume Alpha, consisting of CDs, black vinyl, and limited edition transparent green vinyl LPs, is set to be issued by acclaimed indie electronic label on August 21, 2015.
PlatformsPersonal computer versions
The PC was the original platform for Minecraft; the game runs on multiple including , , and . Apart from the main version, there are other versions of Minecraft available for PC, including Minecraft Classic and Minecraft 4k.
