INITIAL RESEARCH: MINECRAFT

Minecraft is a game which allows players to build with a variety of different blocks in a 3D generated world, requiring creativity from players - making it unique due to the ownership players are able to take. Markus Persson began developing the game as a project; he was inspired to create Minecraft by several other games such as Dwarf Fortress, Dungeon Keeper, and later Infiniminer. Infiniminer heavily influenced the style of gameplay, including the first-person aspect of the game, the "blocky" visual style and the block-building fundamentals. 

Though what made Minecraft the 'cultural phenomenon' is due to its ability to adapt to demand and changing technologies. Originally, Minecraft was a pretty simple video game. The goal you’d originally have when launching Minecraft was to spawn in, survive, and build structures. Though as the structures players created were getting more and more complex, so did the updates that came out. The Minecraft community was originally fairly small. The community began changing more and more as new people started playing the game. Hence, the game was able to adapt to user demand, which is one of the unique features which made the game so popular. Minecraft was first released to the public on 17 May 2009, though by the end of 2017, the game had over 74 million monthly active players. The community has also grown in terms of entertainment. Minecraft’s main factor for growth can almost always be traced back to YouTube. The exposure Minecraft gained from videos online very easily made the video game have trends in what was the most popular type of feature. 

There is one Minecraft game, but three different versions depending on the platform that you play on - computer (Mac or PC), gaming consoles (Xbox One and 360, PS3 and PS4) and pocket edition for mobile devices. This is another factor which has contributed to Minecraft's success as by making the game compatible on different platforms, the company has widened their audience as there is no limits to which platform a user must have to play Minecraft.  

Minecraft is known to have a predominately younger audience, though the game was not specifically created for kids, but there is nothing in the official unmodded game that could really be considered ‘adult content’. The console version is officially rated by the ESRB as E10+ (ages 10 and up), the PE is rated 4+ for iOS (ages 4 and up) and 'low maturity' for Google Play, and the computer version is unrated (but is similar in content to the console version). Like previously stated, one of the main attractions to Minecraft is its unique theme of creativity for the user. Hence children  are often attracted to Minecraft by the chance to be creative in a world of their own creation, in which they’re in control and can decide where to live and when to eat and what to do. 'It’s just the right balance of challenge and reward and fun - not so hard that you give up, but not so easy that it becomes boring.' Often parents find that Minecarft acts as a way for their children to express themselves without the consequences this can sometimes bring in the 'real world' to like-minded people to themselves.