Minecraft is a block-placing building and adventure game originally created by Markus 'Notch' Persson in 2009. The game was officially released in 2011 and has sold 40 million copies across various platforms.
The game gives the players a randomly generated world consisting of blocks. Each block has its own material and can be gathered as resources, which can be crafted into tools for reaching other, more valuable blocks. The players will then use these new blocks to build houses, castles, mansions, airports, space ships, monuments, or what else they may fancy.
Since the game development started out with a single developer, modern graphics and high-polygon models came in second place, which has led people to call Minecraft things such as "ugly", "looks like its from the 80s", or even "8-bit". This has not stopped people from building amazing and creative structures and contraptions. Some by themselves, but many more in large teams sometimes ranging in the tens of thousands of people.
In his session, Jens will give you an initiation to the world of Minecraft:
- Minecraft's early days and the "classic" Minecraft
- Beautiful, funny, scientific, or simply amazing creations
- How Minecraft is used as an educational tool
- How Minecraft is used to change the world
- The future of Minecraft and modding