Minecraft is a game that is so ubiquitous around the world that one could say that it has become a household name. One way to understand its popularity is to look at its gradual progression from being a bare-bones sandbox to becoming a full-fledged franchise. The Minecraft timeline is full of updates, platform ports, and other spin-offs of the original game that all contribute in part its success.
For the scarce number of people unaware of what Minecraft is, it’s a game owned by Mojang Studios best described as a wilderness survival sandbox, where the player builds to survive and then eventually thrive in their environment. The world of Minecraft exists in a 3-dimensional space where every unit of material is represented as a cube on a tightly packed grid, which can be destroyed for resources to construct buildings and equipment.
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These resources are scattered across a randomly generated landscape, including premade villages populated by villagers and mineshafts full of monsters, for the player to sift through. Over the years, the survival mechanics and resource variability has been enhanced through a litany of updates that can be brought together in a comprehensive timeline.
In the beginning, Minecraft was known as “Cave Game” to creator Notch, or Markus Persson, who ran the then indie game company Mojang. In May 2009, Notch released the pre-alpha build known as Minecraft Classic to the public, and it was nothing more than a builder with a couple of block types. Eventually, Classic was given a multiplayer mode for players to show off their creations, and more blocks were slowly added to the game, giving players more flexibility. In October 2009, the skeleton of a survival mode was added to Minecraft to test enemies like spiders, as well as new blocks like TNT.
In June of 2010, Minecraft finally made it to an Alpha build, where Redstone and an independent launcher was introduced. The independent browser would supplant the original internet browser version of the game until it was re-released as Minecraft Classic in 2019.
Mojang continued to add objects, and a survival multiplayer mode, over the course of the year, until it brought Minecraft to its Beta stage in December. The Beta continued to add content well into 2011, which gave the game beds, maps, weather, hunger, experience, generated structures, and a ton of other new things. The final update for Beta, known as the Adventure Update, set the groundwork for Version 1.0 to add The End, which finally gave Minecraft a boss fight and a way to finish the game.
On November 18, 2011, Minecraft finally moves out of Beta and into the 1.0 build. After Minecraft became a solidified game, Mojang immediately moved to begin porting the game to other operating systems and consoles. In fact, Mojang began work on the iOS port for Minecraft a day before Minecraft 1.0. Three months later, Android got the same treatment, as well as the Xbox 360 in 2012, Raspberry Pi in 2013, and Playstation 3 in late 2013. Once ports had been made for consoles and operating systems of the time, Mojang felt it necessary to port it to all major and minor platforms that would be released in the coming years, including VR support for Minecraft.
Between 2011 and 2020, there were 16 major updates that represent the bulk of the changes that Mojang has made to Minecraft. Version 1.1 released in early 2012, adding spawn eggs and reintroducing the beach biome. March 2012 saw the release of Version 1.2, which added new jungle blocks, as well as iron golems and zombie sieges.
Version 1.3 introduced trading with villagers through emeralds and added pyramids in biomes. Version 1.4 was the last update of 2012, and the first named update, being called “the Pretty Scary Update.” Version 1.4 added many things, including the Wither boss and the anvil, which repairs enchanted items. The Redstone Update (1.5) was released in March of 2013 and gave one of the biggest changes to Minecraft by giving the Redstone system an overhaul, while also giving players a streamlined system to set up servers using Minecraft Realms.
The Horse Update (1.6) came in July 2013, with mounts like horses and donkeys, as well as a new attribute system for items and enemies. The Update that Changed the World (1.7) was released in October 2013 and added a total of 31 biomes to the game, as well as various unique resources to populate those biomes. The Bountiful Update (1.8) of 2014 added some new blocks, but most notably it created the spectator mode and more commands for players to create adventure maps more easily.
The Combat Update (1.9), the first of 3 updates in 2016, gave the combat system a complete makeover and also added a ton of content to the End. The Frostburn Update (1.10) added new mobs like polar bears and fossils as well as an auto-jump feature to make scaling inclines easier for players. The Exploration Update (1.11) created new villager professions, new mobs, and biome structures like woodland mansions.
Going forward, major updates to Minecraft were mostly on a yearly basis, the first being the World of Color Update (1.12) in 2017, which gave the color pallet of the game more vibrancy by adding more colorful blocks and parrots. Update Aquatic (1.13) released in 2018, and its purpose was to populate the water biomes with new flora, fauna, and shipwrecks to make them more than just barren wastelands of sand and squid.
Village & Pillage (1.14) and Buzzy Bees (1.15) were both released in 2019, and between them, they added 8 new mobs – including bees, cats, and pillagers – while also creating a ton of new blocks like barrels and smithing tables. The most recent update, the Nether Update (1.16), was released in June of this year, and as the name implies, its purpose was to add a ton of new content to the Nether biome.
Knowing now that, with the exception of 2015, Mojang never stopped adding major content updates to Minecraft, it becomes easy to see why Minecraft is such a popular game. Many players who have observed this timeline have confidence in Mojang because they understand that Mojang won’t abandon Minecraft, and in fact, there is another major update that will be revealed in October.
Minecraft is available now on Mobile, PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.
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