Minecraft could easily be considered one of the most influential video games of all time. It is to millennial kids what Mario was to Generation X, and perhaps even greater than that. However, the cultural impact of Minecraft can’t be pinpointed on any particular iconic character (except maybe the creeper), but rather an amalgamation of distinct trends.
In this article, we’re going to examine the various cultural impacts of Minecraft on not just the gaming community, but in real life areas as well.
Minecraft in Pop and Gaming Culture
Due to the popularity of Minecraft over the years, it has been featured in numerous pop-culture scenarios. It has been the subject of parody in cartoons such as South Park and The Simpsons, written about extensively in journals like the New York Times (“The Minecraft Generation”) and Business Insider, and a Minecraft film is expected to be released in 2022. Furthermore, an annual MineCon (Minecraft convention) has been held since 2011, and tickets typically sell out within hours.
Minecraft has also had a huge impact on video game culture. While there are a ton of Minecraft ‘clones’ out there (also known as voxel games), many unrelated game genres have paid homage to Minecraft through easter eggs or outright references, including in popular titles like Torchlight II, Skyrim, Borderlands 2, and more.
There also exist a ton of browser games that are inspired by or pay tribute to Minecraft. On this directory of games inspired by Minecraft on CrazyGames, you’ll find titles like Krunker.IO and Worldz, which are actually first-person shooters that have nothing to do with the original gameplay, but the game graphics are heavily inspired by Minecraft (this is also known as voxel graphics). You can also find browser versions of the original Minecraft gameplay, such as Minecraft Classic found here.
For example, in Skyrim, players can find a secret pickaxe (one of the main tools in Minecraft) named ‘Notched Pickaxe’, a reference to the online username of Minecraft creator Markus ‘Notch’ Persson.
Livestream Gaming
Minecraft may not be the most watched game on Twitch, but it is certainly one of the longest-running games to be popular on various streaming platforms. Minecraft has had its ups and downs in popularity, but it has consistently remained one of the top games to be streamed over the years, and has had significant impact on stream culture.
Popular streamers have also contributed to the success of Minecraft. As a very recent example, famous livestreamer Pewdiepie has caused a massive surge in Minecraft popularity over the past few months as he’s been creating his own Minecraft videos. Minecraft was at an all-time low in viewership throughout 2018, yet Pewdiepie’s videos alone have caused Minecraft popularity to soar higher than ever on Twitch.
YouTube has also contributed massively to the success of Minecraft, as some of the most popular Minecraft-related videos have received hundreds of millions of views.
The LetsPlay channel for Minecraft alone has 73 million views. Arguably, YouTube has contributed more to the success of Minecraft than Twitch, but either way, Minecraft remains one of the most-watched games whether it’s live streaming or pre-recorded video.
Classroom education
While Minecraft is primarily known as a creative sandbox game, it has offered immense benefits to classroom settings as an education tool. For starters, there an official Minecraft: Educational Edition, which offers hundreds of lesson plans in math, history, geography, and more. Classrooms can download Minecraft maps that are replicas of real-world locations, allowing the classroom students to explore real-world landmarks within the Minecraft game.
For example, this replica of the city of Florence, Italy, offered as a History and Culture lesson plan, features landmarks such as the Piazza degli Uffizi, Piazza della Signoria, the Museo Novecento, and more. This is a much more fun way of exploring world culture, rather than photographs in a textbook.
Minecraft: Educational Edition isn’t just limited to elementary classrooms, however, as its been successfully used in college scenarios. For example, a mod known as “Polycraft World” has been used to teach chemistry to college students, and it was demonstrated that the students were able to learn chemistry using only the Minecraft game, without any in-class instruction.