by Stone Marshall | Jan 24, 2015 | Minecraft News |
When we talk about YouTube stars it’s often the vloggers that get the bulk of the attention, but now it seems Minecraft gamers are finally getting their due. Gaming is one of the fastest growing corners of the YouTube universe and Minecraft is by far its most popular subgenre. A study released by YouTube parent company Google recently found that Minecraft is the second most searched term on the site after music. Minecraft creators are some of YouTube’s most popular and bankable, despite that fact that many of them don’t even show their faces, preferring to let their elaborate in-game builds or superior game play speak for them. Now a new documentary will recognize some of Minecraft YouTube’s reigning superstars.
Minecraft: Into The Nether will feature some of the biggest names in the game. Minecraft YouTubers and Twitch streamers have built massive followings and hugely successful careers creating content in and around the game. The film will follow Alastair “Ali-A” Aiken, Olajida “KSI” Olatunji and Tom “Syndicate” Cassell, and chart the Minecraft phenomenon through their meteoric rise to online fame. It also promises to provide a behind the scenes look at the life of some of YouTube’s biggest creators. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be a big-name gamer, this documentary is for you.
You can check out the trailer above. The film itself will be available to rent or buy on iTunes starting January 27th.
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by Stone Marshall | Jan 23, 2015 | Minecraft News |
The greatest thing about Minecraft is that it gives players the ability to create almost anything they can imagine. We’re constantly amazed by what the game’s pro-builders can create given unlimited resources and space as well as plenty of free time. We also love seeing some of our favorite characters come to life in Minecraft’s infinite sandbox. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as a Pikachu built to be the size of a Minecraft mountain. Check out this list of our 9 favorite Minecraft cartoon builds:
Bender (Futurama)
Of all the characters on this list I think that the Bender, the foul-tempered robot from Futurama would be the most excited to be immortalized with a sky scraping Minecraft monument. This one comes complete with Bender’s trademark cigar and equally trademark attitude.
Stewie Griffin (Family Guy)
Of course I could be wrong. Stewie Griffin the matricidal baby megalomaniac from Family Guy would probably be pretty excited with this massive pixel-art likeness as well.
Queen Elsa (Frozen)
I purposely didn’t include a ton of pixel-art on this list because I think that generally 3D builds are a little more impressive, but this rendering of Elsa from an obscure movie called Frozen is pretty awesome. The creator obviously worked hard to capture a level of detail that isn’t usually possible with 2-D.
Homer Simpson (The Simpsons)
In the pantheon of influential cartoon characters it’s hard to think of any that are as long-running, influential, or important as Homer Simpson, so I wholeheartedly approve of this massive Minecraft monument to everyone’s favorite dim-wit dad.
Pikachu (Pokemon)
Part of Pikachu’s charm is that he’s a tiny, adorable electric mouse, but this creator obviously decided to render Pikachu just a little tiny bit larger than his actual size. We’ll just chalk it up to his place in the hierarchy of anime characters we love.
Deadpool (Deadpool)
I know I said no more pixel art but I’m a liar and if you don’t know that by now I really can’t help you. Also I couldn’t help myself when it came to this excellent rendering of chibi Deadpool. Someone show this to Ryan Reynolds, we need that Deadpool movie stat!
Mario and Luigi (Super Mario Brothers)
There are few gaming characters more iconic than Pikachu, but if anyone is going to wear the crown then it would have to be the plumber brothers Mario and Luigi, heroes of the Super Mario franchise and all of its many spinoffs, sequels and iterations, including cartoons, live action movies, and more games than we can count. Here they are looming over the Minecraft landscape just like they loom over gaming culture…and our hearts.
Phineas (Phineas and Ferb)
You don’t see too much solo fan art out there for Phineas of Disney’s Phineas and Ferb so naturally we were impressed with this massive Phineas build.
WALL-E (Wall-E)
If there’s one thing that I always want to be prepared for, it’s the inevitable rise of the robot army that will conquer the earth and enslave humanity. Now that YouTube is aiding and abetting the bots it’s only a matter of time and I want to make sure that our eventual robot overlords know that I’ve been on their side all along, so here’s an excellent build of Wall-E to let the robots know I care.
BONUS CONTENT!
Normally I like to stick to the script, I said 9 videos and I meant NINE VIDEOS. However…do you want to see two giant Marios made out of TNT explode? … Do you?
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by Stone Marshall | Jan 22, 2015 | Minecraft News |
The Guinness Book of World Records for gaming in 2015 has been published, which lets us know how crazy and dedicated some modern players are.
If you’ve ever been addicted to an awesome game and then wondered if you’ve ever broken any world records, we have some new information for you (and no, you probably haven’t). The Guinness World Records 2015 Gamer’s Edition is jam-packed with tons of gaming records that you wouldn’t believe, Polygon reports. One of the most impressive? The longest ever marathon play session of Minecraft which took place in Vienna, Austria and lasted a whopping 24 hours and 10 minutes straight. Martin Fornleitner was the lucky (or unlucky, because really that’s a lot of Minecraft) winner of a place in the newest edition of the world records. However, the numbers don’t stop there, so here are some crazy records based on Minecraft alone:
- Best-selling indie game: The original Minecraft by Mojang
- Largest indie game convention: MineCon 2013, where 7,500 people crowded into the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL.
- First country modeled at full scale in a video game: Denmark is the lucky winner having been recreated in April 2014 by the Danish Geodata Agency.
- Largest real-world place created in Minecraft: Surprisingly it’s not Denmark, but instead a map of Britain which the Ordnance Survey created.
- Most concurrent players in one Minecraft world: Yogscast decided to get a little crazy and push Minecraft to its limits when it had 2,622 players online at once on Aug. 1, 2011.
- Most popular game beta: You guessed it, Minecraft, with over 10 million gamers signed up.
- Most Minecraft snow golems built in one minute: We’re not sure where this idea came from, but Brazilian gamer Nachtigall Vaz made it happen with 70.
There are still more awesome Minecraft records that were broken that you can check out by buying The Guinness World Records 2015 Gamer’s Edition for $14.99. If those are the statistics on Minecraft alone, just imagine what other crazy stories about gaming this record book contains.
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by Stone Marshall | Jan 17, 2015 | Minecraft News |
Peter is very interested in Minecraft and is always willing to help somebody else out regardless how it affects him. Peter sits with his grandfather every morning and reads the newspaper.
What is your favorite thing about Minecraft?
The main thing about Minecraft on my XBox 360 is building houses and small villages for my brother. I am a true artist.
What other games do you like to play?
I like to play Rango on my XBox 360. In this game, I am a lizard and I fight off the bad brutes and henchmen, people who are “wanted” by the sheriff’s posse. I also play Quantum 007.
You have a special bond with your Grandpa, what do you enjoy doing with him?
My grandpa is always happy and he loves me with all of his heart. He makes my lunch and he treats me to toys when I do my chores and behave appropriately. My grandparents are very special to me.
Do you know what you want to be when you grow up?
I would like to be a teacher like Ms. Matie. I think I want to teach the big kids because I can teach them everything they need to know.
What do you like most about your school?
I like that we go to recess, sometimes I get to help Mrs. Nahrgang and I love my teacher Ms. Matie.
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by Stone Marshall | Jan 17, 2015 | Minecraft News |
Minecraft is building itself a record-breaking reputation.
You’ll see it’s true for yourself if you read the Guinness World Records 2015 Gamer’s Edition. The block-building and survival-based sandbox game (which is out on just about every non-Nintendo platform imaginable) has tons of records listed in the book, including:
- Best-selling indie game: Total PC and Mac sales for Minecraft are at 16,176,201. Not bad for a studio with just 40 employees.
- Largest indie game convention: 7,500 people attended MineCon 2013 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla., on Nov. 2 to Nov. 3, 2013. That’s a lot of people to gather for an event dedicated to just one game.
- First country modeled at full-scale in a video game: That would be Denmark, which the Danish Geodata Agency re-created in Minecraft to 1-to-1 scale.
- Most popular game beta: Minecraft’s beta had more than 10 million participants when it was active from Dec. 20, 2010 to Nov. 18, 2011
- Most-played Xbox Live game: Players of Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition had spent a total of 1.75 billion hours as of May 2014.
The book also includes Minecraft-specific records, like “most concurrent players in one Minecraft world.” The Guinness World Records 2015 Gamer’s Edition is out now for $15.
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by Stone Marshall | Jan 15, 2015 | Minecraft News |
Minecraft is a lot of different things to a lot of different people; a place to build a word processor, recreate Westeros or trap incredible monsters. For many players it’s simply about survival, which means making sure you have shelter at night, forging armor and weapons with which you can fend off attackers, and somehow finding food to keep your hunger meter full. It’s that last one that presented a problem for me when I picked the game up again recently.
I decided to stop eating meat over a year ago, around the time I turned 25. My family has a history of heart disease, and the way I saw it my life was practically half over. I also really like animals—and not just dogs, although they’re my favorites—and I got tired of killing them for their meat when I know full well there are ample alternatives in our modern society. I had to make a change. I started going to the gym, which hasn’t worked out so well, and I stopped eating meat—which has.
So now I’m a vegetarian, and I’m much happier. But when I started playing the Xbox One edition of Minecraft I found myself in a curious situation: how to play Minecraft successfully without killing any animals?
I wanted to see if I could play Minecraft as I live life: by doing as little harm as possible to my friendly animal neighbors.
When Minecraft arrived on Xbox 360 in 2011 my friends and I delighted for hours and hours in the game’s splitscreen mode, crafting elaborate bases in which we squirreled away our valuables and set traps for one another. We experimented with redstone; I made a complex five-way track switcher—still one of my proudest gaming achievements—with help from a diagram online. We harassed one another constantly, but we played on “peaceful” difficulty so we wouldn’t have to deal with destructive creepers and that pesky hunger meter too.
I did occasionally crank up the difficulty, on Xbox 360 and again later when I built my first gaming PC. I’m not opposed to a challenge—the Souls games are some of my absolute favorites—and I wanted to feel that struggle. But the hunger thing vexed me, and I found myself spending way too much time hunting for pigs whose flesh I could roast for food. It was never long before the chicken drumsticks that represent your hunger started ticking down again, and farming seemed boring, so I eventually went back to peaceful mode and then lost interest in the game for a time.
When the Xbox One version came out I upgraded without thinking, knowing I’d probably get back into it at some point. And my prediction became prophesy when my girlfriend’s Minecraft-obsessed brother came to visit, his laptop in his bag and his pixelated pickaxe never far away. “Two can play that game,” I thought, meaning it literally. So I started it up and, knowing I’d quickly grow bored playing the same way I did three years ago, I selected “normal” difficulty. Daring, I know.
I knew I could spend my time hunting pigs through the woods if I wanted to, but I wanted to see if I could play Minecraft as I live life: by doing as little harm as possible to my friendly animal neighbors.
But I’m also not the first person who’s had this thought. There are Minecraft Forum posts suggesting rules for a vegetarian challenge, and the same can be found on many other online communities. Some thoughtful players simply pose the question: “Do vegetarians avoid killing animals in-game?” One respondent says that any who do can’t tell the difference between reality and fantasy, which I don’t necessarily agree with. Imposing your own external rule set on a game is nothing new; it’s called a metagame, and it’s common in communities ranging from competitive first-person shooter players to avid Pokémon trainers.
That’s how I saw my own Minecraft vegetarian challenge: as an extra set of rules that I hoped would force me to play the game more creatively and, ultimately, have more fun.
In the interest of honesty I have to admit that I got off to a rough start when I really quit eating meat back in 2013. I cheated. A few weeks in I drunkenly gorged myself on some home-smoked BBQ pulled pork, and for months I’d regularly eat fish, saying it was to ween myself off meat gradually, like a smoker chewing nicotine gum. I’ll still eat fish very occasionally, in sushi, because I really, really like sushi.
My experience in Minecraft was similar. Although I didn’t have to resort to eating meat or even fish, I did cheat. I’d done a bit of research before starting my challenge in Minecraft, and had decided to start by farming wheat I could bake into bread. But the wheat seemed to take forever to grow, and in the meantime I was mining resources and trying to stay alive with just a single half heart because my hunger meter was constantly empty. I’d fall a few feet off a ledge and die instantly. It’s a pretty great analogy, actually.
I had spawned and made my base in a jungle environment, so there were plenty of animals around. They proved a temptation—just until my crops started to grow!—but I resisted, instead abusing the game’s generous save system. I did this a lot during those first few hours, making a bit of progress, getting killed by an errant mob or a careless step, and reloading to a few minutes earlier. That probably explains why I felt like the wheat wasn’t growing, but sitting around waiting for it was like watching low-res paint dry, and I was determined to have fun.
So just like in life, I eventually found a rhythm. The wheat did grow, and I quickly baked more bread than I could carry. I planted a mushroom farm in a dark corner of my mine so I could make stew. I eventually found a carrot on a zombie (I still don’t really get why, but that’s Minecraft) and I started multiplying those in the ground too. I added sugarcane to my farm so I could make cakes and cookies—you have to treat yourself sometimes—and I planted two rows of pumpkins, though you can’t even eat them. I just like the way they look on my farm (update: apparently I can make pumpkin pie! Yay! Thanks commenters).
I don’t think any of the blocky cows and sheep that wander near my jungle home are aware of the fate they avoided when I spawned into their world instead of some other player
Yes, I’m now, for the first time, a self-sustaining Minecraft player. It turns out challenging yourself pays off.
I don’t think any of the blocky cows and sheep that wander near my jungle home are aware of the fate they avoided when I spawned into their world instead of some other player, but that’s part of the beauty of animals. They’re wonderfully naive. I did befriend a dog, using bones from a hostile skeleton—it was self defense!—and I’ve been trying to tame a cat, though just like in real life that’s significantly more challenging. I’m feeding it fish, which I count as the natural order.
I do object on some level to the hunger meter being represented by those flesh popsicles, which look less appetizing to me with every day I spend not indulging in them. If I was on PC I could probably mod those out, but oh well. I’m on the right track, and I’m not going to start over now.
Every time I pick Minecraft back up I discover something new that I love about it. I think that’s one of the reasons why it’s remained so popular for so long: there’s always more to discover. And I’ve still barely mined the surface. I’m building a picturesque home block-by-block, and I have a minecart track with some simple redstone mechanisms to take me between my farm and house and mines. But I’ve never brewed a potion, or traded with a villager, or defeated the Ender Dragon or the Elder Guardian (or even seen them, for that matter).
I’m excited to keep playing and discover everything that’s been added since the last time I was into Minecraft, and there are definitely lots of unknowns. But one thing I am certain of is that I’ll never again find myself chasing a pig through the woods with a sword in Minecraft.
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There are few gaming characters more iconic than Pikachu, but if anyone is going to wear the crown then it would have to be the plumber brothers Mario and Luigi, heroes of the Super Mario franchise and all of its many spinoffs, sequels and iterations, including cartoons, live action movies, and more games than we can count. Here they are looming over the Minecraft landscape just like they loom over gaming culture…and our hearts.
