YT YouTube2Text

YouTube2Text → Transcripts → How Minecraft Was Made

How Minecraft Was Made — Transcript

by neo · 3,107 words · 440 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

Open in transcriber Summarize with AI Download SRT/VTT

Full transcript

0:00- [Narrator] On a normal evening in 2009,
0:03a man gets home from work and boots up his computer.
0:07His name is Markus Persson,
0:09but he often goes by his screen name, Notch.
0:14Based in Stockholm, Sweden,
0:15Persson spends his evenings developing passion projects,
0:19fun coding exercises that sometimes
0:21end up as completed video games,
0:24but more typically become abandoned after a short time.
0:28But what he doesn't know
0:29is that the file he starts today
0:32will change the gaming industry forever
0:35and will make him one of the wealthiest suites in the world.
0:39This is the making of "Minecraft."
0:42(gentle electronic music)
0:47In the very beginning,
0:48the game that Persson was creating
0:50wasn't called "Minecraft."
0:52It was called "RubyDung,"
0:54based on the two main elements of the game,
0:56the Ruby Lands and the Dungeons.
1:00- [Markus] "It's going to be a fantasy group manager.
1:03You don't actually do any quests yourself,
1:05but rather assemble, equip and level up heroes,
1:08and send among quests you've gotten them the local town."
1:11- [Narrator] Persson created a texture atlas,
1:14which is essentially one large image file
1:16that contains lots of smaller textures.
1:19Initially, this atlas only contained two textures,
1:22grass and cobblestone.
1:24Using these elements,
1:25he created a digital landscape filled with trees.
1:30Next up, Persson wanted to implement a first person view
1:33of the heroes going on their quests,
1:36but quickly he realized
1:38that it was becoming too pixelated and blurry.
1:43Frustrated that he couldn't get all of the features
1:46just quite right, Persson scrapped the idea,
1:49not realizing that he had just created the first prototype
1:53for what would later become "Minecraft."
1:56One major limitation
1:57was that he could only work on his games
2:00during the limited free time after his day job.
2:04He worked as a programmer at Midas Player,
2:07the Swedish game developers
2:08that would later go on to create "Candy Crush."
2:11However, his bosses at Midas Player
2:14were unsupportive of Persson's hobby,
2:17and once they discovered
2:18that he was making his own games in his free time,
2:21they felt that there was a competing interest
2:23and they barred him from continuing making his own games.
2:28But Persson couldn't be stopped.
2:31Rather than comply, he decided to quit his job
2:34in order to continue working on his own passion projects,
2:38and he found a new job with the software company jAlbum,
2:42where he befriended the CEO Carl Manneh.
2:45JAlbum was not a game studio,
2:48but a company that made digital photo album software.
2:51And Carl Manneh not only didn't mind
2:53what Persson did in his free time,
2:55but instead he actively encouraged him
2:58to continue designing games.
3:03At this point, RubyDung still sat on the shelf,
3:06a scrap project with little more development.
3:11That is until April, 2009
3:13when Persson came across a new game
3:16that would change everything for him.
3:18The game was called "Infiniminer."
3:22"Infiniminer" is a multiplayer game
3:24where players team up against other players
3:27to dig blocks in search of minerals.
3:30As blocks are dug up, they can then be used
3:33to create structures to impede other teams.
3:36Though the objective of the game
3:39was to mine up more minerals than your opponents,
3:42players quickly abandoned that goal
3:45and instead realized it was much more fun
3:47to just build things.
3:50But despite the game's enormous potential,
3:53its development was plagued with difficulties.
3:58Zachary Barth, the original creator of "Infiniminer,"
4:01had intended to create a large network of players,
4:04but with the game's code
4:06constantly being modified and rewritten,
4:09the game soon fragmented its user base
4:12as the different versions of the game
4:14weren't compatible with each other.
4:16Frustrated, Barth decided to abandon the project as a whole
4:20and the game's code became open source.
4:26The first time Persson tried "Infiniminer,"
4:28he immediately had an epiphany
4:30that this was the game he wanted to do,
4:33and he had lots of ideas of how he could make it better.
4:38He sat back down with the previously abandoned "RubyDung"
4:41and got to work tweaking it
4:43into the new vision he had in his head.
4:46Reusing his existing textures, Persson took a full weekend
4:51to rework some of the coding and art style.
4:54He called his creation "Cave Game"
4:57and with just a little more work,
4:58it moved from just a test to a working prototype.
5:02Now all he needed were players
5:04and he had a plan for where he could get some early testers.
5:10Just a few weeks prior,
5:12Persson joined an online indie game forum called TIGSource.
5:17Here, developers can receive feedback from other developers
5:21on games they are creating.
5:23Persson began discussing with others in the community
5:27who quickly suggested a new name for the project,
5:31"Minecraft: Order of the Stone,"
5:34named for the two actions you could do in the game,
5:37mining and crafting.
5:39Though Persson would later drop the subtitle from the name.
5:45He then decided that this forum
5:46would be the best place to start getting early players
5:49and have some immediate feedback
5:51for how he could continue developing the game.
5:54And so on May 17th, 2009,
5:57he shared the first link
5:59that would allow others in the forum
6:01to begin play testing the game.
6:05- [Narrator 2] In "Minecraft," it's an alpha version,
6:07so there might be some crashes.
6:11- [Narrator] Just 12 minutes after he posted the link,
6:14the first person provides feedback.
6:16- [Player] "Oh hell, that's pretty cool.
6:19I just dig around on the ground a bit
6:20and suddenly I'm in this underground cave.
6:23Great sense of exploration already."
6:27- [Narrator] Just three minutes later, the next reply.
6:30- [Player 2] "The animations are fantastic.
6:32It's generally really derivative at the moment
6:34of 'Infiniminer.'"
6:37- [Narrator] Quickly, more and more people are downloading,
6:40providing feedback and above all, praise.
6:45And though the forum was made for feedback,
6:47players couldn't resist posting the things they have made.
6:51And since people were showing off screenshots
6:52of their creations,
6:54more and more people were encouraged to jump in
6:56and give it a try themselves.
6:59The community also had plenty of feedback
7:01for features that could make "Minecraft" even better,
7:05and Persson was on it, updating his blog nearly every day
7:09with the progress he was making
7:10on adding many of the ideas presented.
7:15- [Markus] "I plan on having several game modes,
7:18creative, survival, team survival, a fortress."
7:24- [Narrator] Though players were consistently
7:25finding the gameplay addicting in this early stage,
7:29there was no way to save what they had built.
7:32There was also no way to play with friends
7:34or to play on maps that others had created.
7:39Persson would often sit down with the intention
7:41to add these commonly requested elements to "Minecraft,"
7:45but he would repeatedly get distracted
7:47due to the challenges of implementing multiplayer
7:50and instead would focus on more fun features.
7:54- [Markus] "Okay, multiplayer was boring, but here's water.
7:59Should 'Minecraft' have blood?
8:02No, blood is overused."
8:06- [Narrator] Next up was adding multiplayer,
8:08which would take quite some time.
8:10But Persson was determined to get it up and running,
8:13though not without some more side projects along the way
8:17and more challenges to overcome.
8:19- [Markus] "So I didn't do multiplayer code, but I had fun.
8:24Multiplayer will be in the form of a downloadable server,
8:27which will broadcast its IP
8:29to the main server when it starts up.
8:34Ugh, I feel stupid.
8:36Server admins could host any data
8:37they want on their servers.
8:39This means anything, including bad things.
8:45Multiplayer's starting to go good.
8:48I've got player connect/disconnect going
8:51and map streaming on login."
8:54- [Narrator] With the release of multiplayer,
8:56nearly a month had passed
8:57of constant updates, fine-tuning and debugging
9:01since "Minecraft" was first introduced
9:03to the TIGSource community.
9:06And Persson realized
9:07that his passion project could be much more
9:09than just a game he was making as a hobby.
9:12If it was going to continue to grow like this,
9:15it was time to put a price tag on it and go commercial.
9:21Though today, it may seem completely normal
9:23that an indie developer sells their game
9:26rather than releasing it for free,
9:28this wasn't actually the case in the late 2000s.
9:31The expected practice rather,
9:33was to release a game as freeware
9:35and to make money through the use of ads.
9:38Persson, however, came up with a different plan.
9:42Having seen how valuable
9:43the direct feedback from the forum has been,
9:46he designed his pricing to reward early adopters.
9:50And despite the warning
9:51that people wouldn't pay for such a game,
9:54sales started coming in almost immediately.
9:58Persson even started seeing such a high influx in his income
10:02that his PayPal account was frozen due to suspected fraud.
10:07It was also enough that he was able
10:09to change his status from full-time to part-time at jAlbum,
10:13allowing him to spend even more time
10:15on developing "Minecraft."
10:18Month after month, Persson followed the same process,
10:22listening to feedback from those who were playing,
10:24implementing more features that were commonly requested
10:28and fixing any bugs that were reported.
10:31He also during this time met another person
10:34on the TIGSource forum
10:35that could help him with the game's sound design.
10:40Daniel Rosenfeld is a musician and sound engineer,
10:44and he began to collaborate with Persson
10:46to provide sound effects for "Minecraft"
10:49as well as produce the iconic soundtrack
10:52that is still used to this day.
10:58By 2010, sales of "Minecraft" had grown to the point
11:01where Persson was able to quit his part-time job
11:03with jAlbum altogether.
11:05And it was clear that as "Minecraft" continued to expand,
11:09Persson would need an actual business structure
11:11to handle the explosive growth.
11:14But since he was uninterested
11:16in actually running a business,
11:18he decided to call in some help.
11:21First was a friend and colleague from Persson's old days
11:24at Midas Player, Jakob Porser.
11:29Second was yet another colleague,
11:32but this time from jAlbum, the former CEO Carl Manneh.
11:37Together, the three would establish the company
11:39that would officially back "Minecraft," Mojang.
11:44Persson was no longer working from home,
11:47but had built a small team.
11:50The game was still not officially finished,
11:52but it already became immensely popular amongst players.
11:57And by August of 2010,
11:59Minecraft had grown enough to catch the attention
12:01of other much larger game developing companies,
12:06such as Valve.
12:08Persson was invited for meeting to the headquarters
12:11of the gaming giant in Bellevue, Washington,
12:14and he accepted the meeting halfway across the world.
12:18And while there, Persson thought he could also meet
12:20some "Minecraft" fans.
12:24- [Markus] "I have all day on August 31st free in Bellevue
12:28if you guys could organize something on the forums,
12:31and I figured we could call it MinecraftCon 2010,
12:35even if it's just three people sitting around
12:37in uncomfortable silence for 20 minutes."
12:41- [Narrator] During the meeting with Valve,
12:42the company offered Persson a position.
12:45However, he decided to turn the offer down
12:48as his focus was solely on Minecraft.
12:52After these negotiations, however,
12:54Persson joined a small gathering of people
12:56that had come around because of his blog post.
13:01A little more than 50 people turned up
13:04to hang out in a park,
13:07a meetup that would go down as the very first MinecraftCon,
13:13and this spontaneous event
13:15would give the Mojang team an idea.
13:18By the end of 2010,
13:19"Minecraft" had reached over 700,000 sales,
13:23and yet by this point,
13:24"Minecraft" was still technically not a finished game.
13:28It was still in its beta phase,
13:31but Mojang's development team
13:32was close to finishing the actual release.
13:36With so much hype already built around the game,
13:39Mojang knew they needed some fanfare
13:41to go along with the game's launch.
13:44And in November, 2011,
13:46they decided to host an official MineCon.
13:52This time, instead of an impromptu gathering of 50 people,
13:56it would be a sold out organized event with 4,500 attendees.
14:02And in quintessential early 2010s fashion,
14:05this Minecraft convention had a party DJ'd by Deadmau5.
14:09(bouncy music)
14:14All of this would be leading up to the grand finale
14:17of MineCon 2011,
14:19the official release of the game.
14:22As the Mojang team gathered on stage,
14:25Persson would stand by a large blocky lever,
14:28and with one pull, "Minecraft" was officially launched
14:32as a finished project.
14:39Even though the game was now finished,
14:41the team would continue working on it, releasing updates,
14:44and adding new features even until today.
14:48But for a Persson himself, it was the end of a chapter.
14:51After two years of continuous work on "Minecraft,"
14:54he was ready to move on to other projects
14:57in order to get back to what he loved doing most, coding.
15:01And so just two weeks
15:03after "Minecraft"'s official release,
15:05Persson decided to step down from his position
15:07as lead developer of "Minecraft."
15:12With Jens Bergensten now at its helm,
15:15"Minecraft" continued to flourish,
15:17but Persson didn't get the rest he was hoping for.
15:21Still perceived as the maker of "Minecraft,"
15:23players continued to send any issues
15:25they encountered to him,
15:27and he was flooded by complaints.
15:30For a long time,
15:31he would attempt to ignore the negative feedback
15:33that he could do nothing about
15:35until it finally came to a head in 2014.
15:40As the popularity of "Minecraft" continued exploding,
15:43an inevitable feature from players began to emerge,
15:46pay to win.
15:48Mojang has always allowed public servers to be created
15:51so that players around the world
15:52can play the same map together.
15:55However, this opened a door for some to take advantage
15:58and create servers where players
16:00have to spend money to gain an advantage.
16:03These pay to win services
16:05violated the end user license agreement of "Minecraft,"
16:08which is why in a controversial move,
16:11Mojang began to crack down on these servers
16:14and gave them a deadline to either adapt or to shut down.
16:20Following this statement by Mojang,
16:22there was immense negative feedback.
16:24And though Persson was no longer working on "Minecraft,"
16:27he still received the bulk of the criticism.
16:30In frustration, he sent out a tweet on June 17th, 2014,
16:36that would change the direction of Mojang forever.
16:40- [Markus] "Anyone want to buy my share of Mojang
16:42so I can move on with my life?
16:44Getting hate for trying to do the right thing
16:46is not my gig."
16:48- [Narrator] The very next day,
16:49Manneh began fielding calls from companies
16:51that wanted to know if Persson was serious,
16:54including studio giants EA, Activision and Microsoft.
16:59And after giving it a thought,
17:01Persson realized he actually was serious
17:02about selling Mojang
17:04so that he could finally distance himself completely.
17:08And after several rounds of negotiations, a deal was struck.
17:13- Mojang has confirmed it's being sold to Microsoft
17:15for $2.5 billion.
17:18- [Narrator] The deal with Microsoft
17:20meant that the Mojang founders Persson, Manneh,
17:22and Porser would step away completely,
17:25whereas all of their employees would be barred from layoffs.
17:29The Microsoft deal was worth a staggering $2.5 billion.
17:34And as the major shareholder of Mojang,
17:36Persson had become a billionaire overnight.
17:41(upbeat electronic music)
17:44This is the part of the script
17:45that should have been the easiest to write.
17:48After all, it's a classic happy ending.
17:51Persson had achieved the unthinkable.
17:54He turned his passion project started at home
17:56into an empire, becoming wealthier than he ever imagined.
18:00In the following years,
18:02Persson would continue developing games
18:04and he would do what billionaires do,
18:06moving to Los Angeles
18:08and buying the most expensive mansion
18:10ever built in Beverly Hills, hosting extravagant parties.
18:15Meanwhile, "Minecraft" continues to thrive.
18:18With over 300 million sales,
18:20it is to this day the most sold video game ever made.
18:27But yet, this is the part of the script for this video
18:30that was by far the hardest to write.
18:34In 2017, a series of racist and homophobic tweets
18:38led to Microsoft distancing itself from Persson.
18:42They scrubbed his name from the game
18:44and did not invite him
18:45to the 10th anniversary celebration of "Minecraft."
18:50Persson's tweets were bad, really bad,
18:54and they have significantly impacted
18:56his legacy in recent years.
19:03For me, the hard part about writing this section
19:06is figuring out how to talk about someone's harmful comments
19:09without making things worse.
19:12In situations like this,
19:13it often feels like there are two paths someone can take.
19:17The easy path is the one
19:18where they double down on their harmful views,
19:20find a crowd that supports them.
19:23But then there is the hard path,
19:25acknowledging the mistakes, learning from them,
19:26and making an effort to change.
19:29And the easier we make it for people
19:31to take this second path, the more might take it.
19:35Markus Persson's story is undeniably inspiring.
19:38There are few stories that highlight as well as this
19:40how powerful a good idea is
19:42and how much creativity can flourish
19:45within constraints as his.
19:48And more than anything, he has created a world
19:50that I've always experienced as incredibly inclusive.
19:56When is "Minecraft" the most fun?
19:59Is it when you open a new world,
20:00starting to build something new from scratch?
20:04Or is it when you've built an empire
20:06and when you have an abundance of everything there is?
20:10Markus Persson is now in that second stage of life.
20:14(mouse clicking)
20:19When I first started this channel,
20:21I never could have imagined
20:22it would lead to making videos like this.
20:25I got to hire an actor, build out a set,
20:28and even rent a sound stage
20:31in order to make this story come to life.
20:34And over the course of the last years,
20:36I have produced my most ambitious productions yet.
20:40My video series called Under Exposure,
20:43each episode a unique gripping story
20:47that I believe deserves to be highlighted.
20:51The series name Under Exposure is intentional.
20:55An underexposed image is a photograph
20:57that captures too few details in the shadows.
21:01But in my series,
21:02we will bring these shadowy aspects to life
21:06to find out what really happened
21:08on the top floor of the Bin Laden compound,
21:12why flight MH17 crashed over Eastern Ukraine.
21:16Or look at the remarkable story
21:19of how two families escaped a dictatorship
21:22using only a self-made hot air balloon.
21:26This entire series is available exclusively on Nebula,
21:30which is a creator-owned streaming service
21:32where the likes of Johnny Harris, Wendover Productions,
21:36or Real Life Lore post their videos early ad-free
21:39and create higher budget originals,
21:42such as my original series.
21:44So go to nebula.tv/neo
21:48and make sure that you use exactly this link
21:50in order to get 40% off the annual plan.
21:54All my exclusive videos are up there,
21:56so thanks for the support
21:57and thank you so much for watching this video.

About this transcript

This page contains the full transcript of How Minecraft Was Made by neo, generated from the public captions YouTube serves with the video. The transcript has 3,107 words across 440 segments, with the original timestamps preserved so you can click any line to jump to that moment in the embedded player.

What you can do with it

Use the transcript to take notes, quote the speaker, build a study guide, generate a summary with ChatGPT or Claude via the YouTube Summary tool, or export it as a timed subtitle file with YouTube to SRT. You can also re-open it in the transcriber to translate the transcript into 100+ languages.

Free YouTube transcript tool

YouTube2Text is a free YouTube transcript generator — no signup, no daily limit. Paste any YouTube link and get the full transcript instantly, with timestamps, click-to-jump, translation to 100+ languages, AI prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and exports to TXT, SRT, VTT, or Markdown.