200 million copies sold is a staggering figure, especially for an indie game - Minecraft. Previously, only Tetris could boast of such sales, if you add up its two most popular versions: for Game Boy and mobile platforms. It seems that the creations of Markus "Notch" Persson and Alexey Pajitnov are located side by side in the rating for a reason: these projects have a lot in common.

Both developers started with a seemingly simple concept, inspired by third-party games. These were pentominoes, for the Swede - Dwarf Fortress and Infiniminer. The similarity is noticeable in the primitive technical design, but the lack of bright graphics did not confuse users either in the distant 80s or at the end of the Xbox 360 and PS3 era: in both cases, people only admired the innovative gameplay.

It's a pity that Aleksey managed to come up with Tetris in the wrong place and at the wrong time - otherwise, he would certainly have ensured a comfortable existence for himself for years to come, like his colleague from Sweden. Today we will talk about how a talented enthusiast changed the industry forever with just one game.

The future star of the indie scene fell ill with video games at school age - the reason for this was the Commodore 128 computer donated by his father. Even then, Markus realized that he wanted to devote himself to game development. Notch created his first game at the age of 9: according to him, it was "a text-based adventure where you had to enter extremely precise commands, otherwise you would lose." In addition, the obsession with games allowed the teenager to isolate himself from problems in the family: his parents divorced when he was 12, and his father abused alcohol and drugs. As a result, Persson did not even finish his studies at school and was forced to look for work at a minor age.

Bemorepanda collected some interesting facts.

1. Initially Creeper was not a mob - it appeared as a result of an error when creating a pig. Later, he was retextured and added the ability to explode.

2. The snow golem has a face behind a pumpkin mask.

3. With a 0.01% chance in the main menu instead of a large inscription "Minecraft" the name will appear with the error "Minecraft".

4. The language of the Wanderers of the Edge (Endermen) is English backwards.

5. The workbench in the Minecraft world can be used as a compass - on its northern part there will always be a texture with a saw and a hammer, regardless of the position of the player at the time the block is placed.

6. All cows in Minecraft are female, as they all give milk.

7. A pig can be turned into a zombie pig when struck by lightning.

Having mastered the intricacies of design and copywriting, Markus settled in a small web studio, where he helped with the development of sites. However, due to the subsequent collapse of the IT market, Notch quickly found himself on the street and for some time was completely unemployed. The fateful moment was employment in the Game Federation company, which is responsible for the digital distribution of games. There, Persson met Rolf Jansson, another obsessed gamer, with whom they began to create the multiplayer game Wurm Online in their free time. Developed in Java, this fantasy MMORPG already had elements of the future Minecraft: working closely with other players to build buildings and mine valuable resources. To fight with each other, however, also no one forbade.

In 2004, Markus moved to another company: Midasplayer, later renamed King, where the famous Candy Crush was made. Working on browser games helped Notch improve his knowledge of programming and instilled confidence in himself, so by 2007 the game designer had lost all interest in Wurm Online, and two years later he left Midasplayer due to disagreements with his superiors. Persson found a new job almost immediately, in the same 2009, joining the ranks of the authors of jAlbum, an application for creating online albums. Of course, for Marcus it was just a way to make money - his main passion remained games, as well as the dream of a multiplayer sandbox that would have thundered throughout the industry.

8. And if you hit the Creeper with lightning, it will become charged. The strength and radius of the explosion will be increased.

9. The Enderman cannot be hit by an arrow from a bow, a snowball, or an egg. You can't drop an anvil on it either.

10. However, if you shoot him with an arrow with an effect, then even though the arrow does not hit the mob, he will still receive its effect.

11. The chest cannot be set on fire or moved by a piston.

12. Ifrit caught in the web cannot shoot. He can also be hit with snowballs.

13. The spawning of Slugs depends on the phase of the moon - most of them will be on the full moon, and on the new moon the spawning of Slugs is suspended.

14. The hieroglyphs in the enchantment table are not spontaneously drawn letters, but a real cipher that makes sense.

Freedom of action and construction are two global ideas that haunted the developer. While working at Midasplayer, Notch came across Dwarf Fortress, which combines elements of a roguelike and a building simulator. Subsequently, he created a prototype called RubyDung, which largely repeated the concept of the above game, but in an isometric perspective. Remembering Dungeon Keeper from the notorious Peter Molyneux, Persson dreamed of implementing a first-person view, but in the end he was dissatisfied with the result and put RubyDung on the back burner.

Notch was able to gather all his ideas together and fully start developing the future Minecraft only after he met Infiniminer, released in 2009. Created by American Zachary Barth, the competitive sandbox sent players into teams into a procedurally generated underground world, the goal of which was to mine ore and bring it to the surface.

The blocky structure and the first-person view that Markus couldn't implement properly in RubyDung became exactly the very pieces of the puzzle that he lacked - and then it was all over.

An unpleasant circumstance for Zachary helped Persson speed up development: the Infiniminer source code quickly leaked to the Web. This incident greatly upset Bart - he subsequently abandoned the further development of the game.

15. Creepers, although they do not have arms, are still able to climb stairs.

16. There is a misconception that obsidian cannot be broken by hand. This is not true - in this case, it will take 4 minutes and 10 seconds to destroy it. However, having broken it, it will not fall out, since, accordingly, it can only be mined with a diamond pickaxe.

17. Never sleep in the Lower World. When interacting with the bed, it will explode and you will receive damage.

18. In the earliest versions of the game, skeletons had a small chance to drop a quiver. He was allowed to shoot from a bow without wasting arrows. This item was soon removed, and the Infinity enchantment was added with the same effect.

19. A cactus in the house can be used instead of a trash can - when a dropped item touches it, it disappears.

20. Renaming a mob with a tag using the names "Grumm" or "Dinnerbone" will flip that mob's game model.

As for Notch, he combined the developments borrowed from the American with his own and in the same 2009 posted a test version of Minecraft (then known as the Cave Game) on the TIGSource indie developer forum. The work of the Swede has received a positive response from members of the community, many of whom began to give Marcus advice on how to improve the game. Realizing that things were going to succeed, Notch founded the Mojang studio with Karl Mannech and Jacob Porser, after which he began to actively develop his offspring. However, he abandoned further support for the browser version, later called Minecraft Classic, in favor of a paid client. Access to the latter cost $ 13 - not the most modest amount by the standards of indie. However, the unusual concept and word of mouth did the trick, with Notch selling over 1,000 copies in just a month.

In fairness, we must admit that the first versions of Minecraft were a rather pathetic sight. At first, everything looked like a shameless clone of Infiniminer: two types of objects (grass and cobblestones) and primitive functionality, limited by the ability to mine and place blocks. But with the passage of time and as interest in the project grew, Markus added more and more new features to Minecraft - the survival mode became the most global. The idea to launch the player into a world full of dangers and mysteries, where there is no specific goal, but you need to somehow find food for yourself, was later reflected not only in dozens (if not hundreds) of indie projects, but also in the creations of eminent studios: suffice it to recall though would be The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which managed to radically reinvent the series, including at the suggestion of Minecraft.

In parallel with the release of updates, the fan community also grew rapidly. Unprecedented replay value, multiplied by online multiplayer, paid off: even before the release of the release version on November 18, 2011, 4 million paid copies were sold, and the total number of players was 16 million. It is also worth noting that YouTubers played an important role in the popularization of Minecraft, who flooded video hosting with their let's plays. In addition, players were happy to use modding tools that allowed them to create whatever they wanted in Minecraft: from banal reskins to changes in mechanics. And a year or two after the PC release, the console versions of the sandbox arrived in time - but, alas, without the support of modifications.

21. If you rename a large or medium slug, then after killing it, smaller slugs will also keep the name given to the "ancestor".

22. The most interesting thing about the tags: if you rename the sheep to "jeb_", then it will become iridescent. Jeb_ is the nickname of one of the developers of the game.

23. A little about the developers: Notch and Jeb_ (Markus Persson and Jens Bergensten, respectively) were included in the 100 most influential people in the world in 2013 according to Time magazine.

24. The concept for the black and white cat in Minecraft was Jens's real cat, Newton.

25. The smallest mobs in the game are the turtle baby, the Ender silverfish and the bat.

26. If you die in a battle with Gast, or be in his field of vision at the time of death, then he will still shoot at you until you respawn.

27. Putting a pumpkin on your head, you can easily look at the Wanderers of the Land - they will not attack you.

28. Skeletons usually have a bow in the right hand, but with a 5% chance it can appear in the left.

29. On Halloween (October 31), zombies and skeletons may appear with a pumpkin or Jack O'Lantern on their heads.

30. And on December 24-25, the chests take on a festive Christmas look.

31. If a chicken/pig/cow/sheep are killed while being set on fire, the meat that falls from them will be immediately fried.

32. Rider skeleton will spawn on a spider with a 1% chance.

33. Any spiders are invulnerable to poisoning potion.

34. Cave spiders only spawn near the spawner.

35. A witch cannot burn in lava or drown in water.

36. Endermen take water damage. Moreover, they can be damaged with a water bottle.

37. Initially, potions were supposed to be brewed in cauldrons, but later the method of their creation was replaced with a brewing stand.

38. An iron golem can give villagers or children a flower. This is a reference to the anime Laputa Castle in the Sky.

39. The Iron Golem, along with the Ravager, is the third mob in the game in terms of health (100 HP). In first place is the Wither (300 HP), and in the second place is the Ender Dragon (200 HP).

40. Snowballs can repel Ghast fireballs.

41. A zombie villager can be cured by throwing a potion of weakness at him and right-clicking with a golden apple.

42. If you put a carpet on top of the fence, then you can jump over such a structure, but mobs cannot.

43. It is possible to change the color of the beacon beam. It is enough to put a block of glass of the color you want to paint the beam with.

44. When you find an End Portal, some Ender Eyes will already be framed. Bottom line: there is a one in a trillion chance that all the frames will be filled and the Portal will be immediately activated.

45. Holding a dye and right-clicking on a sign will allow you to change the color of the inscription.

46. The game was not considered complete for another two years. Since the release of Minecraft on PC, Mojang has periodically released updates to the game, only announcing the full version of the game on November 18, 2011.

47. The first name of the toy was not Minecraft. When Persson first started developing the game, he called the project Cave Game. And only after some time it grew into the name Minecraft: first, the project was renamed Order of the Stone (Stone mining), and then, finally, just Minecraft (Mining craft).

48. When was Minecraft created? In 2009, Swedish programmer and designer Markus Persson (better known to fans under the affectionate nickname Notch (Notch)) decided to create a sandbox game that would allow free and easy exploration of the virtual world, and at the same time create his own new company, under named Mojang AB.

49. Persson began work on Minecraft on May 10, 2009 and made the final changes to the game on May 16 of the same year. The alpha version of Minecraft was released the very next day.

50. A very interesting character in Minecraft is Enderman. The speech of this creature is almost incomprehensible to the human ear, but in most of its exclamations, English words and phrases (including "hiya", "here", "this way", "forever", and "what's up?") are voiced in reverse okay.