User:Reverse88/Minecraft community

This article is about everything related to the community created around the Minecraft video game.

Definitions
1). Conglomerate of people who collectively contribute in one way or another to the permanence of the Minecraft video game in the collective imagination, especially on the internet, by generating new content beyond the official media of the company that owns the game.

2). Group of people whose particular taste for videogames encourages them to act as a community to generate and share content related to the common theme.

Something in common
The huge popularity of the game has caused an immense number of people of different nationalities, ages, and identities to participate more or less actively in the community, the way in which they generate said contribution varies enormously from one individual to another, since the amount of content that can be created from the main theme is inexhaustible.

Virtually all minimally popular products have a fan base or a community that intends to devote some of their time to that product or its fandom, but few can boast such a sizeable following.

Demographics
Although the variety of people in the community is considerable, involving people from all continents, it should be noted that there are still clear majorities in terms of active players and amount of content generated, fortunately, there are exact censuses regarding this kind of figures. Below is a table that represents the number of active servers per country, all countries that do not appear have at least 4 active servers, it should be noted that this does not consider servers of all kinds and apparently does not take into account servers for pirate accounts.

Many obvious things can be highlighted, as well as the fact that the English-speaking community is one of the ones that seems to contribute the most in this aspect, that of server maintenance, it should also be noted that apparently these figures handle the players of the java version exclusively, This implies that they do not provide us with a very complete overview of the matter, it would be worth reviewing the sources themselves found on the page on which this information is built, everything discussed here concerns the figures extracted between 2021 and 2022.



Projects
As stated before, members of the community are constantly producing a vast amount of various content, much of which also exists in most other communities on internet:

On mod creation:
Early on, a sector of the community was committed to developing free modifications for the game, developers or groups of developers who are dedicated to creating their own additions to the game, some consistent with the aesthetics and main theme of the game, others not so much, what is a fact is the immense variety of works that the community has created by these means.

In many cases these projects are maintained thanks to donations made by other players, many of these teams or developers usually have their own spaces to give news and updates about their project, such large and recognized platforms have been created on this idea like forge, a page for the publication of mods that has its own section for minecraft, this is where many moders establish the development of their projects, the program has a list of mod version history, the number of downloads and a space for comments, among other really useful sections.

The amount of things that these mods cover is also unmentionable by its quantity, but if we reduce it it would be possible to categorize it, so we know that independent developers take pains to add:

Some mods grow enormously in popularity until they are known practically by the entire community, others are constant and with small niche groups, many are based on different elements, for example, some are created from existing concepts in series, movies or other video games, others are the product of the imagination of their author or group of authors, aspiring to do things that they always wanted to see implemented in the game but that the official developers never implemented.
 * New creatures.
 * New mechanics.
 * New tools.
 * New biomes.
 * Performance improvements.
 * New decorative blocks.
 * New customization systems for the aesthetics of the game.
 * A lore.
 * New mechanics for multiplayer.
 * Nuevas mecánicas para el multijugador.

In the same way, some mods become known for the relentlessness of their mechanics and development, even standing out before the official developers themselves, they exist.

Of course Forge is not the only platform nor the only launcher modifier for mods, it is definitely the best known, although others are not far behind, having fabric as a great example, so much so that at a certain point the community speculated that the latter would outperform forge.

The mods usually advance with the development of the game itself, but not at the same rate, highlighting that many players remain in old versions for convenience or because their favorite mods got stuck in some version already outdated, currently we can highlight three versions that represent very well this point, 1.12, 1.16 and 1.18, about the first, many high quality but old generation mods ended up getting stuck in this version, either because the project was abandoned or due to technical limitations, other mods remain in this version same version to this day, but its development is not frozen and they wait to be updated to more recent versions, something similar happens with 1.8, where many mods seem trapped in a limbo from which many do not escape and are forgotten, then we have the 1.16 mods, these are under active development but not looking to upgrade to newer versions all at once or simply looking to stay in the current version, it is not easy to give specific figures, but it would not be strange to suspect that the vast majority of mods oscillate between staying in this version or advancing to 1.18, finally, the aforementioned version, being the last one, is in the where the latest generation mods are found, adapted to all recent developments, most of these are still under development and plan to be extended to future versions.

If the reader wishes to follow up on the data adjusted to his own temporal context, he is suggested to review the page hosted in the second space of the references of this article, since the figures presented here to exemplify will be obsolete in the long term, at least in the more specific aspects, on the other hand we can even bet that even with the passing of the years, Asia and the English-speaking countries together with Europe will continue to be the ones with the largest number of active servers and players.

Texture packs:
Texture packs are elements that allow you to directly modify the appearance of the game, including all internal or external elements in relation to gameplay, practically most of them are created and distributed on the internet by the community itself, either to generate new settings for the game or just to allow for further customization, these texture packs can also contain audio modifications and others give new animations if used in conjunction with mods like optifine.

Fanarts, music and animations:
As in other internet communities, minecraft players have also been in charge of producing a huge number of works or illustrations (mainly digital), these are usually distributed in the different social networks that allow it, here also include crafts, compositions musicals or animations, the characters or elements of the game have been illustrated and interpreted by artists from different places, the great variety of works of different nature (some reach +18) is simply indescribable for the purposes of this article, so the reader is encouraged to take a look to appreciate some of these colorful creations of the community.

Video games and mods inspired by minecraft:
On the internet, many independent developers have undertaken their own projects completely based on some premise or idea of the minecraft game, others have been in charge of creating modifications for other games based on minecraft itself, on the first point, we can mention some games that transform the title in a 2d and aerial version of itself, other less usual examples would be visual novel games inspired by the most popular mobs, dating games where the player can interact with female and anthropomorphic versions of creatures like the creeper.

Similarly, there are mods for hundreds of games that allow them to use skins derived from minecraft mobe or players (this last one would end up being a mob).

The game wiki:
The game has its own online encyclopedia, where users update and correct information regarding the game, these articles are in various languages and can be read or edited by anyone on the internet, in general, the idea is to collect as much accurate information about the game as possible.

Content creators on YouTube:
Both in the English-speaking sphere and in the Spanish-speaking sphere there is a colossal variety of content creators who are dedicated in part or totally to upload videos about this video game, it is important to mention this point since the relationship between the growth of minecraft and the platform of YouTube is something inseparable, the platform found abundant content usually suitable for all audiences, while content creators found a way to dedicate themselves to what they liked the most, in short, it is true to admit the mutual importance that exists between these two elements, about the currently generated content we can highlight some such as: Reviews of the new versions, survival series on servers, survival series at a technical level, animations about the game, etc.

Communities by platform
The minecraft video game was widely differentiated depending on which device it was run on, in the past, there was an independent version for each old generation console, one for computers (java), another for mobile devices (which came to be implemented in devices such as smart watches ), another for windows devices (which would be the future bedrock edition). In this way, many of these platforms congregated in small communities differentiated from the others, but all within the game community itself, each one made known its own "influencers", its own content, its own modifications or mods, among others. a long etcetera, here we will briefly portray some differences between the most notable platform communities as well as a brief summary of them.

Communities pre-bedrock edition
Java edition: Probably the most popular edition of the game in terms of the proportion of content that is on it, suitable for operating systems: Windows, Linux and Mac, this being the edition ' The original'' of the game, the one that Notch and his team created before any other, has a good number of mods available and it is well known that these mods are the highest quality among all the other platforms so far Now, the player's appearance has practically always been totally customizable, unlike other versions, and he always had his launcher to explore the version history. Pocket edition: In terms of figures by number of players, it has always been the one that is above the others, in its time it occupied a huge niche within platforms such as youtube, making a good number of of content creators, the community created external modifiers to perform or facilitate certain actions such as changing the game mode in a game, using texture packs and changing the appearance, its developers shared advances and comments on the development of the game with the community. community, the distribution of pirated APK files was a fairly common behavior until the security protocols of the game made the process very difficult.


 * The version for smart watches could be considered a derivative of the pocket edition due to its touch control, among other similarities.



Legacy edition: With this term we refer to all the editions for old generation consoles, in the same way, each one had its own community, only in this case, the only thing that used to be shared directly was the maps, which could be downloaded from a computer and transferred to the console, otherwise there were no real modifications to the game or customizable aspects, regardless of this, the community shared their adventures and creations through multiplayer games remotely or cacera, we used to be on the lookout for what 4Jstudios announced regarding future maps or game updates, since this studio was in charge of all legacy editions, it was like this until the game was discontinued, here are considered the versions of:


 * Xbox 360 edition
 * XboxOne edition (prior to bedrock edition)
 * Playstation 3
 * Nintendo 3DS
 * Wii U
 * Play Station 4 (before bedrock edition)
 * PSPvita edition

Events
The official events that the community attends virtually or in person and that are usually annual are the following, these vary in the number of times they occur, the influx of spectators they have and their formal nature:


 * Minecraft Live
 * Minecon
 * Minecraft now
 * Minecraft festival (cancelled)

Voting
Within the aforementioned events there are their own events (specifically within the annual minecraft live) which have a great influence on the game and the community itself, essentially the votes so far have been divided into two terms, a vote for biomes and another for mobs, the process for carrying out these activities is simple, first the developers give us an outline (through animations) of the features that will be presented, there are usually three options, then, during the event, polls will be opened on the official twitter of minecraft, there the players will vote for their favorite feature in two rounds, one to eliminate some of the features and the last one to determine the winner, the one with the most votes from the public wins.



The voting and its presentation methods underwent some changes over time, the most notable being the artistic section, the first of all consisted of a video of Jens pointing out four illustrations and giving some details about what appeared there, later, with the voting of biomes, this would be changed to a pixel-art style animation presenting Jens and Agnes as main characters who fulfilled the role of explaining to the viewers what each change would consist of.

Myths or stories of the community
Next, some mentions will be made for those anecdotes, contemplations or existing or already forgotten beliefs created by the community itself, with special emphasis on those commonly known on the Spanish-speaking side.


 * Near coal there will be a diamond: many people, especially in their childhood, came to relate coal deposits with diamonds, a correlation that is not supported by anything plausible.
 * The Sky Dimension: Being really little more than a mod and an old rumour, many were disappointed at an early age to discover that it was not possible to access such a dimension as it never existed in the vanilla game in the first place. place.
 * Herobrine: The well-known legend of the stalker, now it is well known that he was never more than that, a legend... right?
 * We all live on the same map: The origin of the myth is unknown, but it originally suggested that all the individual worlds in survival were actually part of a mega server where all players unknowingly coexisted.
 * Hostile mobs taming: There were many supposed attempts to tame hostile creatures such as creepers, some took advantage of errors in their AI to simulate docility on the part of these creatures, but it is really well known that it is not possible turn them into helpful companions.
 * Disc number 11: Although the object itself is real, the conclusions drawn about it by the community are not.
 * Cleric villagers were female: It was not the most common, but many players say they believed that cleric villagers prior to 1.14 were female, due to the pink color of their clothing, which is not True, since these mobs do not have sex or gender.
 * Get zombie horse in survival: Currently this is not possible, the mob is only available in creative.
 * Pillagers abduct young villagers: It has been mentioned that, being unable to procreate, pillagers need to obtain young villagers to add to their ranks.
 * Blue Redstone: During the animated trailer for the bees update, a material identical to the redstone but blue can be seen for a moment, the community generated theories about it but in the end it was a simple mistake in the animation.
 * Voices that are not in the game: It is possible to hear some kind of murmurs or distant vocalizations in the nether, but some players report that these voices are similar to those of their acquaintances or relatives, which is impossible.

History
In the distant 2010, Markus Persson undertook the design of his new video game, new users regularly came to the forums where Notch made updates about his project, the number of interested parties increased proportionally to the progress of the game, every day there were more who came to make requests, suggestions or simple questions, thus establishing a good relationship between developers and players.

To a certain extent, the relationship between gamers and developers continues in some way to this day.