How a Game About Blocks Took Over the Internet: Minecraft

Most people know what Minecraft is and the versatility it has to offer. Minecraft caters to every audience. From little kids watching Let’s Plays, to horror nuts obsessing over the idea Minecraft is secretly a horror game, to modding Minecraft to what you want it to be, Minecraft is a game for everyone and all ages. 

You can find more information on the game in Yearning for the Mines: A Minecraft Review. 

With Minecraft celebrating 17 years in mid-May, there’s no better time to dive into its rich history.

Let's start where most of us did: YouTube. Many of us first discovered Minecraft through Minecraft YouTubers after a long day at school.

The Founding Fathers of Minecraft 

Minecraft wasn’t a super popular game until YouTube gamers got a hold of it. These gamers became the founding fathers of Minecraft on YouTube. They established the "Let's Play" format for the game, acting as both teachers and entertainers for a new, largely undocumented sandbox world. You likely already have a few in mind, but let's talk about a handful of the most famous.

PopularMMOs and SuperGirlyGamer also known as Pat and Jen—respectively—were a husband and wife duo known for The Challenge Games. This was a series in which they opened Lucky Blocks (which drop random loot and other fun things), traded with villagers (Ted, Kylie Jenner, and Chuck Norris) for gear, and then faced off against each other or modded creatures. 

Pat and Jen weren’t just known for The Challenge Games; they also have series like Lucky Block Races, Lucky Games, The Crafting Dead, and much much more. The duo were constantly trying new mods and new things, showing off how much you could customize Minecraft with mods.

DanTDM (TheDiamondMinecart) created family-friendly videos that included mod reviews, custom adventures, and Hardcore mode series. 

He’s mostly known for his iconic laboratory where you can find his two companions: Dr. Trayaurus (a scientist villager who is DanTDM’s lab partner), and Grim (DanTDM’s skeleton-wolf dog companion). DanTDM’s series also featured recurring characters like Craig the Mailman. He, like other Minecraft YouTubers, treated his videos like short adventure stories to engage a young audience.

“Hello! This is Stampy and welcome to a Minecraft Let’s Play video! And another video inside of Stampy’s Lovely World!” 

The opening of nearly every single one of stampylonghead’s Stampy’s Lovely World videos. A series that lasted for over ten years (2012–2023) and had 823 episodes. These let’s plays of Stampy taking one of his many dogs and building restaurants, shops, or expanding his Funland are the staple of his channel. 

But that’s not all Stampy had to offer. Stampy also had multiple very successful series with other YouTubers like the Space Den series with Sqaishey Quack, and the Quest To Kill The Ender Dragon series with iBallisticSquid. He also played Hunger Games maps, droppers, and other one off videos.

Now obviously those aren’t the only Minecraft YouTubers from the Golden Age. There was also CaptainSparklez, SSundee, iHasCupQuake, LDshadowlady, and so many others.

Oftentimes this original group of YouTubers are credited with raising an entire generation. Kids would come home from school and find another entertaining video on one of their channels. But eventually, the 2010 Minecraft YouTubers stopped getting views and Minecraft fell off the trending page. That would change in 2020 when a new group of Minecraft YouTubers emerged.

This new surge of Minecraft YouTuber’s would be spearheaded by the Dream SMP (Survival Multiplayer) and would feature people like Dream, GeorgeNotFound, Sapnap, Jschlatt, and Technoblade (who sadly passed away in 2022). The Dream SMP was a new style of Let’s Play videos and provided entertainment to many during the Covid-19 pandemic.

There’s surely a few famous Minecraft YouTubers missing from this very short list. You likely had your favorite, the one that got you into Minecraft all the way back in 2010, and maybe one from 2020 that surged your love of the game. It didn’t matter which YouTuber you watched, everyone all loved the game for one reason: the world they could mold to their liking. Minecraft YouTubers showed the endless creativity you could have while playing, but some of them showed another side to Minecraft.

A spooky side…

Herobrine Was Removed…

Picture this. It’s 3 a.m., you’re strip mining for that last diamond you need for a new pickaxe, Minecraft’s music long faded into silence, and all you hear is stone breaking. Then you jump out of your seat as you pickaxe breaks. 

That’s everyone’s first jumpscare in Minecraft. While Minecraft isn’t specifically a horror game (an argument can be made that it is, but we’ll get into that another time) there are elements to it that catch you off guard occasionally. 

The typical sounds like your pickaxe breaking, the sizzle of a creeper behind you, and those pesky cave sounds, make every player jump at least once. 

Outside of the ambient noises, the player can stumble across music disks. These are different from the classic and nostalgic background music. Music disks are something you can play in a jukebox and most of them are great to listen to. 

But there are a few disks that stand out in a not-so-peaceful way. Stal and Mellohi both are musical but seem off putting, like Tip Toe Through The Tulips. They, however, aren’t the scariest of the disks. Disc 5 features distorted sounds of the Deep Dark (fitting since that is where you can find the disk) and Disk 13 mimics those sharp and horrific cave noises. 

None of those compare to the infamous Disk 11 (the broken disk). Disk 11 is perhaps the scariest of them all. It’s not music or ambient sounds you can hear in Minecraft, instead its running footsteps, heavy breathing, blocks breaking, and then suddenly silence… It’s like someone is fleeing from something and perhaps that something is Herobrine.

Who’s Herobrine? Well he’s one of the most famous and well known Minecraft urban legends. He is exactly like the default Steve skin, but has one change—his eyes are all white. It’s said that Herobrine lurks in any world he wants, including yours. 

If you ever stumble across perfect 2 x 2 tunnels, trees stripped of their leaves, redstone torches in caves, or animals with all white eyes it’s too late, Herobrine has already found your world. 

Herobrine—while not real—is a huge part of Minecraft’s past and played a key role in the 2010 spike of popularity of the game. Although, maybe he does exist… Mojang themselves leave one crucial hint to anyone who reads the update logs. It’s only one line and two very simple words, but it has appeared in almost every update log since Herobrine was discovered. 

“Removed Herobrine.”

If you’re daring enough you can add Herobrine to your world by using mods. 

The Challenge Games

Already have hundreds of hours in Minecraft and want to try something new? If you’re playing on a PC, then let us introduce you to the wonderful world of modding. 

Mods are fanmade modifications to a game that you can install. If the game has a fanbase, then there are mods made for it. Minecraft is one such game. Many players have realized Minecraft’s true potential as a horror game, and have made mods that add new monsters, enemies, and sometimes Herobrine. There’s even short story mods that you can play. 

One of the more popular mods is the sky island. This is where you live on a floating island in the sky with hardly any space. The challenge is having to expand your island and quite literally build your home and world one block at a time, without falling into a sea of clouds. 

Alternatively, there are mods where you must live in a cave with no way to get to the surface. Food becomes a fast issue without the presence of animals, and crops take longer to grow without sunlight. 

There are also modpacks, which are numerous mods packed into one installation. The most popular one being All The Mods 9, a package of over 400 mods to enhance your gameplay experience. 

Aside from gameplay altering mods, there are also mods for shaders. Shaders are how your game processes lighting and colors. As a pixelated game, Minecraft has very flat coloring with minimal shadows. A shader pack can fix that. This is where the true fun lies. 

Shader mods can range from simply making the game’s colors more vibrant, to completely overhauling the game’s look. Some of these mods genuinely have me questioning if we’re even playing the same game anymore. 

There are also texture packs which, surprise surprise, change textures in the game. Some texture packs even add blocks of circular shapes or shapes other than squares, which is just wrong. 

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Minecraft is an incredibly appealing game to all because of all the ways to customize and enjoy the game. Even if you don’t play Minecraft, it’s entertaining to watch other’s play and see the creativity Minecraft inspires. 

Let your creative side show and make Minecraft what you want it to be. You could install quality of life mods like tree choppers or shaders, or you could make the game even more challenging; it’s your game, you get to make it.

The sky’s the limit in Minecraft—approximately 320 blocks up.