Minecraft: The Story of Mojang, is a documentary from 2 Player Productions that chronicles the inception and unlikely success of the developer’s juggernaut sim Minecraft.

In 2009, independent video game designer Markus “Notch” Persson released an early version of Minecraft, a computer game he developed in his spare time at home. Growing up in Sweden, in a place called Edsybn, programming was one of his hobbies, and since the age of 8, Notch had a desire to develop games.

While he worked at King.com, Notch was allowed to make games in his spare time but he couldn’t do it as a business. He wanted to try that so he left begun a 6-to-12-month project, which turned into what is now known as Minecraft.

“No one could predict the success of Minecraft from looking at it back then. The game was like a digital Lego. Everything is made of blocks where the only limit is your imagination. It is the most significant sandbox you’ll ever set foot in.”

Tubby Tube TV

Minecraft would thus go on to break every industry rule for achieving success. Part exploratory adventure, part creative building tool, Minecraft evolved from a cult classic into an unprecedented hit. With no PR company pushing the game, a great community formed around it, and through word of mouth, sales of the game quickly hit 10,000 a day.

Notch alone couldn’t keep up with demand, and so he started a company made up of 7 people and 1 office. To date, Minecraft past the PC Platform, and is currently slated to hit Xbox One and numerous PlayStation platforms. It’s total sales recently exceeded 33 million.

image from: minecraftstoryofmojang.com