Without a large publisher or marketing budget, Minecraft relied on word-of-mouth promotion through gaming sites and forums to generate interest. It also benefited from audiences sharing gameplay videos and mods on YouTube and forums. As Minecraft grew more popular, it expanded to new platforms and versions while maintaining a strong fan community. This led to various franchise extensions like Lego sets, books, and merchandise, as well as a planned movie.

1. Marketing, Promotion
& Franchising

2. How are video games
traditionally marketed
and what franchising
takes place?
Small group activity

3. Without the commercial backing of a mainstream publisher, and no money spent on advertising revenue,
due to the independent nature of Mojang, the game relied on word of mouth between gamers and featured
on sites such as the Penny Arcade web comic to generate interest amongst gamers.
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic

4. The cultural impact of Minecraft is significant. We
know that much of Minecraft’s success was due to
word of mouth but also audiences sharing their own
mods and game footage across web forums and
video sharing sites such as YouTube.
Find out what a Minecraft Mod is and bring an
example to the class discussion.
Explore some Minecraft gameplays - How many
views do they have? What kind of comments are
being left? How can convergent media promote
the sharing these and what impact can this have?
https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Mods
www.youtube.com

5. Different versions of Minecraft were
released, moving away from creation
only narratives to include story
modes, spectator modes,
educational mode and multi-player
functionality across Minecraft
Realms. Also, now that Persson no
longer has a stake in the company
plans to work on a virtual reality
version of Minecraft have been
renewed.
Why do this?

6. Intertextuality
Culturally, other
developers and games
studios have made
intertextual references to
Minecraft across games
such as Runescape and
The Elder Scrolls V:
Skyrim to name but a few;
there are also Lady Gaga,
South Park and The
Simpsons parodies. All of
this benefits the game by
heightening its exposure to
audiences.

7. The Minecraft
Franchise
A Lego set based on Minecraft called
Lego Minecraft was released on 6 June
2012
Two more sets based on the Nether
and village areas of the game were
released on 1 September 2013. A
fourth Micro World set, the End, was
released in June 2014. Six more sets
became available November 2014.

8. The Minecraft
Franchise
Mojang collaborates with
Jinx, an online game
merchandise store, to sell
Minecraft merchandise,
such as clothing, foam
pickaxes, and toys of
creatures in the game.

10. The Minecraft
Franchise
In March 2013 Mojang
signed a deal with the
Egmont Group, a children's
book publisher, to create
Minecraft handbooks,
annuals, poster books, and
magazines

11. Minecraft the Movie
In 2019 there will be a joint venture with
Warner Brothers to release Minecraft
the movie, this will be anticipated as
having as much commercial success as
The Lego Movie, also a Warner
Brothers Movie. No doubt, there will be
several spin-offs as a result of this.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3566834/

12. Fan trailers
How does this help the promotion of Minecraft?

13. Minecon
MINECON is a convention for the video
game Minecraft, hosted by Mojang.
The first gathering in 2010 was known as
MinecraftCon
Mojang announced that MINECON was
taking the form of an interactive 90-minute
livestream on 18 November 2017. It was
titled MINECON Earth.
https://minecraft.net/en-us/minecon/

14. Henry Jenkins - Fandom
& Participatory culture
Video games offer social experiences (online
multi-player options) as well as communities
outside of the core game experience.
Jenkins’ key quote ‘if it doesn’t spread, it’s
dead’
There has “been a blurring between the
grassroots practices I call participatory
culture and the commercial practices being
called Web 2.0.” - Fandom being used as
marketing.
Minecraft has a strong, well
developed fanbase how could we
relate this to Jenkins’ ideas about
participatory culture?
Participatory culture. Term developed by
Henry Jenkins to describe contemporary
cultures where members of a society do
not only consume media content but also
create and distribute it.
Fandom. An intense emotional investment in
a media text whereby you engage with other
‘fans’. Regarded collectively as a community
or subculture.
Stretch and challenge

15. Using your notes
from the lesson
create a document,
complete with visuals,
that outlines how
Minecraft is marketed
and how initially it
differed from more
traditional methods.
Task /
Homework