Minecraft: The Story of Mojang

2012
7.1| 1h44m| en
Details

Minecraft: The Story of Mojang is a feature-length documentary that follows the young company over the course of its first year as their profile expanded across the world stage and into the homes of millions of gamers. Featuring insights from industry icons (Peter Molyneux, Tim Schafer), journalists (Geoff Keighley, Stephen Totilo), tastemakers (Gabe & Tycho of Penny Arcade), and players profoundly impacted by the game (Yogscast, The Shaft, Minecraft Teacher), the film serves as a time capsule for one of this generation's most unorthodox success stories. Minecraft: The Story of Mojang is the second feature from game culture archivists 2 Player Productions (Reformat the Planet, Penny Arcade: The Series - Season 1, Double Fine Adventure!). Funded through crowdsourcing site Kickstarter.com, the production spanned nearly two years in locations across North America and Europe.

Director

Producted By

2 Player Productions

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Trailers & Clips

Also starring Markus Persson

Also starring Mike Krahulik

Reviews

BeSummers Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.
ActuallyGlimmer The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.
Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
fartnutsaywhat I would say that overall, I found this 1 hour and 47 minute documentary to be annoying and less informative than a Wikipedia page I could read in 10 minutes The scenes with the kids and the lets-players felt unnecessary and detracted from the original purpose of the documentary, which seemed like it was to provide insight on the development of Minecraft. I get that those scenes were present to show the wide range of appeal that Minecraft has, but there were so many of them that it started to feel like the filmmakers just wanted to make the documentary last longer than an hour and were running out of interview material. There were also a lot of times when an interviewer asked Notch the same type of question and received the same kind of answer from Notch each time. The type of question I'm referring to is along the lines of: "did you ever expect Minecraft to become so popular?", or "did you ever expect that ______ would happen because of Minecraft?", with Notch basically giving the same answer of "no" each time. This probably sounds like nitpicking, but it happens so often that I couldn't not mention it. My verdict is that I don't think this should have been almost two hours long, because the content added to fill for time is just that, filler. I'd give it a 5/10, with it's only saving graces being the production value and the scarce amount of scenes that actually have some kind of significance.
Smartdwarf This movie is a real and unique look at the development of one of the decades best computer games. Having played Minecraft for a year before the release date, I was thrilled that the movie followed the game development during this time. The movie flows along through the different stages of the games development and really shows that the staff are on their own journey and have no idea where they will end up. The interviews with the staff of Mojang were very insightful and informative. Also I especially enjoyed the interviews with the various gaming experts and developers especially Peter Molyneux who offered his own take on the development of computer gaming. This is not really a movie for someone who plays Solitaire, but I highly recommend it to anyone who plays or has an interest in computer games and their history.
Ali Foroughi A very good movie for a all technology lovers and certainly all of the Minecraft fans (such as myself) will enjoy this film.We get to learn about the Minecraft creators and their story and how they got here. did they really expect this amount of love and attraction around the game or not.one interesting point of this movie was Notch. I personally could not believe how humble and normal he was. as he said himself , he makes games of the sake of games and because it is what he enjoys doing.he decided to create 'Mojan'. because Minecraft was getting too big and a company to represent was needed. we see how that happens, and what people are hired to help expand the game.Notch was able to create a game in his spare time and went on and became one of the greatest and most popular games ever made. and the fact that people can't decide between Minecraft and super Mario shows that. I'd personally pick Minecraft.the movie shows how Minecraft takes a role in education. and how kids (and adults) can learn to create things using Minecraft. that was quite interesting for me because I was not aware that this was happening. we also get to see amazing maps and locations that has been created by users and feel all the love and excitement around the game. A great film if you are a Minecraft fan; or just a fan of being creative! 8/10
StrongKanegou I recently was in the lucky position to watch three documentaries on video games in rather short succession (Get Lamp, Indie Game: The Movie, and Minecraft: The Story of Mojang). In this trifecta, Get Lamp has to probably be the odd man out, since Indie Game and Minecraft revolve around recently released indie games, whereas Get Lamp presents itself more like a nostalgic retrospection. Still, out of those three, Minecraft, I am afraid to say, turns out to be the weakest - for a variety of reasons.The movie documented facts and events after Minecraft had circulated the internets, turning out to be a tremendous success and having created an immense fan base. This may be partially due to the fact, that the film was founded through Kickstarter and thus needed some time until it was in the clear financially (I am not familiar with the exact details, though). The thing with Minecraft is, however, that the game is probably the most thoroughly documented gaming phenomenon on the internet (being responsible for numerous Let's Players and game commentators on YouTube) – those videos alone vividly depict the endless possibilities Minecraft has to offer and are able to make you understand why it turned out to be the phenomenon it is, even if you are not familiar with the game itself.So what does this documentary add? Well, other than Indie Game, which focused on the people behind the games, their relation to what they were doing, and the reason why they did it or do it, Minecraft basically renders Markus Persson as a nice guy who simply lucked out making a game that he thought would be cool to play himself. Period. And then moves on to all the other aspects that are the Minecraft phenomenon – all of which, however, you are able to witness yourself first-hand by using your internet connection. Do I need a documentary to inform me about the existence of The Shaft or Yogscast? Or that Persson founded a company and is working on a new game? The most insightful comments are probably Peter Molyneux's in which he explains why he thinks Minecraft is such a big hit and discloses the fact that Minecraft played a role in him founding yet another game dev studio. Guys, seriously, for having Peter Molyneux, Tim Schafer, and Jonathan Blow (although he just makes a very brief appearance) available for interviews, these are pretty meager yields.For fans of the game it absolutely may be interesting to see more of the people behind the game (especially 'Notch' Persson – and it is good to see that he has remained a likable, down-to-earth guy, despite being responsible for possibly one of *the* gaming sensation of this decade), for the average gamer or documentary aficionado, however, this might be too little. Where Indie Game was able to tell a captivating story about the minds behind the games, Minecraft is asking the right people the wrong questions and leaves the viewer with an unsorted array of factoids about the phenomenon that is Minecraft.