Minecraft, a sandbox video game that takes place in a blocky 3D world, is a monster hit with 131 million monthly active users around the world. We visited the developers, Mojang Studios, in their Stockholm offices to discuss Minecraft—as well as their T-shirt collaboration with Uniqlo.
Designs that reflect the Minecraft experience
“You can do anything you want and set any goal you want. It’s a game that lets you express yourself.” This is how Mojang Director Patrick Liu describes Minecraft, which provides an almost limitless amount of freedom. In the blocky 3D world where the game takes place, there are no missions that need completing. Using the tools available to you, you can build the castle of your dreams or even recreate Times Square. You can set off on a journey to see how far the world goes. This level of freedom was unprecedented when Minecraft was released in 2011. This, combined with the ability of users to play on the same servers no matter their platform, has helped the game sell 200 million units worldwide (as of May 2020), making it the best-selling game in history.
Kwan, Liu, and Thoms (L to R) pose with UT shirts in the Mojang offices, located in a former beer brewery. They say they used to wrap up work early every Friday to play Minecraft with each other while enjoying a beer.
“Minecraft can be played in a multitude of ways,” says Sherin Kwan, a product designer at Mojang. “You can create your own world and have all kinds of adventures in it. To convey that worldview, we came up with the slogan: Build. Explore. Create.” Kwan handles merchandise— including T-shirts, which offer a similar level of freedom to their wearers.The Minecraft-UT collaborative T-shirts feature the game’s endearingly blocky landscapes and enemy creatures, including those from spinoff title Minecraft Dungeons (relased last May).“Gaming merchandise is hard to find in Sweden, so I’m happy that the local children finally have something that’s easily available,” says Filip Thoms, who is also a product designer. “I hope they like these T-shirts.”
The procedurally-generated worlds of Minecraft are covered in a variety of terrain. Players can chop trees, crush rocks, and shave wool off sheep to make tools, clothes, and homes. The game offers a Survival Mode that gives you a limited amount of health and forces you to fight off mobs of Creepers, Skeletons, and other enemies.
PROFILE
Minecraft is a sandbox game from Mojang designed in Sweden in 2009 and initially released only for PCs. In 2014, Microsoft bought out Mojang and made Minecraft available for other platforms. In 2020, the action adventure spinoff title Minecraft Dungeons was released. In 2016, the studio released the free Minecraft: Education Edition, which is packed with educational content related to coding and other areas and is incorporated into school curriculums as an educational tool.
© 2021 Mojang Synergies AB. TM Microsoft Corporation.
