Minecraft worlds are procedurally generated from numbers and words known as seeds. A seed defines everything from the nearest blade of grass to the farthest mountain, and the most interesting seeds become challenges in themselves, shared by players and even aquiring fandoms of their own. — Read the rest

Minecraft is premiering a new series called How We Make Minecraft this month. It promises to give fans details about how programmers make decisions about characters and gameplay, all presented in an irreverent and fun style.

Via IGN:

Japanese schools have been closed for over two weeks due to COVID-19 and, with the Japanese school year ending in March, it's meant many students won't have their graduation ceremonies, according to SoraNews24.

However, graduates from one elementary school found they could use Minecraft to create their own ceremony.

It costs $1 in bitcoin to receive an in-game life on the SatoshiQuest Minecraft server. From there, you can start looking for bitcoin treasure (equal to 90% of the money collected from all the players) hidden within the blocky simulated world. — Read the rest

In this video, an astoundingly dedicated player demonstrates how to complete Minecraft without ever picking up an item.

My "bee"-obsessed young son will not be delighted to see the addition of bees to Minecraft, as he is still too young to have played Minecraft or, indeed, to have become cognizant of the difference between bees and other winged insects. — Read the rest

My name is Herobine. I am twenty-six years old. I live in a data entity resembling an ultramodernist residence at x: 68;y: 73; z: 636 in the seed -98734659879863346. I believe in taking care of myself, in a balanced diet of fish, bread and cake, and a rigorous exercise routine of jumping up voxel hills. — Read the rest

Oliver Brotherhood is a British vlogger with over 3 million subscribers who has produced a string of very popular Minecraft-related videos under the name Mumbo Jumbo; yesterday, in the space of two hours, a quarter of his videos were claimed by music publishing giant and notorious copyright fraudsters Warner Chappell, who will now get revenues from those videos, and can take them down at will.

Microsoft celebrates 10 years of Minecraft by making one of the earliest functional versions available to play online in the form of classic.minecraft.net.

Ten years of creating, exploring and surviving. Ten years of mobs, mods and magnificent creations. Ten years of being consistently amazed by what you've built with our game.

Microsoft bought Minecraft in 2014 from Marcus "Notch" Persson for $2.5 billion, but it has no plans to invite the creator to participate in the game's 10-year anniversary festivities.

A spokesperson for Microsoft told Variety, "His comments and opinions do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang and are not representative of Minecraft." — Read the rest

It's been a while since I returned to the blocky, charming world of Minecraft, but this video from 2010 is going viral and satisfies the urge. The fireplace tutorial begins about a minute in.

After architect Andrew McClure received a lesson from his cousin on how to use Minecraft, he went to work making a slick looking house in the sandbox game in just two hours.

[via Core77]

Fans of Minecraft who found that it had already gotten too fancy and complicated by 2010 should check out Craft, a clone by Michael Fogleman. It's pared down to the very basics, written in fast-as-hell C, has online multiplayer, and is available free of charge on Windows and Mac. — Read the rest

Chances are you've heard C418's music, even if you've never heard of him: he scored Minecraft. Now the Berlin-based producer and composer, aka Daniel Rosenfeld, has his first solo album on the way. Here's a single from it, titled Beton. — Read the rest

Alice Maz was part of a small group of players who came to have near-total mastery over the internal economy of a popular Minecraft; Maz describes how her early fascination with the mechanics of complex multiplayer games carried over into an interest in economics and games, and that let her become a virtuoso player, and brilliant thinker, about games and economics.

Last year, the Mirai botnet harnessed a legion of badly secured internet of things devices and turned them into a denial of service superweapon that brought down critical pieces of internet infrastructure (and even a country), and now its creators have entered guilty pleas to a Computer Fraud and Abuse Act federal case, and explained that they created the whole thing to knock down Minecraft servers that competed with their nascent Minecraft hosting business.

Aditya Aryanto carefully photoshopped some animals to look like adorable escapees from the world of Minecraft. [via Kottke]

I tried visualising some animals in different form, which called Anicube or Animal Cube. I am interested in the cubical shape and trying to change some animal form into cubes.

Red Lava Toys is a Detroit-based startup that make super cool, low-cost custom Minecraft figs at a local makerspace: they CNC-milled their own injection molds for the body and joints, and have precision die-cut vinyl stickers that they print to order with long-lasting ink and cover with a clear adhesive coat, then place them on the body of the toy.

You¹ can now explore the St. Kilda archipelago, a tiny collection of islands 40 miles off the Scottish coast, in Minecraft. This is great because it rains less in Minecraft, and the wind won't shear your face off.

The BBC reports that the 1:1 scale map of the islands took 125 hours to produce. — Read the rest

It takes more than eight wooden planks to build a real-life Minecraft chest; it also takes longer than a click. But the results seem worth it, so I know what I'll be doing next weekend! [via r/DIY]

Redditor dan2907 explains:

I made this minecraft chest as a gift for my neice, and since I probably wouldn't have attempted this if it wasn't for the other examples I'd seen when searching google images, I wanted to post it here in the hopes that if anyone else ever wants to give it a try, they might learn something from my attempt, or at least see it's possible even if you're not experienced.