How marketing made Minecraft the best-selling game of all time
Originally released in November 2011, Minecraft has become the best-selling video game of all time, with 200 million copies sold across all platforms, and 126 million monthly active users as of 2020.
But what is it about this particular game which has led to such domination? After all, isn’t it just about placing, breaking blocks, and crafting items?
Player creativity wins
Although it has incredibly popular gameplay for both children and adults, Minecraft’s success has less to do with mining blocks and more to do with tapping into the creativity of its players.
The rapid rise of how it has become the best-selling computer game of all time can be attributed to its global fan base, and crucially, its willingness to share its love of the game with others. In short, Minecraft’s marketing success stems from the creation and consumption of videos being produced by players of the game. According to Tubular, in 2019 its YouTube channel has nearly 436 billion views of videos created solely by fans.
Crowdsourcing SuperOne content
SuperOne’s game uses this path to success. It crowdsources its content from a fanatical fan base, which is rewarded in the cryptocurrency XRP for providing the questions that fuel the game.
For Minecraft, videos of in-game content range from anything like game tutorials to fans sharing their unique, personal adventures with other friends who play the game. Of the total number of views of videos about Minecraft on YouTube, 99.4% of them were fan videos.
SuperOne expects a similar result constantly fuelling both its affiliate and its gaming communities around the world. By encouraging fans to make and share videos, Minecraft is teaching gamers how to become mini-media companies, thus developing the next generation of entrepreneurs.
SuperOne is doing the same, only with an even clearer vision of how to make money at home. They are both giving gamers the tools and resources they need so they can share and spread the message, at no cost to the developers. For example, every Minecraft user who posts on YouTube or works to develop an online community with their friends is building an audience, exactly like a media company does.
Like Call of Duty or Halo, Minecraft could spend millions of dollars on advertising. Instead, however, it invests in its users by teaching them how to build mini-media empires. This is very astute marketing, and instead of advertising through their own social channels like Facebook or Twitter, Minecraft simply uses the millions of user channels to market through.
As fans make content because they’re passionate about the product, Minecraft has been able to help build an army of promotional experts about their game free of charge. In the process, Minecraft became the best-selling video game of all time.
Minecraft isn’t selling its product, it’s teaching others to sell it for them at no cost. It is the best sales strategy ever invented, and SuperOne is the next horse in the field to back.