I won't call it luck, but there were certainly circumstances that enabled Minecraft. For example, Notch being born at the right stage of personal computers; the development of Infiniminer. But all successes will have such circumstances, because all events happen within a historical stream.
I see the particular success of Minecraft coming from multiple overlapping individual components or features that are each works of genius. The piling up of so many feats of genius in one place produces runaway success.
One of these features was borrowed from Infiniminer - the idea of the persistent, destructible/constructible world, modeled as a regular 3D grid to make it tractable, relatively simple to code, and easy to understand and manipulate. An innovation here is treating parts of the world like cellular automata at times (water, fire, etc). The next bit of genius is the crafting system. One might say other games had already done crafting, but I'd say none like Minecraft. Minecraft captured an earthy, complete-feeling microcosm of the whole supply chain. It captures something deeply geological, anthropological, and primal. This is the part of the game that, once I had figured out the very basics of wood and stone, my jaw fell on the floor, because I then intuited where Notch was going with it. How comprehensive and primal it was. I'd played plenty of games with 'crafting' before, and this was something very different. More natural, more tiered, more 'realistic' even though still a simplified model compared to the real world.
Next, the very effective use of lighting as a mechanic. The terror of being exposed on the surface, and the claustrophobia in tight underground packages. The breadcrumb trail mechanic of torches. Other games have used light before, but I struggle to think of one that used it quite like this.
Finally, Minecraft has the type of polish that comes from intentional simplicity, so that you don't even notice it. Part of this is very, very good controls. Another is perfect collision detection, made possible by the simple 3D grid structure. Even though this kind of thing is notable for what you don't notice, it comes from Notch being a good game programmer with a good grasp of 3D programming. Not just anyone could have realized these ideas in such a polished way, even if they had the ideas.
Sure, everyone is a product of their environment, the time they live in, their influences and so forth. You can say that about anyone. But with Minecraft, Notch did a perfect storm of right things, and it resonated with millions of people.
An innovation here is treating parts of the world like cellular automata at times
Dwarf Fortress used cellular automata for water and lava before Minecraft [1]. It also had a from-the-ground-up crafting system with complex production chains, with geology and ecology playing a major role.
Again, this doesn't determent what Minecraft developers created, but they didn't come up with these concepts from scratch, as many people assume. (Even the article says they were inspired by DF.)
I see the particular success of Minecraft coming from multiple overlapping individual components or features that are each works of genius. The piling up of so many feats of genius in one place produces runaway success.
One of these features was borrowed from Infiniminer - the idea of the persistent, destructible/constructible world, modeled as a regular 3D grid to make it tractable, relatively simple to code, and easy to understand and manipulate. An innovation here is treating parts of the world like cellular automata at times (water, fire, etc). The next bit of genius is the crafting system. One might say other games had already done crafting, but I'd say none like Minecraft. Minecraft captured an earthy, complete-feeling microcosm of the whole supply chain. It captures something deeply geological, anthropological, and primal. This is the part of the game that, once I had figured out the very basics of wood and stone, my jaw fell on the floor, because I then intuited where Notch was going with it. How comprehensive and primal it was. I'd played plenty of games with 'crafting' before, and this was something very different. More natural, more tiered, more 'realistic' even though still a simplified model compared to the real world.
Next, the very effective use of lighting as a mechanic. The terror of being exposed on the surface, and the claustrophobia in tight underground packages. The breadcrumb trail mechanic of torches. Other games have used light before, but I struggle to think of one that used it quite like this.
Finally, Minecraft has the type of polish that comes from intentional simplicity, so that you don't even notice it. Part of this is very, very good controls. Another is perfect collision detection, made possible by the simple 3D grid structure. Even though this kind of thing is notable for what you don't notice, it comes from Notch being a good game programmer with a good grasp of 3D programming. Not just anyone could have realized these ideas in such a polished way, even if they had the ideas.
Sure, everyone is a product of their environment, the time they live in, their influences and so forth. You can say that about anyone. But with Minecraft, Notch did a perfect storm of right things, and it resonated with millions of people.