Minecraft Documentary to Premiere on Xbox Live

Minecraft

Minecraft: The Story of Mojang will premiere on Dec. 22 on Xbox Live in the U.S., Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Ireland, Portugal, Sweden and the U.K.

The documentary from 2 Player Productions tells the story of Mojang founder Markus “Notch” Persson and his rise to fame through the indie game Minecraft. Mojang is the game studio that developed the massively-popular multiplatform title. It will air at 8 p.m. EST in the U.S. and 8 p.m. CET in Europe.

Minecraft: The Story of Mojang began through a Kickstarter campaign that launched in February last year. The goal for the project was $150,000 and the game went on to raise $210,297.

Filmed in 2011, the documentary shows Notch assembling a small team of developers to finalize the game after it had opened the open beta stage. The surprising success of Minecraft and the way it made Notch an overnight celebrity are featured in the film. The documentary also gives gamers an inside look at the operations at Mojang soon after the company was founded.

Key developers in the movie include an anonymous artist called “Junkboy,” who appears with a pixelated face because he wishes to keep his true identity a secret, and programmer Jens, who was the lead developer for Minecraft that added player requests into the game such as climbing spiders. Well-known video game figures such as Peter Molyneux and Tim Schafer also appear in the film.

Portland-based 2 Player Productions has a solid production history. The company has done work for G4 and Spike TV. 2 Player Productions has also done work on projects for Infamous and Uncharted 3. The studios has also produced films for Double Fine and debuted a documentary about chiptune music (video game or 8-bit music) in 2008 called Reformat the Planet.

Details on Minecraft: The Story of Mojang were unveiled in October. The documentary was tentatively set for release on Dec. 7.

Minecraft is still insanely popular. It has received continued support since its release. Meanwhile, Notch is in the process of creating a new sci-fi title.

Ryan Bloom

Ryan Bloom

Associate Editor at Gaming Illustrated
Ryan Bloom is a writer and avid gamer from Santa Ana, CA. He received a B.A. in Communications with a minor in American Studies from California State University, Fullerton in 2010. Follow him on Twitter @BloomsTweets.
Ryan Bloom

@BloomsTweets

Associate Editor, News & Preview Lead, Game Reviewer for @GamingIllustrat, professional writer and multimedia journalist
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