How is Minecraft marketed differently to traditional methods?

The way that Minecraft is marketed differently to traditional methods is that to help spread the word of Minecraft, Mojang relied on the word of mouth between gamers and featured sites such as the Penny Arcade web comic, this would then generate interest amongst gamers. Whilst with other games, they would come out with a TV advert or something that would generate a lot of interest from consumers.

Another way is the cultural impact, as whilst the word to mouth was working with gamers, they wanted to sell it to a bigger audience that probably haven’t played a video game before. The way they did this was by getting the audiences to share their own mods and game footage across web forums and video sharing websites e.g. YouTube where a bigger audience can watch.

To help with the marketing they also released different versions which was moving away from creation and instead moving too only narratives, including story modes, spectator modes, educational modes and multiplayer functionality across Minecraft realms. This is different compared to the traditional methods as other games usually have only one or two other game modes but they have advertised their game to have not only a creative purpose but an educational one as well, which in today’s society is very rare as a majority of games are for the purpose of fighting and they condone violence, but Minecraft advertise their games to be educational and have a positive function for anyone who uses it.

Minecraft then added intertextuality to their games, such as the Simpsons and south park – this benefits the game by heightening its exposure to audiences. To then market their game, they collaborated with Lego and Lego Minecraft was then released in 2012, Minecraft also collaborated with Jinx to create and sell merchandise (clothing, foam pickaxes and toys). They then went on and signed a deal with Egmont group which is a kids book producer and they created handbooks, annuals, poster books and magazines. In 2019 Warner Brothers will be releasing the ‘Minecraft movie’ and this is anticipated to have as much commercial success than the Lego Movie.

In conclusion, the way that they have advertised their game differently compared to the traditional methods is by using the word to mouth, so instead of advertising it online they wanted gamers to pass on the message themselves and wait until one of the gamer You Tubers makes a video on it and then they would advertise it through their channel and then their audience will then want to go out and buy/download the game to play.