Guinness World Records released their 2015 Gamer’s Edition book this winter, which included records and information about players, indie games, and even industry leaders. Minecraft swept the board with 12 total World Records.
Minecraft, the popular sandbox creating game, is available on every new-generation gaming system except Nintendo. Nearly 60 million games have been sold across the different systems, making it one of the most popular games of all time. With that being known, it’s not too surprising that Minecraft achieved so many records.
Of the total 12 awards, 4 were set by the game itself and the remaining 8 were set by individuals/groups playing the game and fans.
Awards Set by the Game
- Best-Selling Indie Game: Before being purchased by Microsoft, Minecraft was created and owned by Mojang. Mojang is an indie publisher that made the game for PC and Mac, which now has over 18 million fans on those systems alone.
- Most-Played Xbox Live Game: The moment Minecraft became available on Xbox Live, it was popular, with 400,000 players online in the first 24 hours. As of May 2014, Minecraft Xbox 360 players have spent over 199,722 years cumulative playing the game.
- Most Popular Game Beta: In the 11 months it was released, over 10 million people played the beta.
- Most-Downloaded Minecraft Project: The Dropper mod been downloaded 1,145,546 times. This mod allows players to fall through objects without hitting them.
Awards Set by Gamers
- Longest Marathon on Minecraft: Martin Fornleitner from Austria played Minecraft for 1 day and 10 minutes while on a Sony Xperia Play handset.
- First Country Modeled at Full Scale in a Video Game: In 2014, the Geodata Agency in Denmark recreated their country online on Minecraft. Using over 4 billion blocks, they formed every feature of their 16,602 square mile country using a scale model of 1:1.
- Largest Real-World Place Created in Minecraft: The UK Ordinance Survey mapped Britain and its islands using a 1 block: 538 feet scale. That means they used 22 million blocks for approximately 86,000 square miles of land.
- Most Concurrent Players in One Minecraft World: YouTube channel Yogscast created a surver that 2,622 players used at one point to play Minecraft.
- Most Minecraft Snow Golems Built in One Minute: Nachtigall Vaz created 70 Snow Golems in a minute.
- Most-Viewed Fan Film Based on a Video Game: YouTube user CaptainSparklez won a record by creating a popular fan film. Viewed over 139,888,399 times, “‘Revenge’ — A Minecraft Parody of Usher’s DJ Got Us Fallin’ in Love — Crafted Using Noteblocks” earned this record.
- Longest Journey in Minecraft: Traveling over 919,592 miles in Minecraft’s Survival mode, Kurt J. Mac raised money for charity.
- Largest Indie Game Convention: MineCon, a video game convention for Minecraft, had over 7500 attendees in 2013.
This is the 8th year that Guinness World Records has released a gamer edition, and it seems to be becoming more and more popular with the gaming fans. However, some of the awards do seem to be a bit interesting. For example: why was the rapid creation of snow golems so important to include?
Of these Minecraft awards: Which ones were your favorite? Which ones did you think were just plain silly? Which records do you think you could have won?
