Hooded sweatshirt, green with pixellated face on fully-enclosing hood; 'Minecraft Creeper'; made in China

Hooded sweatshirt, for children aged 13-14 years. Four shades of woven green polyester-cotton, providing it with a 'pixellated', camouflaged appearance. The elasticated cuffs are plain green. The front zip is full-length, it continues beyond the neckline to fully enclose the head inside the hood. The hood has a sylised, 'pixellated' face (two eyes and a mouth), formed by cut-outs in the fabric of the hood, covered with a black synthetic mesh. The metal zip has been cast to spell out the word 'MINECRAFT'.

Purchased brand new by the MoC in 2015 [2016/336].

Minecraft was created by Swedish games designer Markus ‘Notch’ Persson. At its most basic, it is a first-person, open-world sandbox game, in which players build constructions out of textured cubes. There are no specific goals, players are given freedom to choose how they would like to play the game. Cubes with different textures represent different resources, which are needed to craft items and create players’ constructions. Hostile creatures, such as zombies, attempt to hinder the player when gathering resources and building. Non-hostile creatures, such as chickens, can be hunted for food and materials. The game passed 1 million purchases less than a month after it entered its beta phase in January 2011, despite having had no commercial advertising. By the time of its release in November of the same year, Minecraft had been purchased 4 million times and had 16 million registered users. The game has generated an enormous following, especially among children and teenagers, and it has created much discussion around the positive, creative role which can be played by video games. Mojang, the publisher of Minecraft, was acquired by sector giants Microsoft in November 2014 for $2.5 billion. This version, released in September 2014 for Xbox One, featured larger worlds and expanded multiplayer, bringing the console version closer to the PC game in its scope and content.

The ‘Creeper’ is a hostile character encountered in the Minecraft world. It attacks the player by creeping up on them, then exploding. It was apparently created accidentally by Markus ‘Notch’ Persson, as he wrongly programmed the code to create a pig. However, the sprite has become the most recognisable and marketable character, and is usually seen as the mascot of the series. The physical merchandising of video games goes back almost to the origin of video games themselves, good examples being the Pac-Man board game (1980), or the countless Super Mario branded products of the 1980s and early 1990s. The ‘Creeper’ appears on merchandising such as toys, homeware, clothing and personal accessories.

The Minecraft online community has been noted by observers as one which is cohesive and mutually supportive. The 'Creeper' is instantly recognisable to fans of the game. This hooded sweatshirt, designed for a boy aged 13-14, shows succinctly how this video game has entered the consciousness of the western teenage world, and how the 'Creeper' character has been adopted by many young people as a mark of affiliation.

Minecraft was created by Swedish games designer Markus ‘Notch’ Persson. At its most basic, it is a first-person, open-world sandbox game, in which players build constructions out of textured cubes. The ‘Creeper’ is a hostile character encountered in the Minecraft world. It attacks the player by creeping up on them, then exploding. The sprite has become the most recognisable and marketable character, and is usually seen as the mascot of the series. The Minecraft online community has been noted by observers as one which is cohesive and mutually supportive. The 'Creeper' is instantly recognisable to fans of the game. This hooded sweatshirt, halfway between casual clothing and fancy dress, designed for a boy aged 13-14, shows succinctly how this video game has entered the consciousness of the western teenage world, and how the 'Creeper' character has been adopted by many young people as a mark of affiliation.

B.83-2015