The Let's Play Era: How YouTube Made Minecraft a Phenomenon Before Advertising Did

Pocket edition. This is a shorter version of a longer article; you can read the full edition when you have more time.

Minecraft didn't become a giant through advertising. When it exploded, around 2011 and 2012, there was barely any marketing behind it. What there was instead was something else: millions of people watching other people play it on YouTube. The Let's Plays, the Yogscast series, CaptainSparklez's music videos. The game spread the way truly important things spread: because someone showed it to someone else.

Everett Rogers studied how new things spread and described something crucial: we don't adopt something because an advert tells us to, but because we see someone like us using it and enjoying it. A video of an ordinary kid laughing while he built convinced people more than any campaign, because it wasn't selling: it was showing. And what it showed was irresistible: look at what you can do here.

That is Minecraft's peculiarity. A game with no story and no ending was terrible to explain in a trailer, but you understood it instantly by watching someone play it. YouTube wasn't the game's loudspeaker; it was the place where the game became understandable.

The lesson holds today: what truly spreads isn't advertised, it's caught. It's passed from person to person, by real people showing something they care about. Minecraft is the proof that sometimes the best marketing is to do none at all and let people tell each other.