Who was the first person to play Minecraft?

Markus Alexej Persson, better known as Notch, is known for creating the video game Minecraft and is likely the first person to play it.

Notch Created Minecraft

Minecraft was created by Markus “Notch” Persson. Notch is a Swedish video game programmer best known for creating Minecraft.

Notch started developing Minecraft in 2009. At the time, he was working for King.com and developing games in his spare time as a hobby.

The very first version of Minecraft was called “Cave Game.” It was inspired by games like Dwarf Fortress, Dungeon Keeper, and Notch’s own RubyDung project.

Cave Game started off extremely simple, with bare-bones graphics and gameplay centered around mining blocks and crafting items. However, Notch continued expanding and improving the game, eventually renaming it to Minecraft.

On May 17, 2009, Notch made Minecraft available to the public for the first time as an early playable “classic” version. This is considered the official release date of Minecraft as we know it today.

Notch Was Likely the First Player

As the creator and lone developer of Minecraft at the time, Notch was most likely the very first person to ever load up and play the game.

In the beginning, Minecraft was Notch’s personal project that he worked on alone. There were no other developers or testers involved yet.

So when Notch compiled that very first build of “Cave Game” and launched it on his computer, he would have been the first and only person to see Minecraft in action.

In a sense, Notch was playing and testing the game with himself. As he added new features and content, he would boot up the latest build to see how it looked and played.

Of course, back then the game was extremely primitive compared to the vast Minecraft we know today. But the core mechanics of mining, placing, and crafting blocks were there from the start.

Notch continued to iterate on the game, likely playing each new version more and more as it gradually transformed into Minecraft.

Minecraft’s Earliest Testers

Once interest around Cave Game/Minecraft started picking up, Notch did begin letting other people try early versions of the game.

Some of the first Minecraft testers included:

• Notch’s friends – Notch shared early builds with his friends to get feedback.
• IRC chat users – Notch gave out download links in IRC chats for people to try.
• Minecraft forum members – The original Minecraft forums let users download and discuss early versions.
• YouTube/bloggers – Popular YouTubers and bloggers received early access from Notch.

So while these testers were not the absolute first Minecraft players, they were likely among the first few dozen outside of Notch himself.

Their videos, feedback, and coverage of the game during 2009-2010 helped boost Minecraft’s popularity during the alpha/beta days.

The Minecraft Account “Player”

There is one other potential candidate for the first Minecraft player: the default player name “Player.”

When you first launch an untouched copy of Minecraft, the game automatically fills in the default player name “Player” (or in newer versions, your computer username).

So when Notch compiled and booted up that very first version of Cave Game, the name shown on-screen may have been “Player” rather than Notch.

However, this is just the default player name, not an actual Mojang game account. The very first person to physically click buttons and move that default character around would still have been Notch behind the scenes.

Nonetheless, “Player” has been there from the very beginning and lives on today as the canonical default player name in Minecraft.

The Evolution of Minecraft

It’s amazing to look back and realize how far Minecraft has come since those first crude versions developed by one man in his free time.

Over a decade later, Minecraft now has endless content and depth, a development team of hundreds, and more active players than many small countries!

But it all started with Notch and a simple game about placing blocks. Minecraft forever changed gaming and cemented Notch’s name in history as the creator of one of the most significant video games of all time.

So while we may never know the exact moment Notch clicked that mouse and moved for the very first time, he will forever be remembered as the person who brought Minecraft into the world.

So then when you have Minecraft, and you can tell any story you want in a Minecraft world, it’s a big reason why we have so many people creating Minecraft content,” Winters added. The first-ever Minecraft video on YouTube was shared by YouTuber @jwaap, nearly 12 years ago on May 17, 2009.

Fruitberries. Fruitberries is the one of the best minecraft players hands down. Not only is he one of the only people to be great at both 1.8 and 1.9 PVP; But he also has an extremely rich knowledge of the game, which allows him to craft elaborate traps with ease.

Technoblade took the top spot on this list thanks to their victory over Dream in various Minecraft updates.

Technoblade took the top spot on this list thanks to their victory over Dream in various Minecraft updates.