Minecraft game design highlights player agency, creativity and open worlds within a simplified game system. We can learn how to integrate mechanics and systems that result in long-term success by looking at what principles lie behind Minecraft’s game design. Minecraft stands out among sandbox games for its continuous climb in revenue, with $220 million as of 2024, despite out-living the average shelf-life of a video game since its release in 2009.
Minecraft’s popularity is evident via the spike in its player base, which is attributed to its ability to cater to multiple playstyles. Players are able to set their own paths, express their creative freedom and explore at their pace. Minecraft makes a point to prioritize player agency by adding both open-world mechanics and emergent systems.
Markus “Notch” Persson introduced the early version of Minecraft in 2009, and the full version was released in 2011 by Mojang. Microsoft’s acquisition of Minecraft in 2014 for $2.5 billion highlighted the importance of the game in the industry. Reasons for Minecraft’s success lie behind design principles and pillars integrated by Notch and Jeb.
Jeb’s Minecraft design book outlines core principles used for developing Minecraft, as well as how mechanics were used to create a game built on player freedom. Devs and designers are recommended to take a look at Minecraft’s design principles and pillars to understand the importance of concepts such as emergent systems and player agency. Keep reading to get an overview of Jeb’s game design book, as well as Minecraft’s game design principles and pillars to create a successful sandbox game.
What is Jeb’s Minecraft game design book?
Jeb’s Minecraft game design book is a game design document made by Jens “Jeb” Bergensten for Mojang developers. The book was only meant for internal use but has been circulated online by fans. It outlines the foundational principles Minecraft integrates into its design by touching on design philosophies, mechanics, plus anecdotes from Jeb that provide development insights.
Jeb “Jens” Bergensten is a Swedish game designer and programmer. He joined Mojang in 2010 and took over Minecraft’s lead development from Notch in 2011. Jeb is the lead creative designer at Mojang for the Java and Bedrock editions, as well as Minecraft Dungeons.
Jeb is known for introducing key features such as redstone repeaters, wolves, pistons and map structures like villages and strongholds. He’s credited with stabilizing Minecraft’s development after Notch and leading it into a more structured and scalable design framework. Players have paid tribute to Notch and Jeb by constructing temples in their likeness, highlighting how much freedom Minecraft grants its players.
To give a simple overview of the contents, Jeb’s Minecraft game design book starts off by introducing Jeb’s design philosophy and personal goals for Minecraft. The book then goes on to outline Minecraft’s core identity, which is that it offers emergent gameplay, enables player-driven creativity and caters to open-world exploration.
Emergent gameplay refers to instances in games where players are able to perform actions that weren’t explicitly designed by devs. Minecraft lets players create unexpected outcomes by interacting with the game system via mechanics, increasing player retention and replayability.
Minecraft’s creative mode is a useful example of how to integrate mechanics that enable emergent gameplay. Creative mode poses no restrictions on where to obtain resources from and players aren’t at risk of attack from mobs. The limitless supply of resources and objects means players are able to combine materials, resulting in unexpected outcomes, or use them to progress in paths unaccounted for by devs.
Player-driven creativity goes hand-in-hand with emergent gameplay when it comes to Minecraft. Players are set loose in the world with a set of tools, capturing the essence of a sandbox game. The variety of interactive blocks in Minecraft, including the crafting tool, means players are able to experiment and create independently. Players have been able to build imitations of real-life buildings and customized their own bases to reflect their personality.
Both aspects are enabled with Minecraft’s open world which encourages exploration. Open-world exploration is possible via Minecraft’s procedural generation system, which keeps the world continuing in a seemingly endless path. There is no end for exploration, so there’s no end for creativity or outcomes. All three together tie up to highlight how Minecraft prioritizes player agency. Players are given freedom to explore, make choices and create, resulting in builds or structures that tend to surpass dev expectations.
Section 3 of Jeb’s design book has guiding principles that centre around preserving player agency and balancing simplicity and depth. He presses on the fact that the principles apply only to Minecraft’s core vanilla game. Any features designed for spin-offs, mods or additional in-game commands exist outside the design book’s scope. A quick overview of the guiding principles and what devs and designers need to take away from them are shown below:
| Guiding Principle | What to Learn |
|---|---|
| One block at a time! | Players interact with one block at a time to learn as they play |
| There is no Steve or Alex | Both are just placeholders so players are able to build their own characters in-game |
| Not quite an RPG | Minecraft is inspired by other RPGs but stands out since players don’t level up after trades or battles |
| Bad things happen… | Failures are entirely based on player actions, the system itself doesn’t harm players’ hard work. Remember dying needs to be fun to keep motivation and morale up |
| New features need to be respectful of existing ones | New features need to balance out existing features but still offer something new to players |
| Items should be multi-purpose | All objects have to serve a purpose, or at least impact the gameplay in a significant way |
| It’s up to the players to build the world | Players decide when and whether they want to add to existing settings, like protective walls around villages |
| You are not wearing a hud | Use minimal UI and in-game messages so players interact with the game to learn; basically show, don’t tell |
| Finding things is fun. Searching for them is not. | Surprise players with hidden objects and rewards during exploration, but make sure it’s doable, like offering maps |
| Real-life animals should be friendly | Animals in Minecraft are either friendly or neutral so players are able to have peaceful interactions with them |
| Hostile mobs should be unique | Make unique monster/enemy designs since you have the opportunity to create original mythology |
| Mobs need personality | Have a base for each mob, then add stylistic features that make each stand out |
| Human characters are human beings | The players are the only characters who look like humans in-game to make players stand out |
| No blood, no gore | Avoiding blood and gore in animations keeps it somewhat PG while sending out the necessary message |
| Keep it vanilla | Minecraft needs to appeal to multiple player types and playstyles, so keeping it simple makes sure everyone has something to do |
| No item is truly unique | Making sure item names and aspects tied to other universes carries the multiverse concept forward |
| Expand the mysteries | Let players make their own stories for unexplained aspects in Minecraft |
| Gender neutrality is a core principle | Players being referenced in-game can be anyone so pronouns are avoided to make sure everyone is included |
| Death is real | Mechanics don’t rely on respawn to appeal to hardcore gamers, which is a setting available in-game |
| Bugs are not features | Don’t rely on bugs to count towards emergent gameplay since it’s easy to accidentally remove player-centric features if designers didn’t intend them |
| Minecraft is not an editor | Rules, command blocks and so on mustn’t take away the idea that Minecraft is a free-for-all game with little to no rules on how to play |
The one block at a time principle is the most critical for preserving player agency and refers to when players are able to interact with only one block at a time. There can’t be a copy-paste function, templates or tools that make play too convenient. The ‘one block at a time’ rule allows Minecraft’s devs to maintain the interactivity model of Minecraft while setting restrictions for multiplayer builds.
Jeb wants other players to be able to observe and learn from other players and an instant build using templates tends to hinder the educational process. In this sense, player agency is once again put in the spotlight since Jeb wants players to be able to choose what to learn and from where.
Steve and Alex’s lack of personality and dialogue in-game is another principle relating to player agency. They don’t exist and are intended as placeholders for players. Players are instead given a template to build characters from, and have the freedom to go wherever they want from there. Devs and designers need to make sure their players have the necessary tools to progress but aren’t restricted by system or game rules.
Jeb’s next principle explains how to blend simplicity and depth by connecting Minecraft’s concept to games such as Dwarf Fortress and Dungeon Master. Dwarf Fortress is a simulation game that requires the players to help a clan of dwarves survive while doing other tasks. Players need to care for mining, brew beer and come up with goblin defenses in their fort, all while making sure the citizens are mentally well. Dwarf Fortress uses procedural generation for its world and encourages emergent gameplay, much like Minecraft.
Minecraft draws inspiration from Dwarf Fortress’ choice not to give players compulsory quests, but instead generate goals as the player progresses. Dwarf Fortress also involves a lot of mining, even though the focus is more on managing the dwarves. Players need to gather resources and craft, which is reflected in Minecraft’s interactive blocks and crafting features.
Dungeon Master is a 3D fantasy RPG game that made use of real-time mechanics and was an inspiration to Notch while he was designing Minecraft. Dungeon Master made the dungeon crawler format popular with its caves, monsters and battles. It threw resource management into the mix, making players have to manage their food, light and spells in risky areas. Minecraft reflects the dungeon crawler aspect with its complex cave systems and mobs, plus the health, hunger and gear durability systems tie into resource management.
Dwarf Fortress inspired Minecraft’s emergent systems and player-centric progression, while Dungeon Master feeds into Minecraft’s dungeon crawling with RPG mechanics reflected in adventure mode and boss battles. Devs need to note that even though Minecraft’s foundation stemmed from these games, it has grown into an unconventional RPG since the player doesn’t develop skills as they progress. Player level ups are given to leveling tools instead, and players are able to choose between exploring dungeons and surviving the generated world.
Player progression is defined by what items players have in their inventory and what knowledge they’ve gained over the course of their play. Minecraft seems simple because there are no progression systems or quests, but depth is added as players set the path themselves, using their own knowledge and resources to achieve goals. The key is to integrate tools and mechanisms that are simple but have the potential for complex outcomes. The complexity of the outcomes depend on the players themselves.
The last section of the design book has anecdotes including behind the scenes stories. Jeb goes into the rose flower and how it was scrapped. He wanted to add peonies, but community members said that it was a shrub and not a flower, the same as a rose. Roses were scrapped and became poppies instead, explaining the origin for the Minecraft community’s ‘remember the rose day.’
The anecdote is funny, but also showcases how Minecraft makes sure elements are realistic to the minute details and takes player feedback into account. Devs and designers need to keep in mind that an active community exists for them to further their own knowledge on how to make their game better.
Jeb explains the original purpose of the redstone repeater in another anecdote. The redstone was supposed to be a diode, meaning that a redstone signal goes through the block in only one direction. Jeb had configured the original values to be 1, 2, 5 and 7, redstone ticks but the community pointed out 1, 2, 5 and 6 as better. Jeb went with 1, 2, 3 and 4 in the end since it was more direct and easier to understand. The takeaway is to keep player experience in mind while taking external feedback into account as it helps with creating games that are accessible.
Jeb discusses Endermen and their intended mysteriousness in another sub-section Jeb goes into Endermen. He admits that Mojang doesn’t want to explain Endermen to players. Endermen are apparently trying to collapse all the dimensions so they displace key blocks, but only one at a time. Notch added Endermen as an acknowledgement of the Slender Man meme, but they’ve grown to become integral to Minecraft.
The Endermen act as an example of how creative liberties in games make them stand out in the market. Taking an existent element and tweaking it to become your own stylized version highlights it as proof of innovation, which is what’s most needed in sandbox game design.
The parallels between these anecdotes is how Minecraft’s devs actively engage with the community. Online player communities keep the game alive even after updates have stopped coming out. Keeping up with player needs, wants and suggestions continues to lengthen the game’s shelf life.
The Internet archive has Jeb’s design book in multiple downloadable formats and two additional translations. The book, as said before, was never officially published but has been archived by fans or discussed on community discussion forums such as Reddit and YouTube playlists including Minecraft Discoveries.
What game design rules does Minecraft follow?
Game design rules Minecraft follows include prioritizing player agency and emergent gameplay. Players are allowed to choose how to progress because there are no forced objectives. Minecraft uses minimal UI to maximize world feedback as well, in order to incorporate environmental storytelling.
Player agency refers to how Minecraft’s systems empower creativity without directing outcomes. Players are able to control the narrative, express themselves freely and decide their own path in the game. Player agency automatically ties into emergent gameplay since player-driven choices create unscripted outcomes because of unexpected interactions with the game system.
Minecraft has no forced objectives since it avoids win stats or compulsory quests, enabling player-driven progression that ties back to player agency. Players are able to choose how they want to play and set their own goals. Minecraft’s adventure mode progresses like a fantasy RPG, while players who want to roleplay their life in a little house by the village are free to use creative mode. Survival mode makes each reward feel earned because of the additional risks posed by mobs while exploring.
Minecraft’s open world enables exploration, enhanced by integrating minimal UI to maximize world feedback. The game avoids cluttered interfaces, relying on environmental triggers and player interactions. World feedback is made more apparent by Minecraft’s environmental storytelling. The world tells stories via terrain, villages, and player actions.
Minecraft generates its world through procedural generation techniques that use algorithms like Perlin noise combined with randomness. The algorithms create terrain, biomes, features and decide what blocks are placed where. Minecraft worlds are made of 16×16 blocks spanning the full height of the dimension. There are more than 18 quintillion possible worlds, so the game generates them through randomness, algorithms and manually built decors.
The image below shows biome data for plains in Minecraft Legends I’ve worked on. We have different noises to give general randomness and define any surface properties. There are different top blocks for different parts of the IE surface, as well as for the Mid and the seafloor. We then add tags that world placement rules act on afterwards. This system is deeply nested and is just a quick sample. For any deeper dives I recommend looking into Mojang Minecraft legends docs on GitHub.
All the design rules given above are echoed in publicly available documents from Mojang’s internal design guides including the Educational Edition Design Guide and community sourced documents including Jeb’s 2019 game design document.
Looking into Minecraft’s design rules helps with understanding what makes Minecraft successful and how to apply them to your own game. Minecraft’s priority on player agency and the ensuing elements let players create impressive structures in their game worlds. By catering to multiple playstyles, Minecraft is accessible and has very low barriers to entry.
The takeaway for devs and designers for their own projects from Minecraft is to design for systems, not scripts. Mechanics have to interact freely and hard-coded outcomes need to be avoided. Player expression must be encouraged by handing them tools rather than rules. From a technical standpoint, make sure to use consistent logic and feedback loops for experimentation. The takeaway is that every mechanic has to be reusable, combinable, scalable and integrate into other systems.
What are the Minecraft game design pillars?
The Minecraft game design pillars are modular simplicity, open-ended progression, and multiple playstyle support. Minecraft’s design pillars, from a technical standpoint, are the integration of emergent systems and environmental feedback.
Modular simplicity is when every block is simple but has the ability to be combined into complex systems. It refers to how players are able to mine blocks, such as stone, and combine them into flooring for a house, or any other structure using crafting recipes. Players are able to create complex blueprints that have the potential to become large and winding structures.
Modular simplicity goes hand-in-hand with open-ended progression since players are able to chart their own goals. Specific players decide that ‘winning’ is when they create an entire village from scratch in survival mode while other players ‘win’ when they finish a certain number of quests in adventure mode. Hardcore players set themselves goals like building a fully functional underground base in survival mode within 100 days.
Minecraft supports multiple playstyles because of low barriers to entry. The low barriers to entry refers to how anyone, regardless of age or skill level, is able to start playing Minecraft. Mechanics in the game are easy to figure out and don’t need tutorials since it’s mostly placing and mining blocks. There are also no set goals, so players set their own paths, which automatically opens doors to creative freedom.
Minecraft runs on most devices, increasing its platform reach and has simple visuals that don’t overwhelm new players. All of the design features combined mean both casual and hardcore players are able to access the game with ease and master it with continued play. Players are motivated to engage and put in long hours to progress, which contributes to Minecraft’s revenue and continued success.
The active online community for Minecraft contributes to independent play via the availability of mod packs, structure blueprints and how-to videos on YouTube. Mod packs such as Maximum Creativity contain FPS improvement mods and Creative Mode mods like Axiom. They’re lightweight so they’re easily downloadable for players on low-end devices.
Minecraft’s inclusion of emergent systems and environmental feedback create a gameplay experience that’s immersive and engaging. Emergent systems are when mechanics interact with each other and create unscripted outcomes. These systems directly support emergent gameplay, as the outcomes depend on player actions.
Environmental feedback enhances emergent systems as it results in minimal UI, making players learn via world interaction. Minecraft has simple controls where players are handed a toolkit and inventory that lets them craft on the go with whatever resources they have. Players are encouraged to learn via independent exploration and experimentation which results in finding hidden locations or resources that are usable for new types of materials.
Minecraft’s success is notable and widespread enough to warrant scientific research on its effects on player mindsets. Minecraft contributes to adaptive learning and decision-making skills according to Charley et al’s 2025 research from the Cluster of Excellence Science of Intelligence. The research simulated an interactive environment using Minecraft to study how players learn from one another.
Minecraft was said to simulate real-life challenges in the game world. Small parts of the game world are visible at a time which makes players choose where they want to pay attention to. Players in the study had to choose whether to explore on their own or observe other players and learn from them. This is true for Minecraft in a non-scientific context as well, since Minecraft’s outlined design pillars for emergent systems and open-ended progression support players learning through exploration.
Minecraft was found to improve spatial reasoning, creativity, and critical thinking by Slattery et al in 2025. A systematic review of 29 studies found that because Minecraft has an open-world system supporting independent gameplay and simple UI, it’s accessible across age groups and skillsets.
Minecraft’s low entry barriers and accessibility prompted the creation of Minecraft Education, which is a Digital Game Based Learning platform. Minecraft Education has the same core gameplay but with additional features catering to education such as students being able to work on projects on the same world.
The modular simplicity and open-ended progression in Minecraft mirror existent learning models. Students or players develop spatial reasoning through making decisions about where to mine, how to use the blocks, and how much risk to take on. Players are able to choose their own wins and paths, which partners creativity with critical thinking. WesterosCraft, for example, is a player community that’s building the entire continent of Westeros from Game of Thrones in Minecraft.
The death message is a notable example of how Mojang uses death or failure as a teachable moment without compromising immersion. Minecraft’s “Player was killed by [Intentional Game Design]” phrase appears as a death message, which is Mojang saying that the mechanic is supposed to kill the player and not a bug.
Minecraft’s death message appears when players attempt to sleep in the Nether or End, or use a respawn anchor in the Overworld. Explosions occur for both player actions, resulting in in-game death. The mechanic is an intentional trap for players who don’t understand dimension-specific rules.
Mojang uses the death message as an educational tool and as a preventive measure. Players die, so they learn to adapt to avoid repeating the action. On the other hand, beds placed in the Nether have a chance to trap the players permanently, especially new players who haven’t figured out transportation mechanics yet. The death message is funny too since Mojang admits that it’s a design choice made by them.
The takeaway for designers and devs from Minecraft’s ‘intentional death’ message is to incorporate mechanics that help players learn game rules. Player expectations need to be broken in unexpected ways and signal intended design decisions by reinforcing world logic via consequences. The teaching moment has to have elements of humor that reduce the severity of the failure as well.
Does Minecraft have bad game design?
No, Minecraft doesn’t have bad game design. Minecraft’s success shows through its continued user acquisitions despite being released as far back as 2009. There are common criticisms of Minecraft, but they don’t mean Minecraft has bad game design. Every other game, despite high popularity, has aspects that need to be improved on and taken into consideration. Minecraft is similar, so devs must apply the critiques to their own projects to avoid repeating mistakes.
Minecraft’s survival progression is a common criticism. Progression in survival mode is lacking due to weak boss design and a drop in meaningful mid-game motivators. Progression is grind-heavy so players put in a lot of hours that result in rewards that don’t feel like enough. Educational wikis online help with finding shortcuts to combat grind-heavy elements.
Minecraft’s unrealistic farming mechanics have been criticized for undervaluing plants. Minecraft’s farming mechanics prioritize meat over plants for stamina and resource value. The gameplay feels unbalanced because the farming mechanics seem geared toward animals instead of plants despite both being equally available. It’s a missed opportunity.
The open-ended play Minecraft offers is under fire for contributing to addiction and isolation amongst players. A majority of video games in the sandbox genre pose this threat since players have little to no restrictions in how they engage. Minecraft’s open world design and player-driven progression systems contribute to excessive screen time amongst players but depends on the players themselves at the end.
Experiences with inconsiderate players in co-op worlds are a primary critique. A personal experience of Minecraft’s multiplayer feature is from when I was in game design school and part of a Minecraft server with my class. My first interaction with Minecraft wasn’t pleasant since my base was TNTed to the bedrock and watered on by another player, undoing hours of work I put in.
The anger and emotional attachment I felt toward the loss of the base is a testament to Minecraft’s social impact. I was upset enough by the loss of my first base that I didn’t play Minecraft for a couple years, but my partner ended up being a fan of Minecraft. I had a better experience playing with someone else, who was next to me, instead of playing with an acquaintance online. My perception of Minecraft changed as a result, and working on Minecraft made it more personal to me.
Minecraft’s multiplayer feature is criticized for being an unsafe environment for underage players. Servers are free-for-all grounds for uncensored language use and offer anonymity to users. The combination increases the risks of cyberbullying and drawing people with ill intent toward younger players. Online recommendations emphasize including moderators and server rules to reduce negative multiplayer experiences.
Devs and designers have to understand that opinions are subjective, which is why Minecraft remains popular despite having commonly criticized aspects. Consistent updates and content contribute to Minecraft’s success, plus the very active player community online with mods and education editions increase the platform reach.
