Minecraft is game that started small and turned into a cultural phenomenon. A cultural phenomenon that is rooted in people working with other people to build amazing things. And now they want to use the power of the community to rebuild the real world.

Within Minecraft exists a community where every individual is empowered to build. The game provides the blocks, but the community makes it their own.

Minecraft states its mission simply: “At our core, we are here to Build a Better World. Each player starts by placing one block. Then another. And another. These small actions are more than the sum of their parts, and so are we. We can create change from the bottom up.

Adults don’t always see the good in kids playing video games. But gamers aren’t the ones responsible for the greatest threat to the planet. As Minecraft players have grown up, they’ve become interested in building more than just game worlds. Social and environmental change indexes very high among them, so we created Coral Crafters. A project that enabled players to improve the real world with their gaming skills. After releasing an update that filled its previously-empty digital oceans with marine life, Minecraft enlisted its young community to do the same for Earth’s non-digital oceans. Combining Minecraft’s top content creators, middle-school genius, revolutionary underwater technology, 91 million monthly active players worked together to restore coral reefs and prove to the world that video games are more than entertainment. They can actually help young people improve the world they will inherit.

Minecraft is one of the most popular games in the world, and the only one without instructions. Players have built a community to share experiences and help each other craft and build. They don’t just want to build new worlds in the game, they want to build a better world in real life. To excite players about an in-game update that added new ocean features, we looked to spark desire around something that 70% of players said they cared about deeply: giving back to their community.

Coral Crafters empowered Minecraft’s community to celebrate a new update by using their imaginations to update life in real oceans. Minecraft’s top content creators from around the world invited their followers to help them build in-game designs. The community’s favorite designs were built in real life using a revolutionary coral-regrowth technology, and installed by local Minecraft Education students in the waters outside Cozumel, Mexico. Over time, this technology will regrow coral atop the Minecraft sculptures, creating a new coral reef that could last for thousands of years. The effort also unlocked funding for The Nature Conservancy to restore more reefs in the Bahamas, Dominican Republic, and Virgin Islands.

Coral Crafters exceeded all benchmarks established by the last major update launched, with just half the media budget of its previous campaign. At launch Minecraft announced record-breaking increases in active players - hitting an all-time high of 91 million people playing every month.

The community grows primarily through Word-of-Mouth and sharing, so engagement with any update campaign is crucial. Coral Crafters engaged the community not just with an update, but with a mission that has real-world implications and racked up nearly 10x more social engagement than the last major update campaign.

Our connection to Minecraft’s engine of growth clearly worked, as within the associated time-frame of July 2018, Minecraft net revenue jumped along with year-over-year game sales.