Minecraft visualisation shows 826 days of development - with lasers

In real life, game development sounds hard. You've got to create, debug and fix all manner of problems. A bug could appear in only the most specific and hard to duplicate circumstances. Or an errant line of code could cause the entire floor to disappear, killing everyone on your level. But in this Minecraft visualisation, released by Mojang, development looks like a game in itself. The avatars of its creators float about, zapping features into existence. In eight minutes we're taken from Alpha 1.2.6 to yesterday's release of Minecraft 1.5. That serene unfolding of pretty development branches represents 826 days of hard coding graft.

Each dot represents a different game file, with file types classified by colour. When a dev floats past for a laser zap, they've made a change to the file - be it bug fix or feature add. For real development spectacle, skip over to around the 4 minute mark - the merging of singleplayer and multiplayer files results in a firework display of colour.

It's a fascinating abstraction of how Minecraft went from this:

To this:

Phil has been writing for PC Gamer for nearly a decade, starting out as a freelance writer covering everything from free games to MMOs. He eventually joined full-time as a news writer, before moving to the magazine to review immersive sims, RPGs and Hitman games. Now he leads PC Gamer's UK team, but still sometimes finds the time to write about his ongoing obsessions with Destiny 2, GTA Online and Apex Legends. When he's not levelling up battle passes, he's checking out the latest tactics game or dipping back into Guild Wars 2. He's largely responsible for the whole Tub Geralt thing, but still isn't sorry.