How I Became An Official Minecraft Partner

So this is a brand new blog, where I thought I could write about my story on how I became an official Minecraft partner designing maps for the Minecraft marketplace. It's funny because I never actually intended for it to happen at all!
It all started around 2 years ago when my child first got into Minecraft. As a lifelong gamer who's played a massive variety of games, I never quite understood the hype around Minecraft and I simply used to judge it off it's graphics alone!

I mean come on now, how can a game with graphics like that be so good?!

Well that attitude all changed the moment I first jumped into a survival world with my kid........wow! I couldn't believe how much it sparked the imagination and how it made you want to explore, craft and build! I finally got how so many people had been gripped by this amazing masterpiece of a game. 

Fast forward a couple of days later, this is when I purchased it for my phone so I could play it when on the move. Fun fact, I can remember one of my first Minecraft survival worlds where I built a base on a beach and was utterly convinced you could not cross the huge ocean that was always in my view. I never did cross that ocean lol. At that time though, I just did not understand the concept behind different Minecraft biomes and how the game had infinite worlds. But this made the game even more fun when I think back to it now, as it was all part of the massive learning curve every player must follow when first getting into Minecraft.

My first Minecraft world and base. I never tried to cross the ocean as I did not think it could be done lol

A few weeks later, I purchased Minecraft bedrock by mistake for Windows 10. This was because of another thing I did not know anything about at the time......the difference between java and bedrock, and I only got bedrock as it was cheaper on the Microsoft Store lol! 
This sounds so stupid now but I think many people have felt like this at some point. As anyone who's a total noob to the game, can easily get overwhelmed by all the different game modes, items, platforms etc.
However, I feel like this was meant to happen as it then shaped my journey into becoming an official Minecraft partner.

As I mentioned before, I started my own first Minecraft survival world to explore and build. However, shortly after I seen some redstone devices, which got me curious! I then went into creative mode in a new world and started playing around with different redstone items and building my first redstone circuits. Once I discovered you can make opening/closing doors with levers joined by redstone, it sparked something in me that wanted to then make my own Minecraft map for people to download.

That's when I discovered mcpedl.com, and you realised many people were uploading their creations onto the website so other people could download and enjoy for free. So I created an account and then finished my first Minecraft map 'Escape the Skeleton Dungeon' and uploaded it to the site. This map then got quite alot of shares, downloads and positive comments......there was also various people uploading gameplay videos to their YouTube channels! If I'm being honest, it threw me off as I simply thought I was building maps just like everybody else does, but that wasn't the case! 

One of the basic parkour sections in my first map

The attention the map got gave me instant motivation to go and build another Minecraft adventure map! This was when 'Escape the Zombie Dungeon' was produced (even though there's not that many zombies in the map lol). As I'm writing this, I honestly cannot even hardly remember the sections inside my first maps as I have terrible memory at times! But one thing I can remember is when I dug out the parkour section with a huge drop.....it took me ages, as I did not know about the fill command which I could of used to get the job done much easier and quicker, whoops! 

I then went on to release various free maps like

- Tomb of the Skeleton Kings
- Lava Land Escape
- Escape the Diamond Dungeon
- Escape the Redstone Railroad
- Raid the Ocean Temple
- Raid the Skelton Dungeon
- Plus others!

After creating multiple Minecraft adventure maps, the road to becoming an official Minecraft partner got much shorter! I did a playthrough of a Tomb Raider game and got some inspiration to then build a jungle themed map. I then create and released another map for free called 'Raid the Jungle Temple'. Again, this proved to be pretty popular and not long after its release, that's when I woke up to a very surreal message in my Instagram inbox!

It was the morning of 12th April 2020 I received a message from DF Founder!

I can't remember the specifics but he basically explained he himself was an official Minecraft partner who can publish content onto the Minecraft marketplace. I was asked a couple of simple questions like if I worked alone and my age and if I would be interested in an opportunity to join the team and become and official Minecraft partner myself and potentially earn some money in the process.......well yeah.....sounds good to me mate :D

Fast forward to just over a year and I now have 7 adventure maps on the Minecraft marketplace ....which is just crazy, as I never intended to become an official Minecraft partner.
It's been a good journey though, and hopefully one with many more maps to come!

If you're a Minecraft map/skin/model creator, then I advise simply don't give up! Build stuff because you genuinely enjoy doing it then hopefully things will fall into place after that! Remember if you have enough Minecraft content which is good quality, you can always message studios directly asking if they would like to work with you or you can also easily apply directly through Mojang to become an official Minecraft partner. Beware though, the latter has a very long waiting list even just for a response from them! Thank you for reading this and wish everyone all the best on their Minecraft journey!