 Good evening. The class-based first-person shooter Team Fortress 2 came out in 2007 thanks to a multi-billion-dollar corporation named Valve. Two years later, a survival sandbox indie game called Minecraft was brainstormed by a single lonely Swedish man in his bedroom. But despite having radically different origin stories and being completely separate genres, these two beloved games have a surprising amount of shared history, and quite a large community overlap as well. Screw you! I am gonna go play Minecraft! So today I'm going to talk about how Minecraft and Team Fortress 2 came to be so intertwined. Let's begin. First, we need to cover the relationship that Notch, the creator of Minecraft, has with Team Fortress and its developers. As you might know, Team Fortress got its start as a mod of Quake, a game that Notch is a lifelong fan of and has even attempted to set a lawsuit with. Knowing this, it's no surprise Notch claims to have been a fan of the original Quake World Team Fortress, as well as Valve's Gold Source-adaption Team Fortress Classic. And when Valve let loose the pre-release beta for Team Fortress 2 on September 17, 2007, Notch joined and continued to play after its official launch. I had played a lot of Quake World Team Fortress and Team Fortress Classic back in the day, and I knew TF2 would be the greatest thing ever. My friends humored me and got in on the beta with me. And my god was it awesome. It was awesomeer than awesome. Fast forward to 2010, Notch had begun really pursuing work on Minecraft, and it wasn't long before he and the TF2 team crossed paths for the first time. On July 28th, he used his Tumblr blog, titled The Word of Notch, to praise and promote a community payload level for TF2 called PL Minecraft. The TF2 blog responded the same day by linking Notch's Tumblr post and singing their own praises for Minecraft. Notch had already made his high regards for Valve a parent in Minecraft by including paintings depicting Counter-Strike maps. So when he learned that he had been acknowledged by one of his favorite developers the following morning, he took to his blog once more to celebrate. This is so cool, I can almost forgive them for forgetting about Gordon… almost. The next major interaction between Notch and Valve happened on April Fool's Day of 2011 when Notch released a prank update for Minecraft. Upon launching a world, players were greeted with a Steve Co-Supply crate, which displayed a shop offering items like a mining helmet and enlargement pills. The store was just a ruse as clicking to check out prompted players with a Jurassic Park jump scare. If you're familiar with TF2, you'll know that this prank was poking fun at its in-game microtransaction service, the Manco storefront. Notch talked about the joke further on his blog. This is meant to be a playful jab at the Manco store in Team Fortress 2. Valve is my favorite game development studio on Earth, but it seems like they can't take a joke as they immediately put their best witch doctors to work and sent horrible hexes my way. My throat exploded into a quagmire of pain. My brain started trying to escape from my head and disturbingly large quantities of sticky goo began to make its way out of my face. So this is my warning. Do not joke about Valve. By this point, fans were starting to notice the playful relation between Valve and Notch, and became curious why Notch hadn't pursued putting Minecraft on Valve's massively popular game storefront Steam. At the gaming festival PAX in August 2011, Notch explained to a fan that he had plans to add an in-game marketplace to Minecraft, which would be prohibited under Steam guidelines. He once again took to his Tumblr blog a day later to clarify that, though Minecraft wouldn't be coming to Steam, there was no bad blood between him and Valve, and that he was a huge fan of their service. On November 5th, 2011, Notch participated in the third TF2 mix-up charity event. Teaming up with members of the Yogscast, Notch went toe-to-toe against TF2's lead developer Robin Walker, as well as YouTubers Freddy Wong and TotalBiscuit. Later that month, on November 23rd, Valve developed and distributed an in-game Team Fortress 2 cosmetic called the Top Notch. This hat, which is a one-of-a-kind item distributed only to Notch's personal Steam account, takes after his then-profile picture on Twitter. It was created in response to a tweet Notch posted complaining that TF2 players were accusing him of being an impersonator. Notch was extremely flattered by Valve's gesture, and made another blog post praising TF2. Holy cow, thank you Valve, you wouldn't believe the amount of medic I get now. Also spies, I am never quitting TF2 again, and you should all go buy it right away. How much is it you ask? It's free, yes! Notch continued to livestream Team Fortress 2 on his Twitch for years to come after that, with the game even getting a mention on the final post of the word of Notch blog. I'll also keep talking to the players, and I'll keep streaming myself rocket jumping in TF2, forever wants to listen to or watch that. When you look at the friendly interactions between the TF2 developers and Notch, it becomes easy to see how their mutual respect facilitated a community crossover. But this connection was built off more than just dev interaction. Another notable way that these games fostered their player overlap was by encouraging user contribution and expression. This meant that players had an opportunity to express their love for TF2 while playing Minecraft and vice versa. For Minecraft, a major factor was its skin customization feature that allows the player to set their character to a portrayal of whoever or whatever they want. A zombie, a robot, Chris Chan, you name it. And of course an abundance of skins depicting the Team Fortress 2 roster were created and posted online for fans to enjoy. You can find skins for each of the game's classes, and even some for the minor characters from the game's comics and shorts, online. And beyond that, Minecraft Sandbox Nature has helped itself to a robust modding scene, which has also occasionally come to lean into the Team Fortress community. Check out this impressive project where someone has tried their shot at remaking TF2 as a Minecraft game mode. As for Team Fortress 2, Valve has a long reputation as a community-friendly company. And even though their communication skills have gone off the deep end in the last ten years, they remain leagues ahead of other game companies in terms of how many opportunities they provide to fans building passion projects. For example, the Valve Developer Community website is essentially a ginormous network of documents detailing Valve's game design philosophies. And they've made it available for modders and developers to study for free. Or how about the Steam Workshop, where Valve has created an official platform to support user-generated content. And even going as far as to implement uploads into their games and let community contributors take a small cut of the game's revenue. With how much free information and promotion Valve gives away, it should come as no surprise that their games have some of the biggest and most fruitful modding communities in the industry, with TF2 being no exception. It should also come as no surprise that, by giving away incredibly helpful documents that explain how to use their developer tools, Valve accidentally opened the gate for a ridiculous amount of Minecraft-themed TF2 levels. Seriously, there are so many, and they're still being regularly produced, I have no idea why. An interesting bit of trivia is that Two Builders, Two Tools, a notorious Minecraft anarchy server you may have heard of, got it started as an offshoot of a now-defunct TF2 server called 242 Furious. The creator of Two Builders, Two Tools goes by the name Housemaster, mirroring the creator of the 242 Furious server, Floormaster. Floormaster is known for a couple of other things, too. He created the intro video for the TF2 community map CP Steel, which earned him his own community rocket launcher back in 2008. And he was also one of the founders of an early TF2 griefing channel called Team Roomba. But to pull things back together, how did Minecraft and TF2 come to be so intertwined? I think it comes down to a couple of factors. Both games were created around the same time by developers who shared a mutual respect and occasionally cross-promoted. Both games are very casual and appealed to similar demographics of teenage boys, and both games fostered exceedingly creative communities which often bled into each other. And while both grew to be bloated with updates that a decent chunk of their community members absolutely despise, both are still massively beloved by their core fanbases and will likely remain staples of PC gaming for years to come. Thanks for watching! If you enjoyed the video, consider liking it and subscribing to my channel. If you want to support me further, you can check out the video description for links to join my Discord server and follow me on Twitter. I've also started a second channel called Richter After Hours, so check that out as well. Have a good day!