I wanted to write something pithy and interesting today, but I got 4 hours of sleep and there is a distinct lack of pithiness in my brain at the moment. I am staring at my to-do list and all I can think is “I’d rather be playing Minecraft.” So, hey, let’s talk about that.
My first gaming console was an Atari 2800 (with 2600 joysticks). I played all the usual suspects. I also had an Apple IIe and some games like Burger Time and DigDug and Math Blaster. My high school days, however, did not have much in the way of video games. Then in college I did primarily MUDs. There were then a couple years of Quake, Doom, and Half-life. Then video games fell away for a bit – aside from the occasional rambunctious spree of Monkey Ball with friends.
It wasn’t until my kiddo reached tween-hood and I was looking for games we could play together. Wizard101 was the start, then fairly soon after that we added Minecraft to the mix. We started in 1.8. I love big open world games. Like, I actually dig No Man’s Sky, but the pure sandbox-ness of Minecraft is what keeps be coming back to it. I am NOT a particularly good builder. I am TERRIBLE at redstone. I am somewhat rattled by the Nether and totally freaked out by the End, but I love it nonetheless.
I love it because I can bend the game to suit my mood. Do I need to blow off steam and just whack mobs? Then a fire up a world, set it to hard, and get aggressive. Do I need to just veg out and do something to de-stress? Then I head down to level 11 and just start mindlessly mining. I can go into creative and try out some things in a test world. I can jump in a boat and just go to new lands. You can set it to peaceful and not worry about bad mobs. You can set it to Ultra Hardcore and try to make it as far as you can without dying. The game is so versatile that pretty much no matter my mood, there is something I can do in one of my worlds.
I especially love the multiplayer world that I play in with my husband and son (we are in our third such world at this point)., because I love having adventures and problem-solving together as a team.
The other thing I love about Minecraft is that people do amazing things in it and there are a plethora of YouTube channels showing off incredible builds. And, not just builds. You can watch people try to speed run the game in 20 minutes. And, my favourite, you can watch a collective of builders and redstoners co-creating worlds and storylines. My favourite it Hermitcraft and I watch several Hermits (I also may have an unreasonable crush on XizumaVoid, or as Grian would say “Ex-ee-ii-zuma-Veeodd”). It is in its 7th season right now. And, this brings me to what may be my absolute favourite aspect of Minecraft…it is the absolute best when you share and create together.
I love that in the Minecrafting world there are people all over the world, from teenagers to 60 year olds, working together to make amazing contraptions, buildings, and spaces.
But, as much as I would like to be finishing up my very first automated sorting system right now, I’ll wait until my to-do list is done.