How I Got Started Playin Minecraft

When Minecraft came out  I was not impressed. When Minecraft moved from alpha to beta and all of my online friends were discussing who was going to host the new multiplayer server, I did not get it. It’s blocks - crude little pixel blocks put together in a randomly generated world where there is no story, no characters, no dialogue, no speech, and what I induce to be no point. I don’t have a problem with indie games that are rough sketches of what the creator intends; I suppose I just don’t like games that lack a story. So I didn’t play Minecraft.  I sat back and wondered what the hell everyone was going on about until one day a friend bugged me into trying it. That, and I was curious as to how my buddy set what looked like an entire world on fire.“Hold down the mouse to break a block” - I quickly figure out. Punch. Punch. Punch…it disappears. And now I have dirt! I have one block of dirt. Hold dirt…punch again. And so I quickly joined up with the massive group of Miners that have already sunk sweet sweet time and effort into their worlds. The odd part is that my initial reaction to the game still sticks with me: there is no story, no characters to speak of, no dialogue. It’s simply creation and survival hand-to-hand in a very simplistic display that everyone in my generation can relate to: pixels upon pixels masking script masking code. I had tried to understand before, talking to people who played and not getting why they liked investing so much time in the game. It seemed like some rip-off of people who able to draw, or architects who are able to build and plan. I’m finding that it’s more of a culmination of everything: it’s pure creation and very little limitation on the player’s part. Other than falling, physics rarely hinder a person as much as in the real world. Want to dig straight down in the world? Sure. Want to walk backwards on air or on top of oceans to place foundation? Meh, gravity’s overrated. Push the hype aside, don’t mind the pixels, grab a couple friends, and start building. Or burning. Or mining. Or dueling. Really, just start. Ideas will start coming to you.