If you're me, Minecraft is a game about spending seven hours getting lost looking for diamonds and then getting bored. If you're a child and have friends, Minecraft is probably your entire life. It is a game whose random number generator and infinite modding scene can sustain a child's attention span for years, singlehandedly.

It represents an interesting anomaly, because to be frank, I truly do not believe that Minecraft's popularity is the result of any remarkable development skill. Like LEGO, Minecraft's appeal does not come from any feats of a toymaker's genius... it just strikes at all of the same critical spots on a young human's brain.

Minecraft's RNG gods are just unfeeling enough to lend authenticity to one's adventures in it. Without that hand of craft, out here in the wilds of chaos, there may exist thrills unrivaled by traditionally crafted ventures. Children love few things more than the absence of supervision, and that includes the tangible presence of a game developer. Minecraft, like Dungeons and Dragons, is more a set of flexible rules than it is anything else... and this is why its community was able to make it into the best video game experience to become commercially available in 2011.

The best playgrounds are built on accident. In elementary school, my friends and I spent our recesses on an old, wooden castle-ish thing with some swings and a tunnel made of tires. That playground is gone now, replaced with brightly colored plastic. The new playground is full of things that have clear and intended uses. The spinning cylinders are for tic-tac-toe. The funnels are for speaking through. I hate it, and I pity any child who frequents it, for a bowl is most useful when it is empty.

Reviewed on Jun 05, 2020


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