I’m just going to say it:
Minecraft is one of the greatest video games ever made.
Not one of the greatest indie games. Not one of the greatest sandbox games.
One of the greatest games, period.
And when you really think about what Minecraft actually is, that’s kind of insane.
You break blocks.
You collect those blocks.
Then you put those blocks somewhere else.
That’s basically the game.
Yet somehow, you sit down intending to play for 30 minutes and suddenly it’s 2 AM, you’ve built a house, dug a mine, found diamonds, started a farm, accidentally pissed off an Enderman, and you’re now watching a YouTube video explaining how to build an automatic chicken farm.
Trust me, me and the wife have done this countless times.
What the hell happened?
It Doesn’t Tell You How to Have Fun
One of my favorite things about Minecraft is that it doesn’t really care how you play it.
Want to beat the Ender Dragon?
Go for it.
Want to build an enormous castle?
Sure.
Want to spend six hours digging a giant hole for absolutely no reason?
Minecraft is perfectly fine with that too.
There’s progression. There are enemies. There are bosses. There are objectives you can work toward.
But Minecraft doesn’t constantly shove them in your face.
Instead, you create your own objectives.
That’s something I appreciate even more now that I develop games myself.
A lot of games are constantly telling the player what to do next.
Go here.
Talk to this person.
Collect 10 of these.
Follow the giant glowing waypoint.
Minecraft basically drops you into the world and says:
Good luck.
And somehow that works.
“I’ll Just Finish This One Thing…”
Minecraft might be the king of creating your own gameplay loop.
I’ll just finish my house.
Except I need more wood.
So I go get wood.
While I’m getting wood, I notice a cave.
Well, I might as well check out the cave.
Now I need some torches.
While mining coal for torches, I find iron.
Now I should probably make some better tools.
Then I find diamonds.
Well, now I obviously need a diamond pickaxe.
Which means I can get obsidian.
Which means…
Oh shit, I’ve been playing for four hours.
Minecraft constantly gives you another reason to keep going, but the clever part is that it often feels like you came up with the reason yourself.
That’s brilliant game design.
The Graphics Shouldn’t Work
Minecraft isn’t exactly going for photorealism.
Everything is blocks.
The animals are blocks.
The trees are blocks.
The mountains are blocks.
You are a block.
And yet Minecraft is instantly recognizable.
Show someone a screenshot of a grassy Minecraft hill with a Creeper standing on it and there’s almost no chance they’re going to mistake it for another game.
As a developer, I think there’s a pretty important lesson there.
A strong art style can be much more important than realistic graphics.
Minecraft doesn’t need realistic trees or individually rendered blades of grass.
Its limitations became its identity.
And decades from now, Minecraft will still look like Minecraft.
Everyone Has a Minecraft Story
I think this is another huge part of why Minecraft became what it did.
People don’t just remember playing Minecraft.
They remember things that happened to them in Minecraft.
You remember your first house.
You remember finding diamonds.
You remember the Creeper that blew up half of something you spent hours building.
You remember getting hopelessly lost and realizing you have absolutely no idea where your base is.
You remember finally going to the Nether.
You remember building something completely ridiculous just because you could.
And if you’ve played multiplayer, you’ve probably got an entirely different collection of stories.
Minecraft creates the environment.
The players create the stories.
That’s incredibly powerful.
Then There’s Redstone
And this is where Minecraft starts getting ridiculous.
Some people play Minecraft and build a little house.
Other people apparently look at Minecraft and think:
“I’m going to build a functioning computer inside this block game.”
Redstone added an entirely different layer to Minecraft.
You can build doors and traps.
Then automated farms.
Then sorting systems.
Then calculators.
Then actual computers.
At some point I stopped understanding what the hell people were doing with Redstone.
But that’s also what makes it so cool.
Minecraft gives players relatively simple systems and lets them figure out completely insane ways to combine them.
Mods Made It Even More Ridiculous
And then, of course, the community got involved.
Minecraft already has an enormous amount of content on its own.
Mods basically said:
That’s not enough.
New blocks.
New creatures.
New dimensions.
Technology.
Magic.
Automation.
Entire progression systems.
Shaders that make Minecraft look like your graphics card is about to file for workers’ compensation.
If you get bored with vanilla Minecraft, there’s an almost endless amount of community-created content waiting for you.
And that has undoubtedly helped Minecraft stay relevant for so long.
Minecraft Is for Basically Everyone
This might be its greatest accomplishment.
A kid can play Minecraft.
An adult can play Minecraft.
Someone who barely plays video games can play Minecraft.
Someone who has spent their entire life playing games can sink thousands of hours into Minecraft.
You can play Survival.
You can play Creative.
You can build.
Explore.
Fight.
Farm.
Mine.
Play with friends.
Install mods.
Join enormous multiplayer servers.
Or just wander around and see what you find.
There aren’t many games that can appeal to such an enormous range of people without completely losing their identity.
Minecraft somehow does.
It’s Also One of the Greatest Indie Game Success Stories Ever
This part especially fascinates me as an indie developer.
Minecraft didn’t begin as some enormous AAA production with hundreds of developers and a massive marketing budget.
It started small.
The basic concept wasn’t complicated.
But that concept had something incredibly important:
It was fun.
And more importantly, it created a foundation that could keep expanding.
New mechanics didn’t necessarily replace the old ones. They added another layer to the sandbox.
That’s something I think about when working on my own games.
You don’t necessarily need 500 different mechanics.
Sometimes you need a few really good mechanics that interact with each other in interesting ways.
Minecraft might be one of the greatest examples of that philosophy ever made.
More Than a Game
There are games with better stories than Minecraft.
There are games with better graphics.
There are games with better combat.
There are games with bigger cinematic moments.
But there aren’t many games that have given players this much freedom for this long.
Minecraft became a game, a creative tool, a multiplayer platform, a modding playground, and for an entire generation of kids, basically a digital box of LEGO.
And somehow, after all these years, the basic idea still works.
Punch tree.
Get wood.
Build something.
Find something interesting.
Get distracted.
Build something else.
Realize it’s 2 AM.
That’s Minecraft.
And that’s why I think it deserves to be called one of the greatest video games ever made.
