Minecraft was something I didn’t get into early enough, I think. I don’t know why – it’s right up my alley. Maybe I thought it was boring. Maybe my tastes had just changed. Whatever it was I didn’t purchase a copy of the game until my birthday in 2018. A friend of mine was playing it online and they really wanted me to play with them, so I scrounged up some money from the couch cushions, bought a copy from Mojang, and got to it.

I’ll be honest. I didn’t like it at first. Most of that was probably due to the graphics being what they were. While I still had love in my heart for the ol’ 8-bit, it was the love of the games themselves, not the style. I followed franchises, not implementations. But I endured. I played on my own to get used to the controls (which I found I was pretty terrible at), and read up on how to do things. My friend invited others from our server and I found myself shelling out for hosting just because everyone was so enthused by the idea of playing videogames together. And then it clicked. The feeling of “symphony and symmetry” came back. I was playing with real living human beings and we had real goals. It was an amazing feeling. The beauty I suddenly found in this modern 8-bit world brought the nostalgia of yesteryear down on me like the hammer of Judge Mills Lane. It was time to get it on. Mining stuff to craft. Crafting stuff to mine. Dodging the creeper. Killing the zombies. It was surprisingly intense. I was terrible at the building aspect (which is pretty typical for me actually), but I was good at getting resources and doing the killing. So I dragged my best friend into it. He’s got this genius when it comes to videogames – especially ones where building and crafting is part of the gameplay. He wasn’t too enthused at first (just as I had been) but he quickly started to see the charm, and he actually could build stuff as soon as he got a hang of the system.

There were about six of us at this point, with one of the original players who'd dragged me in, making amazing buildings in the game. She (we’ll call her “Bruno”) is one of those people who could do it competitively if she wanted. Seriously. She’s that good. I, meanwhile, got “stuck” doing the thing I loved most (oh, no), which was gathering resources and exploring. I’d come back to the base loaded up, drop off the resources for everyone else, get the food someone had made, and go back out. It was perfect for me. Just hit every button for me in exactly the right order. That’s pretty rare for me these days, but Minecraft really did it and so we played for what seemed like forever. Then the ever-elusive work beast slouched toward Minecraftham and I got busy and haven't been able to devote time to it for almost a year later. Always sucks when that happens.

I’m one of those sorts who likes to analyze things after they happen – especially something I’ve done or participated in. Why? I like to know how I can be better. It doesn’t matter what it is I’m examining, or what aspect it takes in my personal life; more information, more critical thinking, and more logical approaches are always better. Was I playing the game because I liked it or because my friend asked me to play? Pointless really. A better question was: “Am I enjoying the time I was putting in?” The answer to that was a resounding “Yes!” I didn’t like to play on my own all that much, but I loved playing with people and it just really made me happy to be there. I don’t think I can properly articulate the sheer joy it brings me to play games with people, and how that joy is doubled when it's people I want to be around. There is a sense of profoundness in the shared creation of a thing between you and those you love and care for. It doesn’t matter if it lasts, it only matters that it was. As much as I pathologically hate endings, goodbyes, and so on, I recognize that sometimes the beauty of creation is not in the finishing or the starting, but in the doing itself.

Some people just can’t understand that. They cannot believe that there is beauty in the action itself. This translates over to videogames. We gamers aspire to be the best or have fun or whatever, but what we really want, what we need deep down, is a journey. Maybe not zero to hero a la Campbell, but something. We need the feeling of travel in some form or another, because we know instinctively that it is not the destination that draws, but the journey. Now that sounds philosophical and maybe I’m prattling on a bit, but think about this for a moment: One of the most played and purchased games in the world is a game where combat exists, but can be turned off. Where imagination is the key to opening doors to countless worlds. Almost 240 million copies sold and almost 140 million active players. That is insanity. But it does bring one thing to mind for me. It gives me a kind of hope. This is a game where creativity is king and it has been embraced as such. The purpose is to provide a purpose, not to follow anyone else’s. It’s very Zen: “What is the sound of one pickaxe tapping?”

After almost a year ago I started up a Minecraft game. Did some stuff, but couldn’t really get anyone to play. It didn’t spark as much joy as I remembered so I started to consider why that was. Obviously, playing without people was part of it. But what else? What else did I not get this time that I’d had previously? What was it that had addicted me so thoroughly to gameplay that was now gone? I think (and I feel this is a shared thing by most gamers) that it was the act of gaming itself. It was the playing itself that brought the joy. What was around the bend? Could I tunnel down to get what I need? What did I need? I think that feeling of momentum along with shared gameplay is what does it for me. And I really feel that this is the same combination of things that do it for others as well. Humans like to “pack up” and they like to move – it’s one of the things that's made us the most successful animals on the planet. Putting that impulse into a contemporary term: when we come around for entertainment, we like to see it doing things and we like to share what it's doing. It’s one of the reasons why massive multi-player online roleplaying games are so popular. It’s why they remain popular. But add in the other thing humans like: creativeness, and with Minecraft, you get something addictive and fun to play.

I just want to bring back the whole “238 million copies sold” thing here. That’s more than titles like Grand Theft Auto V and freaking Tetris. That is utter and complete madness… but it’s also so heart-achingly beautiful I have to stop and consider it every time I think about it. The game that wins out. The game that people play. That game? That game is bound only by what the human imagination can conceive and there are millions of people who play it daily. That just boggles my gourd and flabbers my gast. And yes, I know it’s got violence in it – Survival mode is exactly what it sounds like – but if you’ve seen some of the things that players have built it makes me wonder the percentage of creative vs. survival games.

As always I end posts like this with questions because we here at Haptic want to know:

1) What sort of games do you like to play in Minecraft?

2) What gets you buzzing in a game?

3) Do you like to play with other people or do you like to explore on your own?

4) Do you have a server you pay for if you play with others? (And why isn’t it a Haptic server?)

These are things we want to know. So tell us! Happy gaming.