A lot of people like to debate whether or not Minecraft is a good game.  Those that argue in favor of it typically talk about how it offers basically an unlimited platform for creativity.  Those that think otherwise argue that a lack of any real objectives or goals makes the game pointless and therefore boring.  Up until very recently (this past weekend), I would have agreed with the naysayers.

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I’ve been playing MC off and on for nearly 6 months and never really cared much for it.  Without an objective to achieve, I always felt like I was just wasting my time building things with no purpose or function.  That all changed a couple Fridays ago.  A fellow member of an invite-only site that I’m a member of posted that he had started a new MC server just for site-members.  Against my better judgement I decided to check it out, and I was instantly hooked.

In my last article about Gaming and Violence, I mentioned that now if your game isn’t an online title, it’s dead in the water, and MC is the perfect example of what I mean.  Played alone, MC gets old, fast.  Played collaboratively with friends and strangers, however, MC becomes an entirely different game.  Instead of mindlessly building useless things, you start trying to build things to help your friends out or show off your skills to them.  The objective becomes “check out what we can build” and stops being, well, nothing.

While I will admit that there is a linear objective in MC singlplayer, what makes the game interesting isn’t getting to “The End,” it’s getting there in the most creative way possible, which typically means never getting there at all.

Minecraft offers a world of possibilities that challenges the player by limiting their capacity for creativity with their ability to mine and build their imaginary structures, block by block.  If you don’t have MC and are skeptical of it’s current popularity or appeal, the only advice I can offer is that if you built things out of legos with your friends as kid, you will enjoy MC, and probably a lot.

But what version should you buy?  Well, it really depends on what you want to get out of MC.  If you want to hang out with friends and casually build stuff, then the Xbox version is probably going to suit you best.  If you’re looking to do more intricate things on a grander scale and don’t mind having to use skype to talk with your friends and track down servers to play on, then the PC version is going to be where it’s at for you.

Please share your thoughts, seeds, or videos in the comments as I’m fairly new to Minecraft and would really enjoy checking out some cool MC stuff.

Thank you for reading.