[Update: This article has been long overdue in being finished. Over December and January I was very busy with finals, Christmas break, J-term, losing the short outline for the article, etc... Fortunately, it will not be like another article I started precisely a year before, only to completely forget where I was going with it. Anyway, that's all; Now to the article:]
First, you punch some blocks. Then you use a tool, made from those blocks, to get more blocks. Using further blocks, you build a container to store ... you guessed it, more blocks. After minutes of digging, you find better, stronger blocks and make better, stronger tools for getting blocks. Enemies try to destroy you and your blocks, but you valiantly defeat them all. At the end of the day, you rest in your bed, surrounded by blocks and block-derived items, accessories and decorations.
The above description is a tedious rendering of the basic concept of the recent compter game, Minecraft. Looking at the description (crafted by me), I find myself asking one question: what is the appeal of the game, exactly? I am the type of gamer that thrives on games that are story-driven, or have at least a moderately-formed narrative somewhere within them. Minecraft is a sandbox game with no particular goal. So, why do I often find myself spending hours playing it? A question to ponder indeed.
Of the reasons for its appeal, Minecraft's very title tells the first: an appeal to creativity. By mining different materials, the player can create various fantastic, and sometimes impossible, structures.
Another reason, something common to all video and computer games in general, is the appeal to control that it offers the player. This is present more in the Creative Mode (which allows the player to fly, be invulnerable to enemies, use any blocks, etc...) than in the ability-limiting Survival Mode. Using Creative Mode, the player can spawn animals, people, and monsters, in addition to the plethora of materials the game affords. You can torment Creepers by spawning them in a confined space with many ocelots. Or, you can destroy entire villages with an excess of TNT. However, because of the very nature of games putting the player in control, this aspect, the appeal to power, should not be emphasized too much.
A similar reason, also common among video games, is the idea of the re-spawn. As you are all familiar, in real life it is quite fatal to fall into a pit of lava from a great height with an anvil landing on you just after your toasty bath begins. However, games, including Minecraft, allow you to safely re-spawn - albeit without items, power-ups etc... - safely afterwards. Still, this reason is common to many video games and does not bolster my argument as much as I would hope.
The key reason for Minecraft's appeal is the sense of community that it fosters in its players. It is not merely a way of satisfying OCD-like tendencies by organizing massive buildings in a row (as above) but instead sharing those organized massive buildings with friends. I have had the fortune of having access to a server run by a good friend. Sometimes, we just walk around and look at all of the cool things he and others have built. At least once, I've been able to show him a project on which I'd been working. Related to the idea of sharing structures, gamers also put on programmer hats to modify the base game in several different ways, be it adding new items, or ways of crafting things. Some add new animals. Others add forms of transportation. Either way, the programmer-gamers and the plain-old-gamers form a community. In Minecraft, it's really the end product and sharing it that matters, not merely the act of building.
