Minecraft
Review on PC
Rating: 9/10

2020 has been a year that is heavily affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. Many countries went on a lockdown measure and people had to take different lockdown policies seriously in order not to get infected or infect other people in the society. This led to the absence of normal life and the rise of online gaming. The impact of COVID-19 made people unable to interact in real life like usual and has forced many people to use different means to connect to each other. Some may use social media to call and connect with their loved ones. Many people, on the other hand, use online games to connect with their friends and family in the time of pandemic. Minecraft is a good example of this, as it was popularly and differently used by many people from different fields. Minecraft was already becoming quite popular among everyone, be it young people, teachers, journalists, or researchers, long before the pandemic. Before the pandemic, Minecraft was a gaming phenomenon where people gathered together to play different new modes and mods created by third-party groups and to keep on exploring new elements and aspects of the game in new updates. To put it simply, it was just a simple block-building game for everyone. Unquestionably, Minecraft has become a popular phenomenon on YouTube over the past decade, having some 201 billion views in 2020 and in schools, where teachers used Minecraft as a means to teach students about a lot of different things, from general subjects, like History and Programming to social skills, like teamwork and communication.

This led me to think about how such a simple-looking videogame like Minecraft could become one of the best videogames of all time and be used in manners other than for the sake of entertainment or gaming. If we are to talk about this, we have to know first what kind of a game Minecraft is. Minecraft is a survival, open-world, and sandbox game. It is not clear whether Notch, the person behind the creation of Minecraft, wanted Minecraft to be a multiplayer game or not, but Minecraft’s design was more than suitable for it to be played with other people since it puts players in a vast world full of different possibilities. When players enter the game, they have to generate a world in which they will be playing in. All the elements in the world will be randomly generated, meaning that every player will play in a completely different world and environment. They can also tinker with many aspects of the world as they like, like how large it will be, how the environments of their world will be, difficulties, and such. When players have entered the game world, they are put inside a random place in the world with no tutorials and no objectives. If players do not know how to play, they can try gathering materials like dirt, woods, and stones, in order to build a crafting table and build their shelter to survive the first night, where harmful monsters that are hostile towards the players will be roaming the game world. Of course, players do not have to build a shelter on their first night, they can do whatever they want as they are given the possibilities to do anything. This is, in my opinion, what is essential to this game, as the players are introduced to the game world without any instructions on what to do and how to play, they will find out themselves many possibilities of their generated world and craft their own narratives and stories. This is actually similar to our lives or our social environment, as we get introduced to the world or society without any instructions in real life. We have to find out ourselves as to how to interact with all the elements and people surrounding us.

I want to mention 2 notable game mechanics in this game as I think they are what makes the game more distinctive. The first is the ability for players to build, break, and craft things. As players enter the game world, they have to do these things to survive the first night or to advance their progress or stories. They cannot play the game without doing these things. The second is that there are no real displayed objectives, so players are free to do whatever they can think of in their world. The lack of displayed objectives and the open-world aspect of Minecraft encourage players to make up their own objectives that would suit their playstyle, making it easier for players to enjoy the game at their own pace. Again, these game mechanics emphasize how similar the game and our social environment are. In our society, we have to learn how to operate something or get through something to achieve our goals and we have a certain freedom to find out what we want to do in life or what our goals in life will be. This makes Minecraft seem even more societal or more like a social space than a videogame.

Unlike many other popular videogames, Minecraft was not intentionally created to become something this big and popular. Minecraft was a simple java coded game developed from a game called “RubyDung” by Markus Persson, known as“Notch”, in 2009. Notch shared his work on different online forums and updated the game based on feedbacks from those forums. The game was first released to the public on 17 May 2009 and having had many positive feedbacks, Notch quit his job to work full-time on Minecraft and started the videogame company “Mojang” in 2010. The full version of Minecraft was first released on 18 November 2011. Minecraft has over 200 million copies as of date and is now the best-selling videogame of all time.

What I find interesting about Minecraft is that it is reviewed or praised very differently from other videogames. Many other similar sandbox or survival with open-world aspect games are usually praised for their gaming aspects, like graphics, objectives, stories, and such. Minecraft, on the other hand, is praised a lot for different things that are outside of the gaming elements. IGN praised Minecraft for its open-world aspect, daring players to do what they will and not win the game. GamesRadar+ describes that Minecraft is a big blank canvas waiting to be painted by humans’ imaginations. Gamespot says that Minecraft does not really need an ending and that it is only there for some players that need one. The most important point of all is that Minecraft is praised for its aspect of being a social space and its ability to bring people together. From these reviews, opinions, and personal experiences, we can see that Minecraft has been used as something more than a game, a social space or an affinity space for example. This means that Minecraft can become something else other than a videogame that has the function of entertaining players. It has become a virtual social space that can be used to host all kinds of activities and to accomplish the users’ designed objectives.

Minecraft, in this case, is a virtual social space, rather than a videogame, because it does not force objectives and stories upon players and allows players to craft their own objectives, stories, and narratives, unlike many other games with similar genres. As for me and my friends, we would sometimes get together in our Minecraft world to chat, explore, expand our house, and gather resources. It is more like a place where we can use as an extension to our normal chatter. Like me, other people may use Minecraft as a means or an extension to connect with other people to socialize or communicate with people. An example can be seen from when 100gecs hosted a concert in Minecraft amidst the COVID-19 pandemic featuring many famous artists and many people attended the concert just to listen to their music and not to play Minecraft. In this case, people attended the concert to listen to their favorite artists or to experience a new social phenomenon, using Minecraft as the medium. This makes Minecraft become a commercial space, where it can be used as a means to invite people to consume specific kinds of products, services, or performances. Another example is where teachers used Minecraft to teach students school lessons and social practices. They use Minecraft as an affinity space to have students learn many different things, socialization included. As we can see, Minecraft has been used to accomplish many different things thanks to it having a design convenient for adaptation, from being a game to becoming a social space where people use to host different activities.

Similarly, there is an application called Clubhouse which is used as a social space trending among many groups of people. People use this application to connect by creating a room with a topic to talk about and have people enter the room to listen to them and they can also, if the hosts allowed it, talk with the hosts. This application can be called a social space, where people gather to talk about certain topics or to not talk at all sometimes. Comparing Clubhouse to Minecraft, we can see that they are different since the latter is made and meant to be played and is ready to be used for a variety of things other than talking and discussing about a certain topic. As for me, Clubhouse is an application for people that want to talk about a certain topic that might be a useful piece of information for or provide knowledge to listeners. Minecraft, on the other hand, is a videogame where you can have fun, chat, learn to socialize, and host many different kinds of activities. Its role of being a social space is not limited to providing a space for people to only converse. The biggest difference between Clubhouse and Minecraft is that, in Minecraft, players do not have to establish, play, or put themselves in a certain role or title to talk about something, they can just be themselves while playing the game. In Clubhouse, however, people have to have a role or some kind of titles in order to talk about something and interact with other speakers or listeners. Moreover, the topics people talk about in Clubhouse can be very educational, informational, and formal, whereas friends or players in Minecraft have the freedom to talk about anything, as silly as they like. Minecraft, in my opinion, becomes the winner regarding its role as a social space, as it provides players with more freedom to talk about something and do anything in the game, unlike Clubhouse that has moderators to control many things regarding the talks, from topics to who from the listeners may have the opportunity to speak with the speakers.

Minecraft continues to change and evolves as the years pass by, from a simple-looking video game with no stories nor objectives to be called and used by some people as an affinity space or a virtual social space. The unique element for this game is its freedom that makes its players enjoy the game easily in their own way, without having anyone tell them what to do, how to play, or what they should do in the game, they just have to learn it themselves and take their time. Once they break and build or craft something, it is then that they start to craft their own stories. What stands out the most in Minecraft is its ability to function as a social space for people of different qualities to interact and connect in a virtual world that they can create meanings and stories out of. Not only does Minecraft provide players with freedom, but it also makes sure not to restrict players not to do something or say something, unlike other social spaces. Players can then talk freely and do what they want in the game. Another interesting point is that it has a unique design that makes the game very similar to the lives we have in society, as it leaves us in the game world, with no instructions, tutorials, or objectives, full of opportunities to explore how to play the game and to establish our goals on our own, just like how we have to find out ourselves what to do with our lives using what we have. This encourages us to be creative in solving problems and in progressing at the pace that suits us, both in the game and in the real world. In the time of pandemic, Minecraft, a world or a social space that can provide similar elements and aspects of the real world, is very suitable for people to use as an escape from the depressing reality and to make their lives in an invisible cage more enjoyable. Minecraft is a videogame that has become an evolving world waiting to be occupied by people to do different kinds of stuff. It is exciting to imagine if someone will be able to create something as memorable as or something that can evolve like Minecraft in the future.