Minecraft, our most beloved sandbox game of all time, has affected millions of lives over a period of half a decade – by simply providing a source of entertainment to kids who have got plenty of time on their hands, to enabling talented YouTubers to gain an audience and an income that they rightfully deserve. Each of us has a story behind the game, and here is mine.

*****************

Around a couple of years ago, my parents scheduled for my family to go on a trip to Paris for summer break. I was thrilled, and packed my bags a fortnight shy of our trip. Well, all THAT effort proved to be completely worthless as our trip was later on cancelled due to a continuous streak of bad weather. And so, I unexpectedly received at least three weeks of time to spend confined at home with nothing to do. The boredom was overwhelming. I was SOOO bored that I decided to go search up a videogame or two to entertain myself while it was raining cats and dogs outside. I phoned a friend from school to ask for recommendations on what to play.

“Carl? You busy?”

“At the moment, yes,” he replied. “Whatever it is, you’d better make it quick.”

“Well, okay. Have you played any neat games recently that you can tell me about?”

“Yep - in fact, I’m playing one right now.”

“Great! Care to tell me about it? Right now?”

“Not now,” Carl responded. “I’m having a tough time fighting creepers here.”

What’s a creeper? I wondered as Carl hung up with a beep.

A half-hour later, Carl called me to tell me all about this fantastic little sandbox game he found.

“Apart from just having a load of fun fighting monsters and stuff, you also get to build your own house and such. Trust me, you’ll simply ADORE that game.”

And so, I downloaded Minecraft.

After creating my first survival world, I spawned atop a hill surrounded by grass and trees as far as the eye could see. At first I wasn’t sure what I was actually supposed to do, and spent my precious minutes of daytime wandering around, and ended up getting slain by a horde of zombies at night. I respawned, and, after seven minutes of hopeless brawling with the creatures of the night, finally caught on and crafted my first set of wooden tools after consulting Carl on the topic. After crafting my first set of stone tools, I went on my first mining trip, and successfully returned with sixteen chunks of coal and, most important of all, my first iron ingot (FINALLY).

It wasn’t much, but it was enough to spur me on to continue playing the game.

With my pickaxe in hand, I decided to embark on a second fateful trip to obtain myself some iron. As I arrived at the entrance of the cave – wait, I could’ve sworn I heard something…

“Hissssssss.”

Yep, that’s right – I was about to encounter my very first creeper. As I cautiously entered the cave I spotted a couple of zombies in the distance, along with a skeleton or two. Well, I’m glad I brought my sword with me, I thought as I suddenly caught a glance of a two-block-tall, four-legged green creature standing nearby myself.

Hmm, I wonder who THIS fella is? I wondered, and stood still as the walking bomb crept over to me, and started swelling like a balloon emitting smoke.

Three seconds later, I lost everything I owned.

Well, I suppose pretty much EVERYONE has experienced getting blown up by a creeper at some point of the game.

After THAT experience I developed a deathly fear of creepers. Whenever I spotted a creeper in the distance my hand would start trembling like crazy and my brain would automatically freeze up, which usually ends up with my getting blown up once again. Ironic enough, I actually developed at the same time a liking for those cute little green abominations.

With another truckload of mining trips, by the time two months have passed since I first played Minecraft, I had already journeyed to the Nether and crafted myself a full set of (partially) enchanted diamond gear. I must admit, I was really coming to be quite good at the game. Having already obtained myself everything I could possibly require, I decided to embark on the greatest challenge the game had left for me – conquering the End.

Well, thanks to my luck, finding myself an End portal was uncannily easy as there was already a stronghold directly underneath my spawn location. With my sword in hand and my bow in the other, I leapt into the fiery darkness of the gateway to the End, and so began the greatest duel of all time – my skill pitted against the dragon’s unyielding might. It took a solid fifteen minutes for the victor to be determined.

Clutching the dragon’s egg in hand and my XP bar brimming with experience, I jumped into the return portal without a second thought. As the game spawned me back into the Overworld I immediately gave Carl a call, telling him about what I’d just achieved.

“Whoa, dude! I’m still working on building a Nether portal here…”

I felt really good about how I’d successfully defeated the Ender Dragon on my first attempt. By “good”, I mean REALLY good – for thirty minutes.

Considering I’ve already done everything the game has in store for me, I thought, what shall I do NOW? Build another house?

All that I’ve achieved in the past two months suddenly seemed quite meaningless. Sure, I proved to myself that I was considerably skilled in the game, but there was nobody to share my success with. For all I know, nobody took much notice in what I’d achieved that day.

And so, I decided to try playing multiplayer, and did a bit of research considering the subject. I joined my very first server – Frosty Factions.

I started out in the server lobby, with absolutely no idea what to do with the stuff I came across, for instance, the inventory items that were actually supposed to perform tasks upon being clicked on, and the customized commands used exclusively on faction servers. Fortunately, I caught on quite soon, and soon got used to the quirky features.

To be frank, the whole reason why I decided to start off on a factions server was that

1. I got to show off my skill in resource gathering to other players, and
   
2. I got to troll people by blowing up their bases and looting their vaults!
   

Well, I can kind of comprehend to why I thought that the latter option was a lot of fun. I mean, who DOESN’T like playing pranks on people and imagining the look on their faces when they find out that all they’ve worked for in the past month has been reduced to a smoking crater in a matter of minutes?

The answer: the people who get pranked on.

Well, it didn’t take me a very long time to discover that playing on a factions server wasn’t exactly a very good idea. After all, Notch didn’t intend for Minecraft to be a medium for griefing and brawling – instead, he intended for the game to serve as a platform of creation, development and bonding between people from across the globe. That, I believe, is the real purpose of the game.

And so, I decided to embark on something constructive instead. Rather than invest my time on PvP’ing, I decided to become a redstone engineer.

At that time, redstone was a considerably new feature of Minecraft, first introduced in the recent 1.5 update. With a bit of experimenting and a whole lot of research I finally understood how redstone worked, and built my very first redstone contraption – a simple little automatic smelter system that provides a redstone signal telling one when the item has finished smelting. It wasn’t much, but I got something to share with my pals. I even made a couple of friends simply by sharing my creations with them, and most important of all, we all had a great time sharing our creations.


Whatever your hobbies may be, ranging from adventuring with your friends, dueling strangers in friendly banter or perhaps simply sharing your creations with people from across the globe, the most important thing of all isn’t whether you get to achieve something great – it’s simply that you and also those around you get to have a great time playing the game. That, I believe, is what makes me, and also us, Minecrafters.