Minecraft

I’m really confused.

Part of what makes entertainment so entertaining is the vicarious experience the entertainment can evoke in a human being. Watching a movie about some bloody, historic battle is cool because it allows us to experience something that we would not normally experience. Reading a great love story is really enjoyable for many people because it allows them to experience love, or at least a type of love, that is not typical in the life of the everyday human. Listening to music and viewing a painted masterpiece do the same. It all allows us to experience things we don’t typically experience, and we tend to believe these things are pretty cool.

Video games have an added advantage when it comes to opening up new experiences to people. Watching a movie about an alien invasion of a futuristic earth colony on the other side of the universe is pretty cool (the above point being that this is cool in part and/or mostly due to the fact that the concept of an alien invasion of a futuristic earth colony on the other side of the universe is inherently cool and interesting). But buy an Xbox and a copy of Halo and you can actually fight the aliens, save the planet and be the hero. Watching the Champions League on television is pretty entertaining. But FIFA 13 puts you into the experience.

But then there’s a game like Minecraft. Besides the scary monsters that come out at night, there isn’t anything inherently interesting about the concept of Minecraft, a game where you spend most of your time mining things and then building things with the things you’ve mined. There isn’t a lot of action or compelling drama. Most of the player’s energy is spent holding down the “mine things” button and aiming the POV at the target of the mining. No invasion. No love story. No idyllic, picturesque scenes.

But it’s extremely engrossing. And it’s entirely mundane.

Does this speak to something in all of us humans, or just me and my fellow minecrafters? There is an adventure to the game, if digging through dark caves and looking at different kinds of pixelated ores can be called adventurous. But most of the game is about goals. At the start players want to (and need to) build a house. So they do. Then they build a bed. And make some shiny tools and then they can do whatever.

The objects of the game are self-determined and they’re mostly pretty easy to achieve.

Maybe that’s all we (I) want.