Ryo here for a long overdue little piece on a favorite addiction of mine, Minecraft. I have been a player of this game for quite some time along with the two million or so purchasers. What makes this game so good? Simple. It is Lego’s on steroids.As a child, I loved playing with those plastic blocks to build various buildings. At one point in time I had an entire bin dedicated to my massive collection of blocks. I loved my little cities I would craft and roll my toy cars through.

Now, I have graduated to playing Minecraft. I’ve yet to build anything terribly impressive on the game, but I am fairly proud of the work on my rail cart system going on my personal server I host for friends.

Minecraft represents what I believe to be a good turning point for certain types of video games. In Minecraft you are dumped into a randomly generated world, or if you provide the seed phrase yourself you can recreate the same world, and told nothing of what to do next. One might need to get Minecraft server list and choose the one they want. My first time with Minecraft, I watched no videos other than a few on Youtube about people’s creations. I decided to go in fresh with no clues as to how the first day was going to turn out.

I spent that day exploring and punching things. I had no clue you needed to quickly gather resources to start a base, because I had no idea what happened when night fell on the land. Oblivious to my impending doom I chased sheep and pigs, dug a tunnel into a mountain, and just simply tried to find my way around this strange game. Then the sun started to set.

When darkness had settled, I was introduced to the skeleton archers fairly quickly. In a panic I ran for my life and stumbled across zombies. This game was out to kill me on my first time playing. After thoroughly getting lost and nearly dying from being pelted by arrows I met my nemesis. The Creeper. The only warning I had was a faint hissing noise then an explosion finished off what the other mobs started.

Despite being thrashed about by the mobs at night, I hit respawn and tried again. This trial and error served me well over the next few days of me playing Minecraft and I learned what worked to keep me safe and I learned more about various techniques veteran players employed in their games.

Now Minecraft has evolved more and has many new crafting items such as pistons, powered rails for mine carts, and even maps. Notch stated that when the 1.8 update rolls out, we will have the emergence of a creative mode that will give us unlimited resources for building that castle or super structure we have dreamed up.

That is the secret of Minecraft. If you can dream it up, you can build it.