I first started playing Minecraft several years ago. I heard about the game on a blogger's website, and I thought I'd give it a try. At the time, Markus "Notch" Persson was selling the unfinished game for $10 with the promise that any future updates would be free to those who decided to support the game in its beta form. A few weeks after buying it, I read an article announcing the game passed 1 million sales.
The world has plenty of indie games. While many quality titles manage to break the 1 million sales mark, very few go beyond that. The fact that Minecraft has managed to sell over 20 million copies between the PC, XBLA, and smartphone versions is remarkable. So, what makes this game so special? Is it just a goofy block-building game, or is there more to it?
Most gamers have at least heard of Minecraft. The game is comprised of two basic modes: survival mode and creative mode. Most people know the game for its creative mode where players can build anything they want. During Minecraft's infancy, the game got a lot of attention based on creative-mode videos that showed player-made castles, spaceships, complex roller-coasters, and all sorts of architectural feats. For many, the creative mode was enough. In fact, there was a time (I'm not sure if it is still the case) that people were allowed to download and play creative mode for free, while survival mode still required you to buy a copy of the game.
As for me, I'm not the sort who likes to just build. I didn't buy Minecraft for the creative mode. In fact, I've only used it once, just to try it out. Survival mode is what caught my eye. You can still build whatever you want, but you must go out and get the materials yourself while trying to stay alive. Sound easy? It's not. The world of Minecraft is a dangerous place, and with each update to the game, the designers added more and more danger. It's not just the silent, explosive Creepers or the expert sniper skeletons. There's the danger of starving to death or getting sucked into an underwater vortex or accidentally dropping into a pool of lava or falling off a cliff or being crushed by a cave-in or being poisoned by cave spiders.
There's an addictive tension created by the game's core design: stay alive while trying to thrive. Sure, you could pass each day simply getting food and going back to your home to sleep and hide from monsters. Sure, you never, ever HAVE to mine into the earth. But wouldn't it be fun to venture out further? Oh! You found some cows. Kill 'em and use their leather hide to make some armor. There, isn't it nice being a bit safer? Maybe it would be fun to do some mining, after all. Oh! You found some iron. Now you can build a better sword and better armor. Perhaps you should dig further down? Oh! An abandoned mine shaft full of enemies? What's this treasure chest you found? An enchanted spell-book! Hmmm, it sure would be nice to get around your mine a lot faster. Maybe you should build a mine cart and lay down tracks. Wow! That's a lot more convenient. But it sure stinks having to go out and hunt for food. Maybe you could start a garden, or maybe you should try to breed some wild animals for their meat. The choice is yours. The game doesn't restrict you or require anything out of you. The moment you hit "Start", every choice in Minecraft is up to you.
Most people wouldn't think of Minecraft as "scary" or "beautiful", but it is. The sound design plays a big role in this. Each monster has several unique sounds, so if you're in a cave, you can hear nearby skeletons and zombies (even if they're behind a wall). The "hissss" of a Creeper before it explodes always puts me on edge. The cries of the Endermen always freak me out. There's nothing like digging a tunnel while you hear zombies nearby, wondering if the next block is going to open up to a room full of enemies. The music and ambient sounds are great, too. Chickens cluck. Wolves bark. Rainfall patters. Thunder booms. Even the "thunk thunk" of your pickaxe sounds different between - for example - a block of dirt and a block of coal ore. Every sound has a function.
What is so incredible about Minecraft is that it allows the player to create their own story without any scripted events. So, let me tell the story of two characters, Bob and Eddie. These two stories give an example of the first three days of Minecraft and how different things can be based on your choices. Their stories will give you a far better "review" of the game than I ever could...
Bob's Diary: Day 1
I started out in a snowy forest. Through the tree branches, I could see a bit of water, so I headed for shore. With plenty of trees around, I began to chop them down to acquire some wood. Luckily, I heard some cows mooing nearby. It didn't take long to find them, and it didn't take long to kill them and take their meat. Excellent! I started exploring along the shore for a good place to build a makeshift shelter. Oops! Who put that pit there?!? I fell down quite a bit and lost all but two of my hearts. I had nearly died! Getting my bearings, I decided to look around.
Bob's Diary: Day 2
I looked at the sky from this pit. It's WAY too high to climb. I'll have to dig my way out. But why not look around in the meanwhile? The pit snaked down into the earth. Nearby, I found some coal ore. Good! Now I can make some torches to light my way while I explore. With half a dozen pickaxes at the ready, I began exploring the mine. After not long, I found several veins of coal and iron ore. This was too good to be true! I guess falling down here wasn't so bad, after all.
Bob's Diary: Day 3
I realize I have a problem. I've been able to find stone, coal, and iron in large amounts, but my supply of food and wood is limited to what I had with me when I fell down. I need food to survive, and I need wood to build new pickaxes, swords, and torches. I need to get out of this cave. So, I use the last of my wood to build a few pickaxes. After climbing as high as I can, I begin digging up. Up and up I dig. One of my pickaxes breaks. Then another. I'm down two my last slab of beef and my last pickaxe. Luckily, I'm able to break the surface. Whew! After celebrating for a moment, I realize that this wouldn't be a bad place to build my first house...
Eddie's Diary: Day 1
When I start off, I'm in the middle of the desert. Okay, this isn't good. I need to find food and shelter, and sand isn't very good at putting a roof over my head. I scan the horizon and see a speck of green. The jungle! I head straight there. Along the way, I dodge a few Creepers (since I have no weapons). The sun is setting but I have enough time to reach the jungle and climb the vines to the top of a tree. Enemies will have a tough time seeing me or attacking me up here.
Eddie's Diary: Day 2
I gathered wood through the night, so I'm ready to build a shelter. I figure a tree-house would be fitting. Plenty of mushrooms grow on the jungle floor, so I'm able to make mushroom soup to feed myself. My next goal is to find some stone with which to make better tools. I built my shelter high up in a tree. The only way up is via a ladder leading up a tree trunk. It's not much, and I don't have any torches to light it, so I decide to return to the desert for some exploration.
Eddie's Diary: Day 3
I'm in the desert. In the distance, I see a hill. Is it a hill? It almost looks man-made. It is! It's some sort of temple made of sandstone. It is covered in dried-up vines and adorned with decorations. I decide to explore. Maybe this is my lucky break. Maybe I'll find treasure inside. Thankfully, there are no enemies. The floor has a pattern of orange blocks, with one blue block in the middle. Hmmm, a doorway? I use my pickaxe to cut open the blue block. It's too dark to see below, so I drop down. Treasure! Around me are four treasure chests full of gold and iron. But what's that noise? Uh-oh! Below me is a pressure plate. A trap! I scramble to dig my way out of the pit, but it's too late. A huge explosion rips me to shreds before I can escape with my loot. I'm dead...
Stories like these are what makes Minecraft so fun. The best part is that you can do anything in any order you want. Sometimes, I like to spend all my time building a huge castle. Other times, I like to build an underground railway leading to far-off mining areas. There are times when I start my game, chop a tree, build a boat, and simply sail off into the distance until I see something interesting. You're allowed to do whatever you want. There's plenty of content that I've neglected to mention in detail. There's not just a crafting system but also a potion-brewing system and an enchanting system. You can cultivate plants or domesticate animals. You can get pet wolves. You can build iron golems. You can trade with villagers. You can build a moat around your house and fill it with water (or lava). You can explore abandoned temples and mines (while trying to avoid booby traps). You can build a gate to the Netherworld. It's up to you.
Why a perfect 10? Because after 3 years, I still play Minecraft. Other games have tried to duplicate its success, but Minecraft is still the best "build anything, do anything" game on the market. If you haven't tried it yet, Mojang will soon be launching a retail version of Minecraft, or you can just download it from Mojang's website. The 360 XBLA version doesn't have as many options, but it's still a good way to go if you aren't confident in your PC's power. The smartphone version is Minecraft Lite and mostly focuses on the building aspects of the game, not the survival mode. It's a game that continues to be imitated, but never surpassed.
Playing Minecraft splitscreen on the Steam Deck is possible now, thanks to this script that automates everything for you.
Generative AI is a controversial topic, and Microsoft seems to have found that Minecraft is the perfect Trojan Horse to get children on board.
AI is an amazing tool and you’re absolutely right, just like they’re caring less about physical media since they’re growing up in a digital world. Only us old-ass curmudgeon‘s cry about this stuff.
I personally, support AI 100%. As a creative outlet it’s literally a tool to help with creativity or shortcomings a user might have but dreams about doing things. Like those AI generated movie trailers on YouTube are awesome. Imagine being able to make games you’ve dreamt of and using AI to make it a reality.
Lot of great applications and I embrace it, regardless of having watched Terminator 2 a bajillion times, lol.
The only ones who "support AI 100%" are those too lazy or too inept to do the job themselves.
The AI-generated videos on YouTube are absolute unsightly slop. They're all the same, like pretty much everything AI makes and will always make.
If you "dream about doing things"... do things. Put effort into learning instead of having a bot do it for you so that you aren't actually doing the things and are just taking credit (from something born of the theft of other people's work), trucking yourself into believing that you have created something when you have, indeed, created nothing.
AI is the anti creative outlet humans put heart and soul into their work and errors are a part of the art just as much as ideas are.
Offloading creative things to a gen AI is enforcing the fact that your idea wasn't strong enough to stand on its own.
"... are those too lazy or too inept to do the job themselves"
Cool, yeah, you definitely know what you're talking about.
This isn't two years ago when it was new. I've been a software developer for 13 years and the code Gemini and GPT writes is actually usable, when you know how to query in the right context.
And why would I learn it? Oh yeah, because heads of companies and new opportunities in the future will 100% require knowledge of AI, and in 5 years, my near 20 years of experience would just be reduced to if I can meet the inevitable "5+ years AI tooling" requirements or not. Nothing I or anyone can do about that. Being lazy or inept is refusing to adapt to or flat out rejecting changes in the environment.
CrimsonWing, 100% right here.
I don't support it more than I try to understand it.
Terminator 2 was worse than 1 and it let to the host of tasteless Marvel Movies and New Star Wars Movies we have today.
@abriel Carmack recently commented about this too. It's not being lazy it's progression.
Think about when the wheel was invented. How that made people "lazy" not having to carry stuff manually. AI is a tool and should be 100% human monitored/controlled. It's when you decide to let it do ALL the work, you become lazy.
@bunt-custardly: Carmack is a tech chud and an executive. He couldn't care less about whether normal rank-and-file developers would lose their jobs to this slop as long as his company could save money on their salaries.
And yes, it's lazy slop.
"Because Carmack says so" is not a great argument.
Incidentally, what Carmack specifically defended is the Quake experiment, which is *literally* letting the AI do all the work, so there goes your argument.
@Tacoboto:
If you let a bot do your job you're either lazy or inept. You pick. I can't care less of how much alleged "experience" you say you have.
If you use ChatGPT or Gemini you're literally stealing other people's work because that's where the code they give you comes from. AI creates nothing.
I've heard "Nothing I or anyone can do about that" about NFTs, crypto, and all that crap. Nothing is inevitable.
Not using and crying fowl about AI in 2025 is like someone in 2005 saying that using Intellisense and code completion in Visual Studio is lazy and inept.
You know nothing, Abriael, and you speak out of ignorance rather than experience.
"you're literally stealing other people's work"
Ever hear of "open source"? Probably not, because with that statement you clearly know absolutely nothing.
@Tacoboto:
You just demonstrated that you're just a troll and not a developer of any kind. A developer would know that the data used to train the AI chatbots you mentioned is not and has never been open source.
You're likely just an xbox fanboy trying to defend Microsoft just because it's Microsoft. Pathetic.
LOL, so wrong again! I refuse to use MS Copilot in any meaningful regard still. Gemini provides the most detailed results (with context as well) and GPT I feel has started to lag behind it.
Copilot has routinely broken after a few queries for me and the UI Microsoft built is embarrassingly underfeatured. Again, you speak with ignorance over something that you do not understand.
@Tacoboto: sure mate, keep pretending. Like any actual developer would slip on the open source discourse. Totally not a Microsoft fanboy with Master Chief in the icon. 👀
It's so open-source that AI companies are being sued into oblivion by the many they have stolen from. And when these lawsuits end with them being found guilty, this fad will hit the brakes big time.
All I'll say is you should not speak against that which you have no knowledge of or experience in.
And I'll tell you that once you're an adult, with a big boy job, you're expected to get things done, and you should work smarter, not harder. If there is a tool out there that can make a 3 hour job a 3 minute job, you use that tool. That makes you competitive, that makes you more productive. It keeps you relevant in an evolving industry.
We'll see where the "work smarter" goes when the lawsuits cripple this AI slop and everything needs to be retrained on non-stolen content, assuming it's even possible 😂
@Tacoboto nit sure how you're getting usable code from Gemini and gpt I spend more time fixing the code it outputs personally though Claude AI is far superior for generating it from my experience at least.
And honestly I'll go to Claude to write the bones of what I'm after nothing's perfect still a ton of rationalising that goes in after
Well yeah because they’ll grow up with crap like this to make them like it
It’s like training people to defend generative AI or AI in general as they get older
Creative based AI is terrible and I feel bad for the real artists getting the shaft losing jobs to it
They will care if parents talk to them about it in a way to show them why they should care. Unfortunately there may not be enough who do that.
I understand if this tool aids children in Minecraft development. However, I believe that substituting human workers with AI and reducing the creative input of developers, artists, and other professionals is detrimental. It also results in content that lacks a certain human touch.
This has nothing to do with helping children develop in Minecraft. This just uses Minecraft to condition children into liking generative AI.
Their "curriculum" even paints intellectual property laws as something that can hinder innovation. It can't be more disgusting than this.
The idea is that AI can be implemented to aid them in their creations, specifically for minecraft; That's all I was getting at.
Everything else I mentioned was in agreement that AI isn't good and can ruin everything. Sorry you missed the entire point of what I was getting at. Boop
Its getting more and more dystopian lolz. Just wait til the robots are more commonplace, everyone will be replaced. Hey I'd be fine with it if it means everything in life will be free. Cause that's the goal right? The end of capitalism? Bettering society for the sake of bettering the world? By ending human labor? And allowing us all to live rent free and enjoy all the comforts that this amazing technology will bring? Right? Cause if we're all gonna end up jobless and homeless then wtf is the point?
Gotta start em young is the plan here…
Maybe we should relook the whole capitalism thing 😅
People think the film industry is derivative and out of ideas these days, and they're right for the most part, imagine how it would be with creativity handed over to AI. Braindead, basically. Same for gaming.
In any creative endeavour like films, gaming, art, it needs nipping in the bud and used appropriately, not being embraced.
Not everything needs to go free-to-play!
I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of money Minecraft makes these days is from DLC, so going f2p would make a lot of sense. But given how cheap the game actually is ($30 for consoles/PC and $7 on mobile) I don't think it would make that much of diference.
If 50% of all kids buy just one copy of this game (made up number but not unrealistic as the game has become almost a rites of passage) then Microsoft is doing great by being paid for each copy.
it would actually make no sense to go f2p.
If you can charge something for the basegame and people pay for it (obviously they are still doing it) then going f2p would be idiotic.
Puting a entry price on anything also reduces it potential player base and therefore its paying costumer for DLC. That mind you likely make the bulk of Minecraft revenue. That is basic business since at least a decade, so I would get in with the times.
Funny how they and their parent company have different views on subscription-based delivery.
good review
Interesting use of story telling to review a game. And I'm glad that you explained your 10 at the end of the review. IMO a games score should be based partially on how much replay value it has and Micecraft definetly has that replay value.
One slight change I would put, instead of Day one "I chopped down some trees" it's more like Day one "I punched the shit out of some trees until they broke in to small chunks"
I dont get Minecraft... I want to but maybe I am doing something wrong?
Very good review BTW, would use your reviews over a lot of these "sites"
Yes, 20 millions peoples can be wrong.
My time is precious and this is a waste of time. I can see bored teenager find this "interesting" but what the hell.
Build something for weeks, then what ?? Stare at it ?