One Decade of Minecraft: a Reflection
On February 10th, 2021, I jumped back into a game that I hadn’t seriously played in years: Minecraft.
Minecraft has been a huge part of my life. My mom purchased a license for me in March of 2011 back when the game was still in its Beta phase, which is more than a decade ago! Despite having had Minecraft for so long, I had never given thought about how Minecraft has shaped me as a person until the topic came up while chatting with my lab PI, whose sons play Minecraft. When I admitted that I also play Minecraft, he replied, “See, you still turned out alright. How did Minecraft help you?”
Looking back it’s kind of funny how I even stumbled on the game; it wasn’t the survival playthroughs, epic build videos, or montages that caught my attention—rather, it was an unremarkable search on YouTube for bombs and explosions that lead me to this video by legendary TNT cannon creator Kiershar (thanks YouTube algorithm!):
This set off a chain reaction looking for more Minecraft content, which at that time was actually rare. After watching the playthrough by SeaNanners, followed by the beginning episodes of the playthrough by the Yogscast that would eventually become the infamous Shadow of Israphel series, I knew I had to get this game for myself.
As a Minecraft player, I only really ever mastered the namesake “mining” and “crafting” that are central to the gameplay, which really meant just digging underground for resources and hiding in holes in the side of cliffs. Building and coming up with original designs was never a strong suit, and I was always too scared of the monsters to play on Normal difficulty.
However, Minecraft exposed me to so many things outside of the game that I struggle to imagine what kind of person I would be without this childhood experience.
When I hosted a Minecraft server, I was introduced to a lot of basic networking concepts such as IP addresses, ports, and port forwarding, as well as the idea of a server and sending commands. I used internet voice calling services like Skype for the first time to play with friends, and it was one of my first experiences playing a video game toward a common goal rather than competing against them. As the performance of the MacBook I used was pretty poor (it didn’t help that I played the game in a Windows virtual machine), I opted to build a more powerful computer, which introduced me to the world of PC building. When I wanted to share my gameplay with others, I learned how to record and stream gameplay, and how to edit videos and publish them to YouTube like the one below.
Fast forward to 2021 and Minecraft was still giving me new experiences. My desire to host a server remotely without paying for it led me to this tutorial by Oracle Cloud. I delved into SSH, CentOS and Ubuntu server, firewalls, and much more. And in a world fragmented by COVID-19, some of my most memorable moments of 2021 were evenings spent messing around in creative mode with friends.
While I still play Minecraft just like I did 11 years ago—getting jump scared by creepers, avoiding caves, and digging holes to hide in on the first night—I’m confident that Minecraft was a positive and substantial influence on my personal development and character, and helped create who I am today.
