Why Is Minecraft So Addictive?

Minecraft is a game that has an infinite scale with a core focused on simplicity. This Swedish game from Mojang has become a gaming phenomenon and a growing a community that has reached more than 33 million people from PC, consoles, handheld and tablets and now a “Pocket Edition” for mobile phones.

This sandbox survival single and multiplayer game has quite literally taken over the world. But how does a game that greatly resembles Lego, became so addictive?

Minecraft brings simplicity to the fullest and deliberates our creative and architect imagination, just like how we once played with Lego and would build skyscrapers on our city theme children carpet. However, due to the limit of pieces, or because we weren’t just tall enough, we could never go beyond our small stature. In Minecraft with “Creative Mode” we can access all the resources and items in the game without the epoch of time mining, crafting and smelting. We can now just simply place or remove the block.

Defying gravity, the player can fly around the sandbox world. We can even now reach the skies and beyond, touching the troposphere and stratosphere. Unlike the other modes in the game, “Creative Mode” helps the player focus on only building and creating, which ideally fills our imagination to build larger buildings and even more complex structures.

So we all become architects and the game becomes somewhat a learning curve that breathes new life into our fantastical ideas. Your small little cabin in the woods becomes a mansion, then a medieval castle, you build monuments dedicated to your greatness, skyscrapers taller than The Burj Khalifa in Dubai and before you know it you have your own little utopia.

Just like how World Of Warcraft or Star Wars: The Old Republic there is no point of completion. Like most games there is a linear structure of beginning, middle and end. However Warcraft and Old Republic have no set point of completion or finishing the game. Nearly every game has a story that will eventually end. Minecraft benefits from the ambiguity that the game has no story and its only soul purpose is for you to define what you want to do.

In all Minecraft modes there is no satisfying feeling of conclusion because there is none. There are so many different outlets to the game in each game mode. In “Survival mode” the player has to venture into a world where he or she has to gather natural resources and stay alive as long as possible, including food because you can starve to death. “Adventure mode” is the same as survival but even harder because you will need the right tools to do certain jobs.

“Multiplayer” is where the game evokes fun. As players interact and communicate with each other in a single world, they can work together to build, survive or venture in the world. However, the game has taken an odd twist where people have actually built arenas and stadiums to recreate existing games and even films like The Hunger Games. Players have even built Roman coliseums and staged gladiatorial battles.

Minecraft is designed for you to define the game and choose how you want to play it.