The Game Controls you

I don't know how long I've played Minecraft. This won't include an origin or an introduction to how I got familiar with this game. I just want to get to the point, and fast.

The point of Minecraft is that... there isn't one. There's no direct objective to compell you. No official goal to accomplish. That's the beauty of this amazing sandbox game: you do what YOU want. You control the outcome. You control the game.

At least that's what Mojang wants you to think.

The game. Controls. You.

About a month ago, I was eating ramen with a friend at his apartment, taking a break from work and hanging out during Labor Day. I hated my job. I wasn't married, family was distant, nothing to look forward to at home... that's why I tried to get out as much as I did. The only other thing I did was play Minecraft, which was a child's game anyway and I wasn't too much into it.

But my friend, Kevin, was. Played it often. He said he had a responsibility to fulfill, because he was the admin of something or other... didn't sound too important to me, but there were people he didn't want to disappoint, even if they were some child predator living in their mother's basement in real life. He spent at least an hour of his day taking care of his in-game priorities. None of that made sense to me, at the time, because he told me there was no point to the game, it's a sandbox something and you can do whatever you want... whenever I played it, which was only on my phone, I built big square houses in creative mode or played with TNT. But Kevin was a full-fledged minecrafter, owning it on almost every platform and console he had.

"Dude, you should join."

"What?" I said, losing my focus in the cup of cold ramen. "You should join my server." He said. "We just got some new players, and I restarted the world so you would be getting a fresh start like everyone else." "Can I just do it on my phone?" I asked, without looking up. "What? No, you need the computer version! Your phone can't connect to the server." He said, with a "you should already know this" tone. Mind you, Kevin wasn't a geek, I just didn't really care. "How much does it cost?" I asked him.

"26 dollars. But you can just use my Alt, I don't ever use it for anything." "Um, sure. If I'm not paying for it." I said, as I threw my empty cup of ramen in the trash. "Sweet! If you want, come over here tomorrow and I'll set it up for you." He said. "Alright, I'll come over after work. I need to distract myself with something anyway."

The next day, I walked into Kevin's apartment with my laptop and sat down at his coffee table. "Welcome." He said. "Ok, let's start. I just have to download Minecraft to your computer, if that's ok with you." I said yes and he started the download. A few minutes later when it was done, he opened up the launched and typed in the password and username of his alt, deermongingKevin2. He wrote it down on a notepad and handed it to me. "That's the password. The first one is the username; mind my handwriting." He said. I slid over to my laptop as he took control of his own computer and started up his own account. "The server IP is 280:123.137.9267." he said, as I typed it in. I clicked join and watched the loading screen, and soon I saw my character spawn in the middle of some forest. "Ok, so. The rules are simple, just mark your own plot, don't grief, steal, cyberbully, ect..." he said, listing off the rules. "I'm a grown man, Kevin. You don't have to treat me like one of your anonymous online friends." I said, eyes glued to the screen. "Right." He said, and continued with his tour. "Over here is my house" he said, walking over to a nice wooden structure. "Here's the other player's plots." he said, as we teleported to each different location, showing me all kinds of different builds. Some were nice, some were crude. It's strange, I never thought about trying to build something visually pleasing.

"So, you can just start you plot somewhere thataway, and I'll set up a teleporter for you." He said, going back to his own house to work on something. "...ok." I was a bit overwhelmed, I didn't know where to start or what to do, I didn't understand crafting yet any real survival concepts; I only played creative. "Kevin, you need to help me out." I said. "I don't know what to do." Frankly I was getting a little bored as Kevin came to look at my laptop. "Ok, buddy, first you want to start with punching wood." He clicked on a tree nearby and held down the left click button until the block broke. He picked up the wood and said, "Ok, so to get to your inventory you press E. Up here is your crafting square..." Kevin moved the mouse around a picture of four squares. "And this is your inventory. To craft, just take something and place it here." He took the log he broke and put it in the crafting square, creating wood. "Now, you use the wood to craft more things, but I'm gonna make a crafting table so you can make tools and stuff." Over the next fifteen minutes, Kevin showed me the ropes of Minecraft, and I had to admit, I was interested. I was ready to try it out myself as soon as he finished his tutorial and went back to his own computer. I soon made a square wooden house with a hole for a window that contained a bed with a chest. After that, I tried out mining and got the hang of it real quick. I was starting to appreciate this Minecraft game a bit more.

After about an hour, it was 7:30 and I had to leave. I said goodbye and walked out the door, started my car and drove off, but I couldn't stop thinking about the game and what I should do next. I knew I was quickly becoming obsessed, But I still had a job and needed to eat.

-will continue in the future-