Games of 2010: Minecraft

By Alec Meer Published 30 December, 2010

Built to rule.

Following the media trajectory of this free-form building and survival game has almost been more compulsive than Minecraft itself. Watching that slow burn from lo-fi obscurity to darling of indie sites to mainstream PC gaming acceptance to woah-hey-everywhere has been an ambient pastime for 2010. That was before the game even hit beta status.

It's been a lesson, I hope, for gamers and games critics who look down on anything indie (unless, of course, it's neatly packaged up and validated for them by Microsoft or Sony approval).

When its name first began to creep into headlines, I was witness to a shocking amount of sneering from both gamers and industry colleagues who really should know better. "What's this Minecraft thing then? Some indie rubbish?" It was dismissed because of its graphics, because of its name, because it focused on construction rather than destruction, because it was made by one guy, because it was on PC...

It was dismissed until it was successful enough that those same critics who had peevishly ignored it finally realised they were going to look like cretins if they couldn't offer comment on it. And hey, suddenly Twitter was alight with bon mots.

1

Does the mentality that, unless a game comes from a big-pig publisher, it's a stinker really still govern so? Come on! You simply don't have the right to sneer at all those cynical Call of Duty clones all the big boys are working on unless you're also actively supporting something that is different. It doesn't matter if you like it or not. You just need to be glad that it exists. That it can exist, despite the ongoing efforts of large corporations to make gaming a walled garden.

Minecraft proved that attending every industry party in town and endlessly posting expensive trailers doesn't achieve what it used to. The games business has changed. The world's appetite for games has changed.

Minecraft is but one of a great many games to break the old rules, but it did it so subtly and yet so massively that it can't help but stand above the others. Its ease, its cheer, its immediate appeal in both appearance and concept, saw it bust into the global gaming consciousness and achieve incredible success for its creator, Markus Persson. It didn't know its place. It didn't realise it was supposed to be small and obtuse and obscure and only for neckbearded, bespectacled PC gonks. It had the temerity to be something that anyone could play, and anyone could adore.

There's an argument, and one that Persson himself has used, that this was largely a fluke. It could have been any game - his blocky game just happened to achieve the right momentum at at the right time. I've never heard so much nonsense. It could only ever have been Minecraft that did this. It takes the major backbone of MMOs (persistence, self-made narrative) and FarmVille (resource management, instant results) and puts them in a new context. It is, fundamentally, built upon elements that untold millions of people, gamers and otherwise, thrill to: selfishness and collection.

Add to that its casual lawlessness: anything can and does happen, with the sweet side-effect that catastrophe is often on such a scale that it's entertainment in itself. The videos of unexpected lava-based destruction of players' impossible structures are terrible, beautiful documents: heartbreaking but unforgettable with it.

But you can just bet they all went straight back and started building again. Just one more go. For all its openness, arbitrariness and esoteric blockiness, Minecraft is built upon that oldest of gaming foundations: just one more go. I'll do better this time.

Which rather makes Minecraft sound like an inherently solitary pursuit. In a way, it is: this is a game which hinges on personal achievement, an epic LEGO challenge. At the same time, it sings when played in groups: teams of builders with abstract, immense visions, with time the only obstacle in the way of realising them.

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Out there, there's a universe of universes. An instantly forgettable multiplayer server IP could be your gateway to unforgettable sights. Everest-high staircases to nowhere, floating castles built around lava waterfalls, smilies the size of Wales, working animal pens, functional computer processors and to-scale starships. Endless new masteries of fire, earth and water... The sheer volume of time, effort and pixels is extraordinary: selfish obsession meets community endeavour, a world of grand, evolving art projects that anyone can almost immediately contribute to. Together, we are stronger. That's Minecraft's paradigm all over.

What I can't decide or predict is whether Minecraft is just 2010's game - a bright, unexpected star that burned with enough amiable ferocity to attract the world's attention for a few months - or if it's only just getting started. The more tools and features Persson provides, the more players can achieve, and the more YouTube-dominating wonders will be hewn from digital clay.

Compulsive playing of games is bad for society, screeched the BBC last month - that so much time and energy focused into a screen and an input device can lead to so much unfettered creation makes that argument all the more hollow.

Minecraft busts just about every games-circa-2010 stereotype there is. Like it or not, doff your hat to it.

Picture of Alec.

About Alec Meer

A 10-year veteran of scribbling about video games, Alec primarily writes for Rock, Paper, Shotgun, but given any opportunity he will escape his keyboard and mouse ghetto to write about any and all formats.

Read more articles from Alec by visiting the Alec Meer archive page.

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Comments (51) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • riceNpea #1 1 year ago

    i've dallied with Minecraft. it is an insidious drug. i got out before it sucked me in too deep. see beyond the antiquated graphics and what you have is blackhole. the game is a time-sink that will having you dreaming in blocks. it's incredible what some people achieve and build. in the words of Bladerunner, ' I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. '

  • coolbritannia #2 1 year ago

    When its name first began to creep into headlines, I was witness to a shocking amount of sneering from both gamers and industry colleagues who really should know better.

    Sounds like Eurogamer circa 2005, when the PS3 was 'teh real next gen'.

  • darkmorgado #3 1 year ago

    An amazing game, and an amazing ongoing achievement considering it was started by just one guy.

    Ignore the graphics (although you can improve them through tilesets) and you have the best Lego game that Lego never made. Compulsive, creative, endlessly evolving. Success is what you make it, and in Minecraft you can make it anything.

    It's the truest, purest definition of a sandbox game. That you can pick it up for a tenner and receive all future patches and upgrades completely for free also puts many other mainstream releases to shame.

    If you can't appreciate Minecraft, then you don't appreciate gaming.

  • Lukree #4 1 year ago

    Minecraft is really adorable and fascinating.

    Oh the horror when you have dug yourself to so deep that you are on lava level and then you hear the tickling sound of mysterious enemies approaching. Best horror and survival gaming since Dead Space. The best building game since Sim City.

  • Stickman #5 1 year ago

    You could at least have mentioned the huge cathedral that EG readers built. Might have been a nice touch perhaps?

  • Zerobob #6 1 year ago

    But what's the point of this game?

    OK, what's the point of any game. But I can create "cool stuff" in PhotoShop or Illustrator. Why do I need to be limited to building with bricks in a game?

    Similarly, isn't building something impressive but also has a use ultimately better, such as a crazy track in Trials HD for example?

    I just can't see past the mission statement of this game.

  • Gearskin #7 1 year ago

    I have it, and I don't get it either. Yes, you can see people making all kinds of epic stuff... but you can do this in Halo Reach's Forge mode... and a lot quicker! Gathering and crafting etc takes an age here. It's a slow process. And if some clown gets into your online world he might end up setting it on fire lol
    Edited by Gearskin at 30/12/10 @ 10:11

  • darkmorgado #8 1 year ago

    And if some clown gets into your online world he might end up setting it on fire lol

    Only if you're daft enough to leave modification turned on for anyone who visits.

  • nickthegun #9 1 year ago

    Did anyone really give it so much grief? All of the coverage ive seen has been uniformly positive.

  • el_pollo_diablo #10 1 year ago

    @nickthegun

    I completely agree. I've only ever heard Minecraft being praised. Maybe we just weren't "there at the beginning" - a theme that the author of this article seems a bit chippy about in my opinion (sorry Alec).

  • frostcircus #11 1 year ago

    @nickthegun
    That was my thought too. I don't recall seeing anything but praise.

  • sonicyoda #12 1 year ago

    Who would of thought that everything missing in my life was actually the ability to build ridiculous constructions out of blocks? I love you Minecraft.

  • paulf #13 1 year ago

    Lego for the 21st Century

  • Ged42 #14 1 year ago

    HIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSsssssssssss + "Oh Feck"+ BOOM!! = My most played and most loved game of the year.

    Though the mods needs to sort out the EG server so we can finish our epic recreation of Ankor Wat.

  • Xabarin #15 1 year ago

    Minecraft is my Game of the Year 2010 and i'm not trying to make a joke. It is really that fun and it is not even finished.

  • OrgasmicMutton #16 1 year ago

    Yup Minecraft is birlliant. Even if I think I played a different game from most people in that I alsways lived in the first cave I found and all I built was a tower outside to find my way home and eventually a minecart track from the top of said tower to the shore below so I could get to my boat quickly and go exploring.

    That is what Minecraft was about for me. I just love exploring the world's endless bounds, finding something new, venturing into caves and so on. Eventually I got a little bored of it but it took a lot longer than for most other sandbox games and I can definitely see me returning to again every now and again to marvel at its wonders anew.

  • suhawk75 #17 1 year ago

    Anyone know where I can get Nike stuff with free shipping?

  • TheDudesRug #18 1 year ago

    Screw Nike, I want some of that ****.

  • DrStrangelove #19 1 year ago

    I tried it, but found it rather boring. It's the same appeal as Lego I guess, in fact I think this is essentially next-gen Lego. I think I understand why it appeals to many, it's just that I'm not interested in that stuff. I guess I would have liked it in my early teenage years when I was keen to create stuff (and did so with the Doom and later Quake level editors, after being a Lego Technic enthusiast earlier), but I guess today I'm just a bitter old man with little sense of constructiveness left in his disintegrating brain.

    However, the real reason I'm commenting is that the author told of "game critics" who sneer at "indie rubbish" and think only what big publishers do is worth bothering. I couldn't agree less, and I think such attitude questions their being "game critics" at all. I think a more appropriate term would be "twats". As far as I can see, it's the major publishers that flood the market with games that are technically spectacular but embarrassingly uninspired, dull and pointless. For quite some time now, it's mostly indie games which still manage to keep me occupied, and I think the average indie game is more fun than the average mainstream title.

    Minecraft, although not really interesting for me, I can definitely still enjoy more than most of the mass-market industry rubbish.

  • thomaspower0 #20 1 year ago

    Whatever the game of the year is, you can build it in Minecraft :).

    E: Minecraft is awesome, especially when you're in a server where you actually have to mine. Nothing (well, almost nothing) feels as satisfying as mining with a couple of people for hours, crafting the materials into, for example, gold, and then build a huge breathtaking structure :)!
    Edited by thomaspower0 at 30/12/10 @ 21:00

  • TheJediWookie #21 1 year ago

    I bought this a couple of weeks ago and it's soon become a bit of a bad habit.
    It's a fantastic game, deep, fun and utterly compulsive......and it's got Zombies!! I just completed the Golden Gate Bridge linking my tree houses (mansions) and I'm now working on Windsor Castle.

  • lemonfist #22 1 year ago

    @Dr. Strangelove

    100 % agree with you about the reception of the game among critics. It is a highly original, innovative and fascinating game - definitely the most interesting to come out all year, perhaps for the last several years.

    However, much like yourself, I can't really enjoy playing it. It is too time-consuming, too "sandboxy" (for it is really, truly a "sandbox" of possibilites, unlike all of those games that pretend to be). I know that is exactly why a lot of people love this, and I highly envy them. I wish I could enjoy it, but it just seems I'm into games that are more designed, rather than a game where I design what I want, as fascinating as it is in concept.

  • hiddenranbir #23 1 year ago

    I love Lego but I suppose I did nothing but Lego as a kid that, as expansive as Minecraft is...it still feels constrained, limiting for my imagination. That and creating things just ends up being way more tedious than I would like.

  • Bremenacht #24 1 year ago

    @DrStrangelove/paulf: I was wondering if it could replace Lego, but a far more likely scenario is Lego stealing all the good ideas and replacing Minecraft with on-line Lego building.

  • DrStrangelove #25 1 year ago

    "Whatever the game of the year is, you can build it in Minecraft :). "

    I bet when LBP2 is out people will try recreating minecraft in it. If this goes on, heads are going to explode.

  • FeralGamer #26 1 year ago

    All these huge levels are made in Classic mode where you have unlimited blocks. I think that's pretty lame. I play the Beta and deal with monsters, having to mine, and all that good stuff. Any idiot can build with LEGO but the real players are doing the Beta stuff.

  • FeralGamer #27 1 year ago

    All these huge levels are made in Classic mode where you have unlimited blocks. I think that's pretty lame. I play the Beta and deal with monsters, having to mine, and all that good stuff. Any idiot can build with LEGO but the real players are doing the Beta stuff.

  • Zaiz #28 1 year ago

    This whole Minecraft thing makes me incredibly sad, because the better game, Dwarf Fortress, lies in its colossal shadow. Oh, sure, DF is one of the most complex and difficult to get into games in existence(No exaggeration) but why do I care about a castle wrapped in magma falls when someone built a quasi space station that dropped magma waterfalls on his enemies, with terribly complex systems of pumps, levers, and a gigantic power infrastructure to make sure the magma was raised high enough?

    I think my biggest problem is that Minecraft is challenge-less. DF has five or six different challenges you have to surmount, from simply surviving your first two years, to goblin ambushes, megabeast attacks, to goblin sieges, to invading hell.

    Edit: The person above me just called beta minecraft more hardcore. Oh, dear. I mean, yes, it is more hardcore than infinite block playground but...um...
    Edited by Zaiz at 30/12/10 @ 16:20

  • skuzzbag #29 1 year ago

    Minecraft is crying out for a game to be in there somewhere.

  • _LarZen_ #30 1 year ago

    Been gaming since I was 8 years old, im now 32 and have seen and played most games out there. Then Minecraft comes along and blows my mind with it's simple gfx but mindblowing gameplay and possibilities.

    Its is the essence of gaming and reminds me of the feeling I had all those years ago when I was 8 years old and started playing Amiga 500 games.

  • UncleLou #31 1 year ago

    My hardcore game is hardcorier than your hardcore game.

    Christ.

  • Spekingur #32 1 year ago

    Blizzard will add 'minecrafting' in WoW come next expansion or after. Maybe.

    I know of two that do not seem to like it and those are Jeff and Ryan over at Giantbomb. I can't be 100% sure, maybe they're just not into the sort of game that Minecraft is. Maybe they don't see the point (there is none, really). They do, for sure, enjoy indie games though.

  • GamesConnoisseur #33 1 year ago

    I totally get the appeal of indie underdog game but yet able to stand on it's own legs and mark it's own genre territory.

    People who openly and honestly say they don't get the game are the evil dark emperor of all sudden?! I mean we could tolerate people who disliked or just not interested in Halo, Killzone, Mass Effect, Uncharted etc, but to dare mutter any dark words get them negged to hell and back!

    However game such as Minecraft can sell itself many times over without any assistance or otherwise as momentum now is total gigantic!

  • smelly #34 1 year ago

    I spent 2 hours the other day digging a long tunnel. I dont know why.. i just started, and found it theraputic.. digging away, finding tunnels.. killing zombies when they appeared, etc etc...

  • smelly #35 1 year ago

    >mean we could tolerate people who disliked or just not interested in Halo

    Are you kidding me? Every time i say i think halo (even the modern ones) is overrated in the single player, people lynch me!

  • smelly #36 1 year ago

    (Triple post combo)

    I dont think this is a game of 2010 however.. as it's not out of beta yet...

  • fluff_the_tiger #37 1 year ago

    Ha ! Even though you have been negged to death, bravo coolbritannia - too true.

  • smelly #38 1 year ago

    I think if you say something even slightly negative about EG - someone on their staff allocates -40 points to you by default.

  • UncleLou #39 1 year ago

    I dont think this is a game of 2010 however.. as it's not out of beta yet...

    Only if you stubbornly insist on applying the strict meaning of "beta" in conventional development processes to Minecraft, ignoring the fact it has a million paying and more playing customers. Which would, of course, be rather silly.
    Edited by UncleLou at 30/12/10 @ 23:32

  • MisterCraig #40 1 year ago

    Just got this at 7 pm this evening. Still playing. I had literally no clue what the hell I was doing. Now, after frantically burrowing underground to escape evil spiders, I have my own special den, warmed and lit by the lava flow, which passes under my main deck where my crafting table is.

    I just about wept a tear of gaming joy when I accidently made my first torch.

    Now I'm plannning on how to get above the clouds. In style ^_^

  • _LarZen_ #41 1 year ago

    I am a normal boring person, about 3 hours ago I sat down and started playing Minecraft. Now I have build a castle, I have dug so far down in the belly of the earth that I witnessed lakes of lava. I carried hundred of stones from the caves up in to the sunlight.

    I have prevailed, and I have conquered!

  • smelly #42 1 year ago

    @UncleLou : But when it's finished (presumably next year) - then it can be game of 2011.

    At the moment, it's a work in progress, with millions of preorders trying out the beta :-)

    Dunno why i got all the negatives... mustve been saying that about eg...

  • djed #43 1 year ago

    Sim City Wannabe.

  • woffle99 #44 1 year ago

    @RedBarony. Sorry if Santa let you down this year - here's hoping you get those anger management issues under control for your New year's resolution :)

  • uknortherner2000 #45 1 year ago

    "Now bring on the thumbs down you fucking mindless lemmings."

    Remember folks: If you disagree with redbarony, you are a lemming. Lemmings of the world, UNITE!

  • Freakachuu #46 1 year ago

    Here was me thinking I was enjoying Minecraft because I like building mines and castles and railway systems and I like exploring massive cave systems. Turns out it was just hype. I'm glad I have been informed of this. I can stop playing now and play a game that redbaron wants me to play.

  • levitate #47 1 year ago

    @redbarony:

    Sorry to see someone finally pounded your sorry ass and you're butthurt about it. Or maybe Santa didn't give you what you wanted for Christmas? In any case, you're wrong.

    Minecraft is the Lego-game that Lego themselves couldn't manage to create, how's that? Maybe there still are people out there in the world who like to create things just for the sheer pleasure and this game lets them do that with pretty much no strings attached. That's good enough for me, and apparently for MANY other. So you take your hyperbole hype theory and stick it somewhere. Maybe not in the back though seeing as you've had a bit too much action there lately.

  • jakswan #48 1 year ago

    I had heard about this before and thought I would give it a try. I agree that it has a big hook, Wife said she was off to bed at 11pm I was shocked to find the time somehow had got to 1:30am. It has been many years since that has happened to me.

    Bottom line it was £10 and for me at least that represents tremendous value.

  • smelly #49 1 year ago

    Some people just love to hate things which are popular - without even trying them

  • Ged42 #50 1 year ago

    What, I'm a Lemming?

    OH NO!

    /explodes

  • the_dudefather #51 1 year ago

    Yay thumbs down time! let's go!