When I play Minecraft, I think a lot about being a father.

Fathering you’ve heard about.

Minecraft, maybe not so much.

It’s hard to explain Minecraft to people who’ve never heard of it, in the same way that it’s hard to point to a box of Legos sprawled out on the floor and call it one of the best toys ever invented. To say that Lego is just a bunch of plastic blocks is true but reductionist. Minecraft’s like that. It’s a computer game where you mine stuff.

But it’s so much more.

You can play Minecraft on pretty much any computer. Visually, the game seems retro, but it is quite possibly one of the most methodologically advanced computer games ever created. It’s unassuming. At first. Upon opening Minecraft, the player is presented with a first-person perspective, familiar like Call of Duty or Halo. But it is distinctly non-modern in that there is no tutorial, no little pop-up or voice telling you to press a button. You begin alone, wondering what the heck you are supposed to do.

After a bit of time, and likely several deaths, you learn that you must mine the procedurally-generated world to build tools, which lets you mine more efficiently, which lets you get more resources to build better tools, including simple weapons like swords or bows. Eventually you’re ripping massive amounts of stone from earth to construct incredible structures.

Or, not. People call it as a “sandbox game” and that’s a great way to describe it. You can just as easily explore as you can construct. Dig here, walk over there. Destroy monsters, or farm wheat. Or both. It’s up to you.

An independent Swedish game developer named Markus “Notch” Persson released an “alpha” (pre-done) version of the game in March of 2009. In August of 2010, Minecraft went beta (not quite finished), and went big. You’d be hard pressed to find any game critic that wouldn’t call it one of the most significant video games of all time. The Smithsonian is even adding Minecraft to its upcoming “The Art of Video Games Exhibit.” And as of August 5 of 2011, Notch had sold three million copies at ~$15 each, and who knows how many people are playing that haven’t paid. Do the math; people love Minecraft.

My five-year old daughter, Cosette, and I do too. And I know why I like it; I love to explore, the blocky retro ascetic is endearing, and you can build things like Lego on steroids. But I haven’t quite figured out why Cosette loves it. Maybe it’s for the same reasons, but there’s something in my gut that says it’s something else. I just don’t know what.

Minecraft is unique in that it gives the player space to think. Most games constantly urge you to do something dammit: finish this mission, drive here, pick up this floaty health thingy, throw this bomb here, shoot this. Some games even have built-in character animations to drive the point home; stand in one place too long and your onscreen avatar starts tapping their toes, mumbling at your inaction.

Not so in Minecraft. Sure, there are certain obligations. Stand around too long and night falls; if you haven’t built up a house or dug into the ground, you’ll soon find yourself surrounded by skeletons, zombies, spiders, or worse, by “creepers” — green, distraught kamikaze beings that blow up upon contact.

But Minecraft is like Canada. There’s just so much space, one can’t help but think.

So, I think about being a dad.