Those are impressive skills to have! I think I’d be dead within minutes of any adverse situation. This book might help, though! Each chapter delivers a new, really important life lesson. Did you set out to write a book which doubles as this guide to self-improvement?

MB: No, no - the lessons just emerged as I was playing Minecraft! The very first time I spawned was on an island, and I made tremendous mistakes, and I learned from my mistakes and I had tremendous failures, epic fails and I recovered from epic fails and as all this was happening, it dawned on me: this game is a guide to life!

And I was so excited I told all of my other parent friends and ran over to my kid’s school for a teacher meeting - I was so excited telling the principal, “You should have Minecraft courses because this is everything that we’re trying to teach our kids.” He didn’t listen, of course. So I was sort of frustrated trying to figure how to get all this out, and then I got this call saying, “Hey, would you be interested in writing a Minecraft book? Do you have a take on it?” I said, “Oh, do I ever!”

As well as learning to survive, the character in The Island has to deal with the weird rules of Minecraft itself. I really enjoyed the bit where the character comes to terms with the fact that eggs aren’t immediately edible - how did you decide to make it so that the literal rules of Minecraft were part of the story?

MB: Well, I think that’s a great metaphor for life! Putting myself in the mindset of this character in this weird world, it’s really no different than when I stepped out of my parents’ house into the world. One of the most important lessons I put in the book is “Just because the rules don’t make sense to you doesn’t mean that they don’t make sense.” I had to learn that the hard way.

But it was easy for me literally to jump into the world because I always do that with videogames. When I was a kid, I would play a submarine videogame, and my room was the sub and I’d turn the lights down low and when the sub got hit I turned on the hot shower so there’d be steam and blasting water.

Wow, that’s commitment to the fantasy!

MB: Oh yeah - when I commit, I go 110%, otherwise I don’t do it!