The date was, oh, hell, sometime in late 2009. My IRL friend, jk47, called me from his IRL town, three hours away, and told me about this game that was “really awesome”, because “you can build stuff in it, and it can be seen by everyone else.”

Broke and down-and-out, I was skeptical, but jk sent me a Youtube link to watch, which he thought would get me really excited to play Minecraft.

The link was the original Diamond Song, found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh0lrDg04yA . It was a funky tune sung by a guy who sounded way too nice, but the graphics looked awful compared to the World of Warcraft textures to which I was accustomed. So, I was convinced Minecraft wasn’t for me.

But, jk wouldn’t hear of it, and, knowing I was broke, he bought me a copy and helped me register my name. I didn’t know what to call myself, but I had a bottle of Vicodin sitting next to me.

“That would be a good name,” I thought to myself. But, I couldn’t make it toooo obvious, and that’s how my Minecraft name, Vykoden, was born.

Then came my first Minecraft experience. jk invited me to join a server called “Nerd”, which was hosted by something called “Reddit”. I didn’t know what those names meant; I only followed his instructions over the phone, clicking here and there and typing shit in whenever prompted.

Almost simultaneously, jk also talked me through downloading, installing and setting up something called a “Mumble”. He explained it was like “Vent” but better. I had a headset, so I was ready. Again, I followed jk’s instructions to the letter, and we got Mumble up and running, so we could voice chat, rather than talk on the phone.

With headsets on, Mumble rumbling and Nerd’s PvE server showing a great green connection, jk encouraged me to join. Still, I was skeptical. It seemed like an awful lot of work just to play some weird Cubert-looking game. But, he paid for it, so, “I should, at least, humor him.”

I logged in and showed up at Spawn on Nerd PvE Rev 1, and I had no idea what any of that meant. After jk explained the controls, and I remapped them to suit my playing style, we headed out of spawn and down a path; into the world.

Everything looked “derpy”, and at that time, I had no idea what “derpy” meant. The whole world was made of cubes! It felt like I was walking through some freaky Tetrisian nightmare. The game wasn’t pretty. Textures were rough and edgy. People looked creepy, and most of them looked the same.

Apparently, we were in a town called “New Auburn” or “New Arborea” or something like that, but I had no idea. I was just following my friend down a path. He narrated the trip, but I had no idea what he was talking about.

“I don’t get it,” I said to him. “Just stop a moment. What’s so great about this?”

jk stopped in his tracks and turned around.

“Pick this up,” he said, as something fell out of his body.

“How?” I asked.

“Just walk over it,” and I did.

“That’s a compass,” jk said to me with a chuckle. “You can make that. Isn’t that cool?”

“Um, no?” I replied. “What’s so great about a compass? It just points North, right?”

“Actually, no, it doesn’t,” he responded. “It actually points toward Spawn.”

“Why would I want to go back to spawn?” I asked.

“Just, here,” jk said in a frustrated tone, as he walked over to a tree next to the path. “Hit this tree.”

“How?”

jk then told me how to open my inventory and equip the compass, so I could hit the tree with the compass. And, I hit the tree with the compass.

“Okay,” I said, getting terribly bored. “I did it.”

“Keep hitting it,” jk replied, so I did, and eventually part of the tree disappeared, and my body automatically picked it up. “Now, hit all the wooden parts of that tree with the compass, until the same thing happens to the entire tree.”

I did as my good friend said, the whole time thinking, “This is lame”, until, eventually, the whole tree was gone.

“Dude!” jk yelled excitedly. “You just chopped down a tree with a fucking compass! Isn’t that awesome?!”

His excitement was lost upon me. I still didn’t get it; nor would I for several days. In that first week, I mainly did what jk47 told me to do; much like Mr. Miyagi trained Daniel LaRusso or Yoda trained Luke or The Fonz trained Ricky Cunningham or Papa Smurf trained Smurfette. Every night, I was a robot under his control; going “here” and doing “that” and taking “this” over “there” and “placing that” “like this”. It was as if I was going through the motions with blinders on.

Nor did I talk much in Mumble, because I didn’t get it. “Push to talk” was totally new to me, and it seemed like a pain in the ass. I mostly talked to jk47 in Mumble, because we were IRL friends, and I chatted a bit in-game.

Each day, I’d go out and harvest materials for our house. jk devised and taught me an extremely efficient way to mine. Gathering wood, leather, food, sand and coal were daily chores.

“How does that look?” jk often asked me.

“Great,” I’d respond, still not really understanding anything I was doing or seeing. “Yeah, that’s cool.”

Then, one day, I noticed someone else with a funny name was building a different structure a few “meters” from our house. This “guy” was building a house out of brick and glass; in the shape of diamond, hanging from a ledge. His name was 0mni0mni0mni.

I walked over to him and introduced myself and checked out his super cool design. He seemed nice and was obviously very creative. We chatted in-game for a while, and over the course of the next week, I watched as his house took shape.

And, that’s all it took. Suddenly, I got it.

This wasn’t a game about survival or fighting or killing or destroying; Minecraft is an experience in which people all over the world spend numerous hours gathering just the right materials needed to make their visions take shape and become realities, and it is within that creative experience in which people, divided geographically and socially, become friends through their mutually-observable creative experiences.

And, as we shared in those experiences, the world continued to grow, and the sun and moon danced across the sky that blanketed all of us; united under a common goal … to be creative and to have fun with everyone, without worrying about levels and ranks and wealth and bureaucratic bullshit found, not only in the real world, but also, unfortunately, in every single major-release massively-multiplayer-online (MMO) game available.

Minecraft was the perfect gaming experience, and today, six years later, for me, it still is.

Vykoden was born one night in late 2009, when the whole Minecraft world was ripe for the picking, but he wouldn’t realize his full potential until 2010.