Minecraft is easily my most played game. I must have easily clocked 1000 hours or many many more. That said I’m not sure I actually enjoy the game. I recently played Minecraft in single player and after 3 or 4 hours I had built a decent shelter, farms and mined enough to gather plenty of resources… then proceeded to get bored enough to never touch that world again.

In many ways it was similar to my experience back when I first tried Minecraft around 5 years ago. I bought the game due to the viral attention the game had received with people calling it electronic Lego. I waited until survival mode was released and eventually bought the game. I played for a couple of days on single player. Built a house on the top of a hill. Messed around with rails back before powered rails and found them to be a waste of time. Quite quickly I became bored and wondered if Minecraft had been a waste of money.

Out of blind luck and Youtube’s awful recommendation system I ended up being recommended a video of Minecraft griefing on a large public server. I was aware griefing was an issue which put me off trying the game online. Anyway the server looked interesting with some nice builds so I googled the p.nerd server and found out that anti griefing measures were active on the server so I thought it was worth the risk.

I ended up playing on the second map of the server p.nerd.nu. I entered the game and found a wall of rules. Ok all seems interesting and the initial spawn area was crowded with buildings. I followed a random road and found some more interesting builds. I ended up in a crappy little town of Cobble. Not far from spawn. So I went to the top of a nearby hill and built a small stone house. Ok so multiplayer had turned out much like single player and I was losing interest.

However, I ended up meeting the couple of players who had built the Town called Cobble. The word town is rather generous at this stage. It was about 4 houses with an interesting feature and a hidden underground area. So I ended up joining the build and helping develop the town. I soon started recruitment of newer members and the town grew…

And the town rapidly grew. A group of us organised over voice chat and the unplanned town just exploded in active players.

Minecraft became a very enjoyable experience but not for the game play itself. Working together with other players became the main reason I played. Running Cobble was a fun experience. In retrospect we built a giant eyesore on the PVE map, but we formed a community that has had members keep in contact for years since.

Minecraft became about the online community for me. I made a lot of very good friends who I still play a range of games with and am connected with via a range of social media. Currently, making plans over Facebook for another big Minecraft build when another map restart takes place, which should be soon. Should be good fun with around 15 players from the large scale Minecraft builds.

Minecraft has been a unique experience for me as the game play itself does not seem that interesting, but the online community and friendships I have made easily makes this one of the most played games I own.