Minecraft is the best-selling game of all time, originally created by Markus “Notch” Persson, it recently had its 15-year-anniversary. With more than 1100 inventory items and 87 mobs, an abbreviation for mobile entities (a.k.a living things), it is all available to players. The Minecraft world is an infinite world made of blocks different colors and shapes. In my opinion, Minecraft is the best video game ever created.

In Minecraft, the player, who is given ten health and ten hunger, explores the digital world, interacting with various parts of it. The game usually begins with the player going up to a tree to punch and break it until the wood it drops, and is stored in the inventory. There is no gravity in Minecraft so when the bottom log of the tree is broken off, the whole tree isn’t programmed to collapse. After getting enough logs, the player can convert the logs into planks. Using four planks, the player is able to create a crafting table which needs to be placed in order to function. Then, the player will be able to create wooden tools like swords and axes. From there, the player is able to upgrade the tools into stone, iron, and even diamonds. 

But all this is just the start — the player can access various realms and dimensions for expedition. Minecraft has unique mechanics and mobs. For example, if you try to sleep in the Nether, one of the various dimensions accessible in the game, you will spontaneously combust. In the Nether, you will be able to find netherite, which is able to upgrade your gear even more. After conquering the Nether, you will be able to go to the End, the third and last dimension. In the End, you will encounter the “final boss,” the Ender Dragon. Despite the name of the End dimension, it is not the end. After taking on the Ender Dragon, some players still spend hundreds of hours perfecting their world with builds and gear with materials found in the End and elsewhere.

This is one of my favorite parts of Minecraft. Unlike other games, where your story ends in “The End” of that game, you can keep playing Minecraft to your desire. It is a sandbox game with the gameplay element of letting you exert a great deal of creativity with no predetermined goal. Basically, you can do anything you want to in Minecraft. Another example of this is being able to change your gamemode to creative. This gives you power to do anything you want without having to worry about the amount of supplies or mobs. You even have the ability to change how fast time passes in creative mode. I spent a great deal of time building in Minecraft, since you can build basically anything with the amount of blocks you have access to.

I asked a long-time Minecraft player and Clague seventh grader, David Park, what his favorite part of Minecraft was.

“I like that Minecraft has steady updates, this makes the game fresh and exciting like it’s still my first time,” Park said. 

Even though Minecraft’s major updates are slow, the minor updates come around almost monthly without much warning. This makes it so that while playing, you could get surprised by a mechanic you thought you knew perfectly well

Ron Young Lin, another avid Minecraft player and Clague seventh grader, told his favorite part of Minecraft is the aesthetic. 

“I like the natural landscape that Minecraft generates for you. I like that it feels natural and beautiful,” Lin said. 

And I agree: the world Minecraft generates includes rivers, oceans, mountains, forests, and deserts. The new updates made mountains taller and caves deeper, adding subtle dimensions like these only add depth to the game. All Minecraft worlds are different, generated using random seeds, a long string of numbers, dictating the structures and landforms.

All of this is completely not regarding the modifications that add various things to the game, and the multiplayer mode. This simply is empirical evidence as to why Minecraft is the best-selling game of all time and has amassed millions of dollars in profit. From starting as a small project in 2009 by one person, it has transcended into this masterpiece of a game being developed by hundreds of people.