Minecraft is the world’s best selling video game with over 300 million copies sold. It is notable for being a virtual sandbox made of blocks where players can craft, build, farm, fight, and more. The original version of the game was actually made by one person, Markus Persson who goes by “Notch” online. A game studio, Mojang Studios, was quickly created in order to hire more people to work on the game which quickly rose to popularity.
Most people, including myself, were introduced to Minecraft as kids and were attracted by the ability to be as create and survive. Today Minecraft comes with several gameplay modes but initially it was just survival mode. In it, you start with nothing and have to farm and mine all the resources you need to survive. At night, monsters come out and attack you which also adds to the fun. Later, creative mode was introduced where you have unlimited resources and do not take damage from monsters which made it easy to build incredible structures.
I used to enjoy the game immensely but I must admit that I only enjoyed survival and never got into creative mode. There was something really special about starting from nothing, crafting a basic shelter, mining ore, adventuring, and simply living in a virtual sandbox. The best part was that you could play with friends and craft even larger, more complex structures together. There was some point though, where Minecraft suddenly wasn’t fun anymore and I rarely play today.
Sometimes, I will fire up the game and start a new world, eager to have a good time like I used to and after half an hour, I’ll log off bored and annoyed. What happened to the game? There are five good reasons that the game just isn’t what it used to be. Note that this list applies to me only and is in no way representative of everyone. Plenty of people still absolutely love the game but I have noticed a trend among people my age.
1. The new Minecraft is horrendous
Minecraft decided to do something different a few years ago and rewrite the game from scratch. This was called Minecraft Bedrock Edition and was supposed to be a more performant version of the game that would make it easier to add new features and fix bugs than the older, more complex codebase that already exists.
What ended up being produced instead was a very difficult (impossible actually) to mod, less performant game. For PC players, they can actually continue to play on the Java Edition that is far superior. For those of us on console, those editions were abandoned in favor of Bedrock. The UI is significantly worse as it is not optimized for a controller and it lags heavily, the game crashes frequently, and the multiplayer appears to disconnect much more often if you are not paying for a “Realm” (multiplayer world that carries across devices).
The game is simply worse in every way, with the exception of more “stuff” from the older Java edition for PC and specific console versions for consoles. They should abandon it and start again with experience optimization in mind.
2. The survival sandbox genre has so many more options now
Minecraft came out well over 10 years ago when the gaming landscape was vastly different. Today, the landscape is absolutely flooded with games form the thousands of game studios that have opened in recent years. Technology has improved so much that even solo or very small teams can produce a game that is quite fun, if not graphically demanding.
All this means that Minecraft is competing with a lot of different games in the sandbox/survival sandbox genre and there are simply so many other options now.
3. As adults, we just don’t have as much time as we used to
Everyone I grew up with was playing Minecraft in our mid teens but now we are adults with jobs, wives, children, and other priorities in life. I still play video games as I find that it is something I really enjoy but I do not get near as much time as I used to. This means that when I get to play a game, I have to choose wisely what I want to play as I often only get 30 minutes to an hour every other day.
I am probably going to choose a game that is more fun or offers a lot of excitement in that short period of time. Minecraft is more of a game that takes a long time to see the results of your efforts, and that is time I simply don’t have anymore.
4. Playing without friends is less fun
One of the most enjoyable parts of Minecraft was building structures with friends. We would all build a massive base, or build our own bases, and add to them over time. We would all jump on after school or during the summer and work on our creations for hours. We would also often do this at the early hours of the morning while binge eating junk food and drinking soda (ironically we were all in pretty good shape as we played sports).
None of my friends play many video games anymore because of reason number 3. This means that the multiplayer aspect is largely dead to me and that also kills the experience.
5. Been there, done that
A common theme in this post is that life simply isn’t the same anymore. One thing that is largely the same is the basic game mechanics and gameplay of Minecraft. This means that anything we do now is simply something we did before as teenagers. It doesn’t make the game bad, it just means that it has less to offer us as it did when it first came out. This is the same for the vast majority of games (or any other activity), once you’ve done something once the thrill tends to die down in subsequent times.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Minecraft just isn’t what it used to be for me and that is really a shame. I still am very thankful for the joy and happiness that the game brought to me when I was a teenager and will always have fond memories of playing with friends. Perhaps some things are simply best left as memories.
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