Minecraft, Yourcraft, Everyone's Craft!

Minecraft, Yourcraft, Everyone's Craft!
by Jayson Lightbound

Timeline of Minecraft History

The never-ending world of Minecraft continues to build its way into the computers and consoles of millions of players across the globe each day, with a smashing 122 million copies sold so far, and 55 million of us playing the RPG every single month (Blake, 2017). The game itself, which was created back in May of 2009 under the name “Cave Game”, started as an offline, single player game (only available on computer) where you could only ‘destroy’ blocks and place them elsewhere (Minecraft Wiki, 2017 ). It has now blown into a community unequal to anything alike, with large servers supporting enormous amounts of people playing together, monthly updates which bring new items and is now being made available on any technological device you can think phones, consoles and even Virtual Reality Headsets.

With the Minecraft community growing every single day, there are thousands of servers supporting communities of players who can either co-exist with each other, battle to the death or create anything beyond their imagination. Servers which lets players build their own homes and community are great for people to interact and build with one another, as well as giving people a safe place to do their own thing. Every server has either ‘Admins’ or ‘Operators’ who monitor players in their worlds to ensure everyone is following rules and playing fairly (Ultimate Server, 2017). These Admins are given the power to evict members from servers, promote players to a higher rank and kill those who pose a threat to other players. Having a hierarchy like this in the virtual world can be comforting to most, as it gives them a reason to feel safe and someone to go to when things go wrong.

Players can create and design their own houses or buildings to keep themselves, as well as pets and items, safe and to have a place to eat, sleep and basically ‘live’. Author Edward Arnold, writer and publisher of ‘Space and Place’, explains that “The human endowment includes sensory organs like those of other primates” (Arnold, 1979) which basically summarises that humans still have their “territorial” sense, thus giving reason as to why we have the urge to protect and defend our ‘territory’. 

Although not on an extreme level, this is the reason why players within the Minecraft community build and protect their own homes because they consider it their own ‘Safe Place’ much like animals who defend their territory in the wild. As ‘out there’ as it sounds to compare Minecraft players to wild animals, the subject of Space and Place is what throws us all into the same category. All in all, by having different levels of hierarchy within the game and giving players the ability to create their own homes and communities it strongly relates to the idea of Space and Place.

References

(n.d.).

Arnold, E. (1979). Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience . In E. Arnold, Space and Place (p. 7). Edward Arnold.

Blake, V. (2017, February). MINECRAFT HAS 55 MILLION MONTHLY PLAYERS, 122 MILLION SALES. Retrieved from IGN: http://au.ign.com/articles/2017/02/27/minecraft-has-55-million-monthly-players-122-million-sales

Minecraft Wiki. (2017 , July). Timeline of Events . Retrieved from Minecraft Wikipedia : https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Timeline_of_events

Ultimate Server. (2017). Role Playing Minecraft Server . Retrieved from Ultimate Server: http://roleplayingserver.weebly.com/