The first video game ever created was “Tennis for Two” in 1958 by William Higinbotham. It didn’t last very long, but it opened the door for many more games to come. Pong, Tetris, Pac-Man: all of these games started to come out in rapid succession in the late 20th century. Video games revolutionized society. Games had existed for centuries, but an online version which allowed for a mainstream access was new. Many early video games were found in arcades with people of all ages huddled around, cheering on their friends, trying to break the high score or just watching the game. Video games were an amazing innovation for technology, but I argue it was a bigger innovation for society. People across the country, the world even, could connect over a shared interest.
Video games have impacted the social sphere with the rise of social media. It started with blogs and chat rooms, and now there are YouTube videos and TikToks made by enjoyers of the games. I have seen people theorizing about backstories, explaining symbolism, and even just playing a game. Video games have given people a new reason to interact with one another, even if it’s virtually. The social culture around video games has not only given me hundreds of hours of happy memories, but has fundamentally impacted who I am as a person.
On May 17, 2009, the Cave Game was first released. It was a small Alpha version, not even close to what it would later become. After two years, the complete version was finally released. This version was called Minecraft. Minecraft is a sandbox game where a player can play in creative or survival. Creative is a mode where the player has access to every building block in the game and cannot die. It’s an endless well of creativity. Survival is the main feature of the game, with the player only having 10 hearts and having to fight their way through nights full of monsters, traverse scary caves and travel to the End to slay the Ender Dragon. While all of these have been done by millions of people, no one person plays the game the same. That is the beauty of it. A player can spend hours exploring the vast landscapes: dark and dangerous caves, dry and arid deserts, green and lush jungles or a player could choose to speed run the entire game: rush through the over world, blunder through the Nether, and finally slay the dragon in the End. This is what makes Minecraft so unique, its versatility. It allows for people to create freely.
I first discovered Minecraft in first grade when my neighbor was playing it on his iPad. I thought it looked cool, begged my parents for the game, and two math workbooks later, I had earned my prize. I booted up the game, loaded into the world, and just stared at the screen. I had no clue where to start. I inherited my dad’s brain, good with math and science, not so good at coming up with unique ideas. So I googled “Minecraft house” and picked the first photo that came up to try and build. I had a complete inventory of every block in the game and so I picked the first ones I saw and started building. I can’t say whether it looked like the reference photo (I’m pretty sure it did not), but I distinctly remember how happy I was. Fast forward six months and I’m at a sleepover. Between all of the pranks and stories, my friend decides to pull out her iPad and open an app called YouTube. She types in Minecraft and pulls up a specific channel: PopularMMOS. To this day I cannot explain what the name means, but that channel was my gateway drug. I binge-watched every second of content I could find of them. It opened my door to the creative experience that was Minecraft YouTube.
Humans have always loved to create. What is to be believed as the earliest piece of artwork was found in a cave in Sulawesi, Indonesia and was painted around 45,000 years ago. The piece is simple: three pigs, and yet, something is so beautiful about simplicity. Pigs in modern day often represent fortune and good luck, which makes them being the first thing ever painted beautiful, almost like a sign that the door these people opened by smearing some juices on a wall would lead to a meaningful form of expression for humans. Or it could just all be a coincidence, considering after all my research I don’t believe pigs held that meaning back in Indonesia 45,000 years ago. Still, this simple painting still opened the floodgates for thousands upon thousands of new art forms. Music, literature, cooking, the list goes on. And as we became more connected, more types of creative expression were created, styles intermingled, and art evolved. Van Gogh was inspired by Japanese artist Hokusai’s “The Wave,” Freddie Mercury was inspired by American soul singer Aretha Franklin, and the list goes on. While the art itself will always be beautiful, the humans creating it are what I find to be the most moving. Every artist has their own story to tell, to express in their chosen way, whether it be Freddie Mercury experimenting in the recording studio, Van Gogh sketching a rough draft for Starry Night, or a high school student writing an essay about a video game, every artist puts a piece of their soul into their work that is then shown to everyone who experiences the result. These people then go on to live their lives, but will forever be impacted by those who came before them, who created something that left a mark on those who viewed it. That is what I find most meaningful about art: How art impacts society and how society impacts art.
Video games are a form of art. They are another way of expression of the human mind. Creating a story, actualizing an idea, or reimagining something, it doesn’t matter: all of it is meaningful. I have played many video games in my life and I’m sure I’ll play many more but Minecraft still takes the cake for most impactful. That is because of the art people create with it.
As much as some people may complain and groan about social media, I think it’s helped create a new form of artistic expression: videos. This is the main area in which fans of Minecraft create. My most impactful “artist” was Technoblade. He had been creating videos for years, since he was in high school, but I found him later when he was in college. He was hilarious and what he did in his videos was simple: play the game while sharing a story, either from his personal life, something he had heard, or some shenanigans he had been up to. It was simple, but much like the 45,000-year-old pigs, that’s what made it beautiful. I was engulfed with watching these videos and would wait impatiently for the next one. That was until the summer of 2021 where he announced he had been diagnosed with sarcoma, a rare cancer with very little known about it. I was devastated, as he was a role model for me and someone I looked up to. A little over a year later he passed. I still remember the empty feeling of knowing that there would be no more videos to watch and no more chatter among my friends about his content. I was in mourning. That was the moment I solidified my plans to pursue medicine as a career. I couldn’t bear the thought of good people dying so young. As of now, I’m still strongly motivated to continue down this path.
This was the impact Minecraft had on me. Not just the beauty of creating original pieces of art, not just communicating with like-minded fans of the game, but mourning a person I never knew just because they loved the same game, in the same way I did. This is what art is supposed to do, rip out a person’s insides and rearrange them until that person is whole again, but slightly different. Art is supposed to fundamentally change people and Minecraft did just that and not just for me, but for millions of people everywhere. But art does not do this alone. Art does this with the help of the billions of people who came before and who had their lives changed by art. And then the cycle repeats itself, a constant circle of creating, viewing, changing, and then creating again. Someday down the road Minecraft will be nothing but a Wikipedia page or a footnote in history but it is guaranteed the game’s impact will long be felt by those who were inspired to create from it.
I rate Minecraft five out of five stars.
