[cubbic]

I discovered Minecraft when I was 14 years old, back then it was the version 1.6 beta and I think it was one of the best discoveries of mine at the time. One of the most distinct features this game has in my opinion is the community it exposes you to, I had found early on a small server and the experience was really great, everyone was friendly and it was kind of like an mmorpg but you could build stuff! After some time the main reason I was playing it and was logging on the server is to talk with other players, with some of them I'm still talking, after almost 7 years of knowing them. I don't get the hate the Minecraft gets now as my experience was really great and it allowed me to develop my social skills and imagination.

[setr]

>I don't get the hate the Minecraft gets now as my experience was really great

My experience with minecraft was when notch was on /v/, and my dislike of the game is how notch basically has/had no idea what he was doing. He accidentally stumbled into a good formula, and arbitrarily followed community requests with no real plan, destroyed any interesting aspect of survival mode, until it became that creative held all popularity, and then the whole game slowly became a lego building-maker, with a thin veneer of survival on top (mostly amounting to a random sudden death, but otherwise completely ignorable once you figure out the main enemies). As /v/ got fed up with his constant hiatuses, he moved over to reddit and I quit paying attention.

But the game early on had a lot of potential, and it was mostly wasted. Its only notable aspect is an addictive feedback loop, and online play, at this point.

It has more wasted potential in it than spore — impressively disappointing.

And it got so close to something fruitful that it ruined any game that actually does attempt a proper survival mode — they’ve all become minecraft clones, or minecraftlikes, and cant escape the perpetual black hole of its name. Even now the genre of survival-building-sim is only just getting back onto its feet, but it’ll remain crippled probably for at least another decade

[nyolfen]

surely there are dozens of mods that can scratch the survival game itch. this sounds like some weird post facto hating it because its popular thing to me.

[indolering]

It's really sad to see such a trite "kids are obsessed with video games" article on coming from ArsTechnica. What's especially irritating is how he admits to dropping out of medical school due to playing video games but insinuates that Minecraft is the root cause of his child's issues because it's more advanced. These moral panics started with Space Invaders in the 1980's [0]!

Any "addiction" without a strong physical component (alcohol, weed, sex, video games, etc.) is often just an outgrowth of an underlying mental health disorder. But since stigma is attached to mental health disorders, we are very quick to blame anything else. Unlike video games, it appears parents haven't gotten any smarter in past 40 years.

0: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1981/may/...

[vonseel]

>>stigma is attached to mental health disorders

I'd say addiction is viewed just as poorly if not worse. Like anything, I guess it depends on who you're asking.

[PavlovsCat]

> I don't get the hate the Minecraft gets now

What "hate"? The author describes his son showing signs of addiction, and ends up laughing it off.

[PhasmaFelis]

There's a lot of people who despise it because it's popular. Same thing with Fortnite, actually.