A Brief History

The first time I punched a tree was back in college when this little game called Minecraft was in alpha; I think it was only about $5 at the time. What I didn’t realize then was that I started a game that would spark my own creativity and create countless memories with friends.

I can still visualize the very first survival world I created. Corridors of caverns carved by hand etched the blueprints into my mind as if it was a real place. A place I can never return to, sadly, old hard-drives and reformats are like that. The game was more primitive then but the possibilities still seemed endless; I was building a personal narrative in my own little world. I loved the gratification I felt when I had successfully progressed from a scared little man hunkered in a dirt hole on the side of a cliff to an established connoisseur of finer-things: dyed wool. I delved into my world for hours; it was a great decompression for a college student. All said, the single-player stood on its own, but sharing a world with friends is where Minecraft truly opened up for me.

With Friends

I had recently moved to a new city to start an internship. I was away from my longtime friends and most of my family; a recipe for loneliness. My buddy Ampulse set up a Minecraft server so we could hang out and unwind after work. There were several people on the server other than us, and Ampulse wasn’t fond of their antics. So, we got to work on our own secret base.

To ensure our establishment would go undetected, we constructed a pipeline at the bottom of an ocean, accessible only through a very inconspicuous hatch door. From there, you would descend into an atrium from which branched our ever-growing structure. Now, of course Minecraft is a massive world and we could have simply traveled to great lengths to avoid detection, but we wanted to remain within a reasonable distance from origin which also happened to be where said “others” had taken up residence. Once the basis for the our secret base was established, we created a symmetrical interior with separate quarters for each of us that we could customize to our liking. Going a step further for our anonymous autonomy, I painstakingly constructed an underground agricultural facility, code-named “Agri”. Over time, our settlement became like a second home that I could access after work. I didn’t feel like I was hours away from my friends. I was making something with them; how could I feel alone?

Endgame

Fast forward a bit. Well, more than a bit; how about 6 years? The server Ampulse and I played on is long gone and Minecraft had faded from our gaming rotation. That was until Ampulse and I had a little gathering, and in the downtime decided to give Minecraft another go. He had been dabbling in this realm for awhile; nothing too serious, however. We decided that this time around we were going to actually beat the game. While he was over, we got a lay of the land; our bearings, so to speak. Hilariously, we once again decided to establish a covert operation within a days journey of origin. This time, we settled in the tundra. Over the next few months, we got to work establishing ourselves in this harsh landscape. I took the role of Mr. Agriculture while Ampulse donned his engineer cap. Above the surface I toiled the land, carving out a farm while simultaneously constructing a quaint wooden barn. I do tend to construct with more natural materials. Below the surface, Ampulse fashioned a subterranean haven. As was his custom by this point, he rigged up a redstone door that blended seamlessly with the mountainside; the entrypoint to the base hidden beneath. Again, all of this work was in service of our goal: to kill the dragon.

Queue productivity montage… We’re now an established society of two. Two rugged men that have tamed the wilderness with our raw manliness. Our basic survival has been all but trivialized to the point where we hunt Endermen for sport. Well, once we had obtained enough Eye of Enders we knew a pivotal day had finally arrived: we were to set forth to find the End Portal. It’s not an easy task, in fact it took some planning. Of course, all of our resources were tied to our existing home; food being an especially critical factor. We needed to bring enough supplies to survive the journey and establish a new on-site operations facility. We set aside a particular gaming night to find the Stronghold, the sanctuary that houses the portal to the end. It took a few hours to triangulate the position. At this point, we were on our boats and we could see a faint light beneath the surface of the water. We sat there, perplexed. It took some banter back and forth until we both finally agreed it was indeed our destination. Then was the matter of actually getting down there. I dove down a few meters to see if it was feasible to just swim; it wasn’t. So we scoped out a landmass nearby and decided we could tunnel down from there, deep enough to go into the ocean floor. From there, we would bore our way across and finally back up to emerge in the chamber. This work spanned a few additional gaming nights.

One fateful night, after we had activated the portal, the end began. We were immediately met with a challenge. The dragon was on a floating island disconnected from the one we teleported onto. Makeshift bridge it was. The only problem is the dragon saw us and sent us into the abyss below; we persisted. I won’t sugarcoat it, our solution wasn’t quite heroic. We entered the portal, expanded our bridge and fell to our deaths; over and over. Then we met the dragon. I’ll spare you the details, the fight was not easy. We died…a lot. With a little perseverance, however, we ultimately prevailed and the dragon was slain. The credits rolled, the dust settled, and when it was all said and done, I had a feeling I wouldn’t be seeing much of this world any longer. Without a goal to shoot for, we played less and less. Our server grew cobwebs. Mobs began to roam our lands without fear of our mighty justice.

Reflection

The stories above are a mere snapshot of my experiences with Minecraft, and what’s astounding is that I noticed myself placing feelings normally reserved for real-life into this game. I longed to return to some of my settlements; effectively a sense of nostalgia. This didn’t just apply to previous worlds that are long-gone, it applied to a server instance I was still actively playing on. “Remember that old base we built back on that island near origin? We should go back and check it out for old-time sake”. Minecraft became more than just a game. It became the stories we’d talk about among friends and a sense of comradery from building something together. Though we don’t play as much these days, it’s a strange comfort knowing that even now, a virtual sun rises and sets in our server, casting shadows on what we built.