One game that had a strong impact on me is Minecraft. On the surface, it looks like it’s just a game about gathering resources, crafting tools, surviving, and whatnot. However, when you dig deeper (haha see what I did there), I think it’s really about creativity and personal growth. The game begins by dropping the player into an unfamiliar world with no instructions (you can see this in the Minecraft Movie). Instead of telling you exactly what to do, it guides you to create your own experiments and make mistakes so you can discover everything yourself. I think this design is what makes Minecraft so memorable. There is not a “correct” way to play the game, and it creates a variety of types of players from builders to miners to speedrunners. The game’s progression reinforces the idea that this variety makes the game feel personal to the player. Since you start with nothing but your hands, you feel like you earn every block you break and every achievement you collect, and that makes you have a sense of accomplishment. Rather than telling a story through cutscenes/dialoge it tells it through the player’s action, and I think that’s why this game remains meaningful to me; because it shows that creativity can change a blank world into something unique to you.
