Blog warning: do NOT read this or sign up for this game if you have meaningful work you want to accomplish.
After all that stuff about personal discipline, Minecraft has seriously diminshed my motivation to do any work that doesn’t involve smashing rocks with a diamond-tipped pickaxe for use in my elaborate cave bedroom.
There is also a bathroom. With plumbing.
The best way to describe Minecraft is as a Childhood Imagination and Fort Simulator. If you are like me, a good portion of your formative years was spent in the construction of “bases” in the woods, trees, backyard, etc. for the eventual purpose of defending yourself and your friends against an unnamed enemy. Of course, I couldn’t really build that subterranean maze beneath the woodpile (it turns out that digging is hard, and Dad wasn’t keen on falling into a hole while walking through the driveway), and making a real working Ewok village requires patience and a better wood saw than the one on my Swiss Army knife. And so, the most impressive of my constructions exist only in my imagination.
Until I bought this game. This game lets you hollow out mountains and build forts in them, or build castles on top of them, or build elevated walkways over them. You then make weapons and armor from the rocks you’ve mined in the process. Then you use your fort and your weapons to defend yourself from marauding zombies.
You also get to explore randomly-generated caves. You can build furniture, traps, machines, and railroad tracks. Monsters sneak up on you in the dark.
Oh, and it runs in your web browser.
You do have to pay about $13 to sign up for the version I’ve just described, but it’s well worth it–unless you think of it in terms of lost revenue as a result of digging for gold and falling into a pool of lava when you should be doing work.
I have a feeling I’m going to both thank you and hate you for introducing me to this game.