Minecraft and Marriage

So, I’ve been playing minecraft a lot, you should be familiar enough with that by now. What’s different though is that now I’ve bought it for Dru and we’re playing together on a server I’ve setup on the mediabox. It’s been a strange experience, but ultimately very enjoyable. Dru and I rarely play games together, especially if they are computer games. Generally we have wildly different skill levels and it just leads to frustration for everyone involved but with minecraft things are very different. Being the sandbox game that it is, there isn’t that same kind of competitiveness nor is there the same kind of challenges involved regarding control systems and reaction times. It’s a very slow paced game and it’s full of wonder and exploration.

I think it’s actually brought us closer together in a way. We’re together as husband and wife, exploring a strange new world and bending it to our will, shaping the elements to protect us against the dangers that lurk in the dark. There is something powerful about that, when there is just the two of you together against the elements and by necessity you become closer, trust each other more, rely on one another. I logged in during lunch to have Dru tell me she’d made me some armour to protect me and in the morning I’d spent some time before work building up our hut and making a little boulevard of tree across the lake to our door because I thought she’d like it (and she did).

It’s weird, building things for each other, surviving together, working together like that. It’s a completely different gaming experience, even in things like Civilisation which is very similar in terms of sandbox-y type gameplay. The difference is thought that there are no real win conditions in minecraft, it’s purely what you put into it and it’s that, two people pouring themselves into the shared creation of a world, that makes a special kind of bond.

This isn’t to say that we didn’t have a bond to start with, we are married after all, but rather it’s created another nuanced layer, joining us in an arena we’ve normally been distant in. Games aren’t a massive part of my life, I wouldn’t say I’m a hardcore gamer by any stretch of the imagination but it is important to me and to be able to share it with my wife like this really means a lot. I think that’s the thing I enjoy most about minecraft really, more than any of the single player adventures I’ve had it this shared journey I’ve been taking with my wife. There’s just something magical and intangible about it all.

I wonder how many other people find that bond is the thing that makes the game for them, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn it’s a large number. Minecraft is a very basic, buggy game with barely any features and many problems but it has that character to it that really appeals to a shared sense of wonder and collaboration and it think it’s quite possibly that, over any of the other things, that make the game as compelling as it is. The single player manages some of that to a degree but the multiplayer experience really is something else. Saying that, I don’t think I’d enjoy it in a public server nearly as much as I’m enjoying playing it alone with my wife. That sense of intimacy is what makes the game for me and that would be lost playing over the internet with strangers. Perhaps though, playing with friends I already know, a similar kind of feeling could be achieved, just imagining it I can already feel a taste of that compelling experience, the primed potential just waiting to be expressed.

I’m rarely moved by games, in fact generally I don’t play many mainstream games because they seem very empty and soulless. Many are the same as all the others and even though they may have their own unique identity they are still based around a core that is all to recognisable. First Person Shooters are particularly bad for this, but it exists to a lesser extent in the other genres.

Minecraft however has really made a real impact with me. I haven’t been this effected by a game since Aquaria, which is still one of my favourite games of all time and still astounds me with it’s simplicity and beauty. Indie games are the future and the strongest case for games as art as anyone could hope for. I doubt you’ll ever see a game that can provoke such a profound experience from a large publisher, though I’d love to be proved wrong.

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