"It's the first 'sandbox game' that actually lets you dig up sand at the beach, build a giant sandbox, build a sandcastle in it, smelt the sand into glass with a furnace you built yourself, rebuild it into a giant glass pyramid with a moat of lava, and then blow it all up with TNT while riding a pig."
"Minecraft is an independent game that became very famous among gamers all over the world, and not for its graphics and impressive effects, but for its simple graphic engine and for the fact that everything is made out of cubes."
— Anthony Smith, Rocky Bytes, describing this game
"Christ! This is like Zelda meets There Will Be Blood!"
—Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, after bringing up the numerous times he fell into lava flows
"I have heard [Gabe] suggest that the game is crack, but it's more like all of the ingredients and equipment that you need to make crack, which I'd say is worse."
— Tycho, Penny Arcade, describing this game
Created by Swedish video-game programmer and apparent right-angle enthusiast Markus Persson, Minecraft is an open-source platform game that has become the most popular video game in the universe among small children. Recently, Minecraft's parent company was purchased by Microsoft for $2.5 billion. That's two and a half billion dollars for one video game. I've gotten my life all wrong. This guy wasn't even looking for a payday. He just liked building digital log cabins, as Swedes are wont to do.
"You know you fail at Minecraft when you think dirt is useless."
"What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway."
"The aim of the game is not to mine, or to craft, but to run from creepers."
—Arieken, instructing a new player
Guy: Hey! Know how you've been bugging me to play Minecraft for the past year? I'm game.
Girl: But you said you didn't want to "get hooked and spend days on end moving virtual cubes around while sitting motionless." What changed?
Guy: I'm having my wisdom teeth out, and I'll be useless and doped up on painkillers for the next few days, so that actually sounds like the perfect distraction.
Girl: Oh. I'll set you up on our server!
[72 hours later...]
Girl: Hey — starting to feel better? Enjoying the game? Let's see what you've... What the hell? Where IS everything? ... You made the entire continent perfectly flat?
Guy: And sorted it into layers.
Girl: ...
Guy: I feel good about things. This is a good game.
Girl: ... What exactly is in the painkillers they gave you?
Guy: I can't read the label because I'm a hologram.
—xkcd #861: Wisdom Teeth
Markus "Notch" Persson created a finer world than God himself, because on average more people enjoy their time in Minecraft.
—Luke McKinney, Cracked
"I've got so much to do! So much to do and so much to see!"
— Gopher, aptly summarizing what many new players feel when they first start the game.
"So you're mining stuff to craft with and crafting stuff to mine with? Did your dad write this game?"
