I caved and purchased my $13.00 Minecraft license last night and I think I am hooked.. Hooked like how cocaine would suck you in. It's a fun and games to experiment but damn if you don't lose track of time.

The game is simple in it's graphics and simple in its concept. You get a randomly generated world consisting of different times of dirt, ore, stones, plants, and some animals. I see many people 'digitally spelunking' these caves, while I was set more of constructing a barricade for the inevitable zombie attacks at night. I wandered around from the respawn point, got lost, and quickly figured out how to build a dirt house up. Zombies came, night was boring, and then some spikey thing didn't die in the dawn and blew up a chunk of my house and me. Mkay? I respawned and could not find where I built my house v1.0. I then went to a significantly tall mountain and started to build up a good set of walls and a second floor. Night came I and I was safe... until the stupid spiky thing blew up an even larger chunk out of my house 2.0.

Now I am pissed. I wander around and find my house and rebuild. I dig around a bit and finally realized how to craft a pick to cut a hole out better. This rained down on my new fun of crafting rock times, smelting rock in to stone, making windows from sand, and I picked a nicely located spot and started to dig. Dig and I dig. Oh shit it's night again! I make it back before the zombies come and craft more items. Torches, a sword, and a few other items. Back to the hole I poke out the side of the mountain to find a sheer rock face. I hit stupid time suck gravel (worthless and chucked out of my inventory), and now it takes me significantly longer to get out of my mine. I think eventually I might find gold and gems, but what eva.

When I get home I may make a beach house and use that as a secondary camp while I get more pork to keep my health up.

The game gets me on a few levels..
1. I don't have to interact with people in some MMO setting (I can but I won't).
2. Free space to wander around in. I like that sort of control.
3. Building - it rubs me nicely like the SimCity series.
4. A sense of anxiety - constantly watching the horizon for night fall, worrying about zombies, spiky things, and perpetually having enough raw materials to replace my tools as they are used up.
5. I am more or less playing against myself (similar to Portal). I determine where I want to dig, what I want to build, and fully form the world around to my aesthetics.

Just a word of warning - stay away My Biggest Fan! Though it might get you off the WoW crack this java game will be equally addictive.