The Meaning of Life (in Minecraft)

[J T]

I have long maintained a simple notion that the meaning of life is to strike a desired balance between surviving and enjoying that survival. If you can’t survive, you fail life. If you survive but do not enjoy the ride, you fail life. It’s a simple philosophy that kind of boils down to this: your life only has as much meaning as you make for it, so get creative.

I like to keep it simple like that because it is an easy philosophy to remember. So when I get too focused on just getting by, paying the rent, working long hours, I can quickly recognize that I have become overly focused on “productivity” and remember that my purpose is to enjoy the life I work so hard to keep. Or if I spend too much time goofing around, playing video games, or doing other things for simple enjoyment, then I have gotten off track and forgotten that I need to attend to my basic needs and health. When it is so easy to get too caught up in work or too caught up in play, you need something easy to remember to pull you back to center. Life is basically an always changing, never ending puzzle game where you try to resolve the competing demands for survival and fun. This is the basic personal philosophy that I live by.

I would also add to that a system of ethics based on the notion that other people also deserve the same right as me to stay alive and to enjoy their life, and we all need to work together to make sure that happens fairly for all. That turns out to be more complicated than it sounds, but therein lies the foundation of ethics.


Minecraft has become my latest gaming obsession. I absolutely love it. And what I love about it is that it is a game where your only goals are to survive and to make fun. Now I say “make” fun instead of “have” fun because the word “have” sounds so passive. Minecraft doesn’t just hand you fun to have. In fact the world of Minecraft is a fairly inhospitable place full of skeleton bitches shooting arrows in your face and these supreme assholes called Creepers that seem to only desire the destruction of everything you hold dear. No. Minecraft does not hand over the fun. Instead, it gives you a pair of hands and a world to use them in. You have to make the fun stuff yourself: a fortress, a sky castle, a roller coaster ride, a boat, a giant cock & balls carved into the side of a mountain bigger than Mt. Rushmore, or even a glowing obsidian portal into hell. It’s all up to you really. It’s your world.

And it really is your world. Whenever you start a profile in Minecraft, the world given to you is procedurally generated so no two Minecraft worlds are never even close to being exactly alike. Most videogames only give you a mission along a set path that you must follow and they charge you $60 USD for that experience. Minecraft gives you an endless supply of entire worlds for just €14.95! It’s god-like AND inexpensive.

But remember those creeper assholes I told you about, well it turns out they are kind of important to the whole experience. That’s where the survival element comes in. All of those creepers, skeletons, spiders, and mobs of undead zombies are what you have to survive against. So you create to have fun, and you and your creations survive by being protected from the unpleasant creatures of the world. Thus, the central premise to Minecraft’s gameplay echoes my own personal life philosophy- do what you need to survive while still finding enough time for fun to make that survival worthwhile. You see, if Minecraft was just about creating things it wouldn’t be a game. It would just be a tool for creating simple 3D block art. If it were just about surviving the zombies, it would just be like any number of countless games where you attack or hide from enemies.

The beauty of Minecraft is that it is both.

You embark on creative projects that take work, creativity, and planning. You then get attached to these creations and realize that if you don’t pay attention to the time of day, you just might end up seeing your precious creation blown to pieces by some wiseguy creeper with a gut full of TNT. So there is the basic interplay of needing to survive and needing to have fun, which is the core of the game. Creepers are a pain in the ass, but a necessary evil. Light and shadow must work together. There’s no need for preachers without the devil. Yin Yang and all that.

You also need to venture out from your safe little shelter to find supplies. There’s nothing like risking your life to make you feel alive. Not until you have dodged arrows from a cliffside full of skeletons, or zig-zagged through a field of undead zombie just to bring home a few blocks of wood and some chicken feathers, do you really begin to realize that your creations are more than just stacks of blocks. Those blocks have stories behind them full of grand adventures and death-defying escapes.

Now as for ethics, that kind of depends on if you play single or multiplayer. If you are like Jean Paul Sartre and believe “Hell is other people”, then perhaps the single player is for you. I’ve actually been playing primarily single player mode lately because I like to live out my little hermit fantasies. But there is a moral depth to this game that only comes from playing multiplayer mode with a group of other humans.

This is where you have ethics show up in Minecraft. Each person you work with on a multiplayer server is there to survive and to create. You can work together, you can work separately, or you can work against each other. It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you work in a team. It’s also amazing how much another person can screw you over. The game doesn’t really prohibit anything, so you have to figure the ethics out yourself. If you want a great civilization and a good quality of life though, it’s a lot easier if you work together, just like real life.

Oddly enough, playing Minecraft has helped me appreciate my real world life a bit more. For one, I notice blocks much more. Haha. But aside from that, I think about how so much of the world around me, especially in the city, was painstakingly crafted by human ingenuity and sweat. It’s easy to take that kind of thing for granted, but going through the Minecraft process of mining, refining minerals, and crafting items has provided just a little bit more appreciation for all of the manmade stuff around me. The game also prompts a reminder in me that the world is a vast place with many things to offer. If you are stuck working in the same dull cave (office job?) day-in day-out, there are endless possibilities out there and the world provides much, you just have to use your two hands and get creative.

[YoshiEgg25]

I have got to buy this game.

[J T]

I have got to buy this game.

Yes, you do.

[TehOctoNinja]

The Meaning of Minecraft is to stop creepers blowing up my stuff.

[YoshiEgg25]

I bought it. I was on a server with my friend and I couldn't find him and I got frustrated.

Any server a few of you guys are on?

[J T]

I bought it. I was on a server with my friend and I couldn't find him and I got frustrated.

Any server a few of you guys are on?

Congratulations and welcome to the club.

As I mentioned, I tend to play single player mostly. If I do play multiplayer, it will likely be on the server that dlmvii mentioned in the other Minecraft thread: dlmvii.net

[Frizz.Meister]

I cannot stand mindcraft. But i finally understand why others love it, thank you for the great read. However i must ask, does this philosophy also apply to RPGs? You have to mine ore to make armour to survive the monsters. But if mining gets boring you can go and goof around whatever world it is.

[YoshiEgg25]

I bought it. I was on a server with my friend and I couldn't find him and I got frustrated.

Any server a few of you guys are on?

Congratulations and welcome to the club.

As I mentioned, I tend to play single player mostly. If I do play multiplayer, it will likely be on the server that dlmvii mentioned in the other Minecraft thread: dlmvii.net

I and a couple of my friends went on there. We made a base with lots of glass around -270, 70, -210 or something. We would've been fine if when we were mining hadn't found lava. :/

[SirJoshuaTimothy]

Your post is so true. "A man must break his back to earn his day of leisure"

[J T]

I cannot stand mindcraft. But i finally understand why others love it, thank you for the great read. However i must ask, does this philosophy also apply to RPGs? You have to mine ore to make armour to survive the monsters. But if mining gets boring you can go and goof around whatever world it is.

I can kind of see that, but what I'm considering to be the fun part here is the crafting and creating. In an RPG you look around the world and think "wow, this world is vast and beautiful", which also happens in Minecraft, but in Minecraft you also have this feeling of "and this world is MINE." It's like you have to take ownership of your destiny in Minecraft and determine what it is you want to see happen in the world. And then you set to building it brick by brick.

I have never felt the same way about an RPG. Most RPGs certainly involve a lot of exploration and adventuring, but it's in service of reaching a goal that has been given to you and narrowly defined by the game designer, like save the princess or stop the evil overlord. That can certainly be fun, and I also love a good linear adventure if it's designed well and has a good story. In Minecraft though, you independently come up with your own goals to work towards. I guess you could say that you are loosely given the goals of build and survive, but it doesn't put you on any linear path for WHAT to build or HOW to survive. That means the game is only as fun as you can make it. If you're the creative type who likes to build things, then you'll probably have a blast.

My current project is to build a glass floored castle that floats high above the world. I also intend to build a "pig flume" amusement park where you ride saddled pigs down giant waterslides. No game in history has ever let me do that before. That's what I love about Minecraft.