Every time my daughter tells me about Minecraft’s 1.19 update, she describes it in completely different terms.
It can’t see you.
Strangely frank: “I think a lot of people think Minecraft swamps are boring.
1.19 tries to change that.”
She has no fear of its depths and complexities.
Let’s go back a bit.
In many ways it’s the game she measures all other games by.
And that in itself is interesting.
From an admittedly small sample group, the things her generation seems to want from games are very specific.
My daughter’s class got intoFortnitethrough the party mode, where you wander about dancing at each other.
Games are places where these kids come together to hang out and be themselves, together.
They’re an extension of the playground.
Minecraft excels in this role.
you’re able to play alongside your friends while doing your own thing.
And what you do in Minecraft is kind of a definition of who you are.
“I’m a builder,” my daughter explains.
And it’s true.
She builds incredible stuff - incredible to me and my wife.
She built her school in there.
And that’s just the stuff she carried across from our world.
All these builds are problem solving.
The problem solving goes deeper.
When I ask what she most wants from a future Minecraft update she has very clear ideas.
Yeah, like maybe an easy way to make a counter or something," she tells me.
Floating plant pots, no decent counters.
These are the things the committed Minecraft builder needs to come up with their own solutions for.
My builder approached the recentish 1.19 update in her own way.
- and things like that.
“And a bit of sand and stuff.”
She loves mud bricks.
She loves the new kind of wood.
We play alongside each other, and intermittently we team up on something.
What’s the state of this game?
How can you get your arms around it?
It’s so big, it means so many things to so many people.
What can you do in the face of how vast it is, how many possibilities it contains?
Here are a few simple observations, at least.
Minecraft is a bit timeless, I think.
By which I mean, each generation comes to it and feels like they discovered it first.
It’s the island that she and her class discovered for themselves.
All of this is legit.
Goals are what you want to do in the next five minutes here.
Ten minutes if you’re adding furniture.
Minecraft’s not finished.
And this is a big part of why Minecraft is so brilliant.
The caves used to be boring.
The swamps used to be boring.
So they add new stuff.
There are frogs now!
But she’s always clear that none of this stuff is done.
Next, my daughter’s heard, you may be able to breed Allays by giving them a cookie.
And maybe the developers will fix up some of the other biomes.
For years when I thought of Minecraft I thought of something daunting, too vast to get involved with.
It would be like trying to become a Brian Eno fan at this stage in my life.
Where do you start?
(Here Come the Warm Jets, but that’s beside the point.)
Now when I think of Minecraft I think about a specific sound - a fast, confident clicking.
Now I share a house and a TV with one of those people.
What’s the state of Minecraft at the moment?
It’s still new.
It’s still exciting.
And it’s still revelatory.
Sometimes this means I verify nobody has any fun.
But Minecraft, of all things, has helped me change this behaviour just a bit.
She can do stuff with speed and accuracy and imagination and care that I can only dream of.
Of course she can.
She’s a builder.
you’re able to find plenty more pieces like it in ourState of the Game hub.
